THE GOAT
"Can't we come, too?"
"We're not afraid of the gypsies--not in daytime."
Flossie and Freddie thus called after their father and Bert, as the two
latter started the next morning to go to find the gypsy camp. The night
had passed quietly, Snap and Snoop were found safe when day dawned, and
after breakfast Mr. Bobbsey and his older son were to go to Lake Metoka
and find where the gypsies had stopped with the gay red and yellow
wagons. They were going to see if they could find any trace of Helen's
doll, and also things belonging to other people in town, which it was
thought the dark-skinned visitors might have taken.
"Please let us go?" begged the little Bobbsey twins.
"Oh, my dears, no!" said Mrs. Bobbsey. "It's too far; and besides----"
"Are you afraid the gypsies will carry us off?" asked Freddie. "'Cause
if you are I'll take my fire engine, and some of the funny bugs that go
around and around and around that we got in New York, and I'll scare the
gypsies with 'em and squirt water on 'em."
"No, I'm not afraid of you or Flossie's being carried off--especially
when your father is with you," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "But there is no
telling where the gypsies are camped, and it may be a long walk before
they are found. So you stay with me, and I'll get Dinah to let you have
a party."
"Oh, that will be fun!" cried Flossie.
"I'd rather play hunt gypsies," said her brother, but when he saw Dinah
come out of the kitchen with a tiny little cake she had baked especially
for him and his sister to have a play-party with, Freddie thought, after
all, there was some fun in staying at home.
"But take Snap with you," he said to Bert. "He'll growl at the gypsy
men, and maybe he'll scare 'em so they'll give back Helen's doll."
"Well, Snap can growl hard when he wants to," said Bert with a laugh.
"But still I think it wouldn't be a good thing to take him to the gypsy
camp. They nearly always have dogs in their camp--the gypsies do--and
those dogs might get into a fight with Snap."
"Snap could beat 'em!" declared Freddie.
"No, don't take him!" ordered Flossie. "I don't want Snap to get bit."
"I don't either," agreed Bert, "so I'll leave him at home I guess. Well,
there's daddy calling me. I'll have to run. I'll tell you all about it
when I come back."
So, while Flossie and Freddie, with the little cake Dinah had baked for
them, went to have a good time playing party, Mr. Bobbsey, with a
policeman and Bert, went to the gypsy camp. The policeman did not have
on his uniform with brass buttons--in fact, he was dressed almost like
Mr. Bobbsey.
"For," said this policeman, whose name was Joseph Carr, "if the gypsy
men were to see me coming along in my helmet, with my coat covered with
brass buttons, and a club in my hand, they would know right away who I
was. They could see me a long way off, on account of the sun shining on
the brass buttons, and they would have time to hide away that little
girl's doll, or anything else they may have taken. So I'll go in plain
clothes."
"Like a detective," said Bert.
"Yes, something like a detective," agreed Mr. Carