[Illustration: BERT WENT ABOUT, PRETENDING HE WAS A PULLMAN WAITER.
_The Bobbsey Twins Keeping House._ _Frontispiece_ (_Page 140_)]
The Bobbsey Twins
Keeping House
BY
LAURA LEE HOPE
AUTHOR OF “THE BOBBSEY TWIN SERIES.”
[Illustration]
This book, while produced under
wartime conditions, in full compliance
with government regulations
for the conservation of paper
and other essential materials, is
COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Made in the United States of America
COPYRIGHT 1925, BY
GROSSET & DUNLAP
_The Bobbsey Twins Keeping House_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. DOWN IN A PIPE 1
II. A BROKEN WINDOW 12
III. THE LOST RING 25
IV. BAD NEWS 37
V. AUNT SALLIE PRY 47
VI. LOST TWINS 60
VII. SAM GOES AWAY 73
VIII. BERT’S TUMBLE 83
IX. NAN IS WORRIED 95
X. A CALL FOR DINAH 105
XI. LUMBAGO 117
XII. THE SCHOOL BELL 132
XIII. SNOWED IN 143
XIV. NAN’S BISCUITS 154
XV. BROKEN WIRES 168
XVI. A GREAT CRASH 179
XVII. BERT FALLS OFF 190
XVIII. AUNT SALLIE IS WORSE 202
XIX. IN CHURCH AGAIN 214
XX. DANNY’S RING 226
XXI. FIRE 237
XXII. JUST IN TIME 253
THE BOBBSEY TWINS KEEPING HOUSE
CHAPTER I
DOWN IN A PIPE
“Now it’s Freddie’s turn!” called Nan Bobbsey. “Get ready to catch the
ball,” and she motioned, showing that she was going to toss it to her
small brother.
“No, I want to have it once more!” cried Flossie, who was Freddie’s
twin sister. “Come on, Nan! Please throw it to me!” and she jumped up
and down, her light, fluffy hair tossing about her head. It was cold
out in the yard where the children were playing, and that is one reason
why Flossie jumped up and down. Another reason was that she was excited
about the ball game Nan had gotten up for the smaller twins. “Come on,
toss it to me!” begged Flossie.
“But it isn’t your turn, dear!” objected Nan. “It’s Freddie’s turn.
He wants to catch, too,” and she held the big rubber ball, looking at
Flossie meanwhile.
“Oh, just one more turn for me!” Flossie begged, jumping up and down
faster than ever.
“Oh, all right! Let her have it!” agreed Freddie, good-naturedly. “I’ll
wait.”
“That’s kind of you,” said Nan. “All right, Flossie, you may have this
next toss! Get ready!”
“One more turn for me!” sang Flossie gaily. “One more turn for me!
Hurry up, Nan, please!”
Flossie stopped her jumping-jack movements, and with outstretched hands
and shining eyes awaited the ball, which Nan tossed across an old
flower bed. In the past summer bright blossoms had made this part of
the garden very gay. But now, with winter coming on, the flowers had
been killed by Jack Frost and the stalks were sear and brown.
“I got it!” cried Flossie. But she spoke a moment too soon, for the
ball just touched the tips of her fingers, bounced off, and rolled
across the frozen ground of the flower garden right to Freddie’s feet.
He picked it up.
“Oh, dear!” sighed Flossie. She had so much wanted to catch the ball
this last time, but she had missed it.
“You muffed!” cried Freddie. He had heard his older brother Bert speak
like that when, in a real ball game, some boy failed to hold the ball.
“You muffed it, Flossie!”
Then, seeing that there were tears in his twin sister’s eyes, Freddie
did a very manly and generous thing.
“You can have another turn,” he said. “Toss it to Flossie again, Nan. I
don’t mind waiting.”
“That’s nice of you, Freddie,” said Nan.
“Thank you!” cried Flossie, quickly “squeezing back” her tears. “I’ll
give you some of my candy, Freddie!”
“Will you?” he exclaimed. “What kind is it, Flossie?”
“It isn’t any kind yet, ’cause I haven’t got it,” the little
golden-haired girl explained as Nan took the ball from her small
brother and got ready to throw it again. “But I mean, when I do get
some candy I’ll give you a piece.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Freddie, somewhat disappointed. “Well, anyhow, you can
have another turn to catch the ball.”
“Maybe if Nan should take us down town now she would buy us some
candy,” went on Flossie, getting ready for this next attempt to catch
the rubber ball. “Then I could give you some, Freddie.”
“Ho! Ho!” laughed Nan. “That’s a gentle hint, I suppose, Flossie, for
me to take you after candy. But I’m afraid I can’t to-day. Now get
ready. If you miss the ball this time it won’t be fair to make Freddie
wait any longer.”
“I’ll catch it this time!” cried Flossie, and she did. Right in her
hands she caught the bouncing rubber, and then she threw it back to Nan
while Freddie got ready for his turns.
Meanwhile, Flossie danced about, waiting until the ball would again
come to her. Flossie was a lively little girl--always dancing,
running, singing, or doing something. And Freddie was about the same.
In fact, the Bobbsey twins were a lively set of youngsters.
Freddie had caught the ball four times and Nan was getting ready to
toss it to him for the fifth when a whistle was heard around the corner
of the house.
“Here comes Bert!” cried Flossie, and she darted off to meet her older
brother. Bert was Nan’s twin and these two were a few years older than
the smaller Bobbsey twins.
“Maybe Bert will want to play ball,” suggested Freddie, as he caught
the rubber sphere for the fifth time, making a perfect score for him.
“We’ll see,” replied Nan.
But when Bert came whistling around the corner of the house, Flossie
holding him by one hand, he seemed to have something else in mind than
playing toss-ball with his smaller brother and sister.
“You can’t guess what I know!” he called, swinging Flossie around in a
circle by her two hands, her feet flying off the ground.
“Have you got candy?” the little girl demanded, when Bert had set her
down.
“Candy? No!” he laughed. “But there’s a new horse in our garage.”
“A horse in our garage!” cried Nan. “Do you mean a runaway?”
“No, he isn’t running away--he’s just standing there,” Bert answered,
with a grin.
“How did a horse get in our garage?” asked Flossie.
“A man put it there,” Bert answered.
“Oh, I don’t believe you!” exclaimed Nan.
“A horse couldn’t get in our garage!” added Freddie.
“Why not?” Bert wanted to know. “It’s big enough--our garage is. And,
anyhow, it used to be a stable with horses in it before daddy made it
over for automobiles. Of course a horse could be in our garage.”
“Well, maybe it could,” admitted Nan. “But what’s the horse doing
there?”
“Just standing still.”
“Is he eating?” Flossie wanted to know.
Bert thought this over for a moment before he answered:
“No, the horse isn’t eating.”
There was something in her brother’s voice that made Nan look at him
sharply. Then she cried:
“Look here, Bert Bobbsey, there’s something queer about this! What kind
of a horse is it?”
Before Bert could answer Freddie asked:
“Has the horse four legs?”
“Yes, indeed, it has four legs! I’m sure of that for I just counted
them!” and Bert seemed so very positive on this point that Nan didn’t
know what to think.
“Come on and I’ll show you the horse if you don’t believe me,” offered
Bert, moving off toward the garage.
All thoughts of keeping on with the ball game were now forgotten by
Flossie and Freddie. They were eager to see the strange horse in their
father’s garage. Nan could not imagine how the animal could have been
put there.
“But maybe one of the store wagons broke and they had to leave the
horse in our garage until they get the wagon fixed,” she thought to
herself.
Into the garage ran the Bobbsey twins, Flossie and Freddie merrily
laughing, Bert with a queer look on his face, and Nan ready for almost
anything.
“Where’s the horse?” demanded Freddie, entering first and looking
around.
“I don’t see any horse,” added Flossie, who had closely followed her
small brother.
“There it is!” exclaimed Bert.
He pointed to a carpenter’s sawhorse in one corner of the building.
For a moment the smaller children looked at it in surprise. Then
Freddie burst out laughing.
“Oh, ho! A sawhorse! A sawhorse!” he exclaimed.
“But it has got four legs--one, two, three, four!” counted Flossie.
“Oh, isn’t it funny! I thought you meant a real horse, Bert.”
“So did I!” said Freddie.
“And I did, too, for a little while,” admitted Nan. “But pretty soon I
thought it must be a joke. And I don’t think it’s a very good joke,
either, Bert Bobbsey, so there!”
“Well, let’s see you think of a better joke!” laughed Nan’s twin
brother. “Ha! Ha! I had you all fooled! It’s a sawhorse, and you all
thought it was a real horse! Oh, ho!”
“I can get on the back of this sawhorse,” announced Freddie. “Look at
me!” He ran toward the wooden thing.
“Don’t fall!” cautioned Nan. But this Freddie almost did in climbing up
on the sawhorse, which was rather a high one. Bert caught him just in
time.
“How did it get here?” Freddie asked, when he was seated on the back of
the “animal.”
“The carpenters have been working here, and they left it,” Bert
explained. “When I saw it I thought it would be a good joke to make
believe it was a real horse. And I fooled all of you!”
Nan was going to say again that she had not been fooled very much when
Flossie, looking out of the window, cried:
“Oh, it’s snowing! It’s snowing!”
“Is it? Really?” Freddie wanted to know. “Are you fooling like Bert was
with the sawhorse, Flossie?”
“No, it’s really snowing!” the little girl answered.
“Oh, hurray! I want to see it!” cried Freddie, and he was in such a
hurry to descend from the back of the sawhorse that this time he fell
in real earnest. However, as there was a pile of shavings on the floor,
left there by the carpenters, Freddie fell into them and was not hurt
at all. But he was covered with the shavings.
However, Nan picked him up and brushed him off, and then he ran to the
window out of which the others were looking.
“It really is snowing!” said Nan.
“Looks as if it would last, too,” added Bert.
“Oh, can I have my sled out?” begged Flossie.
“I want mine, too!” chimed in Freddie. “Oh, I’m so glad it’s winter
and we’re going to have ice and snow! Come on, let’s go sleigh-riding!
Hurray!”
“Don’t be in such a rush,” advised Bert. “There’ll have to be more
snow than this before you can use your sleds.”
“But quite a lot has fallen, and it’s still snowing hard,” said Nan.
“It must have started soon after we came in here.”
The twins had been in the garage some little time, laughing and talking
about Bert’s joke and playing on the carpenter’s sawhorse, and in that
period the ground had been whitened with the flurry of flakes.
“I’m going out and see how deep it is,” announced Freddie.
Before either Nan or Bert could stop him, if they had wanted to, the
little fellow went to a side door of the garage and, opening this,
rushed out. But he did not go far.
Right at the door a new drain was being put in. A large sewer pipe was
set upright in the ground. Work around it was not yet finished, and
that was why the side door had been closed.
But Freddie opened it. Then he slipped on the newly fallen snow and a
moment later disappeared down the drain pipe!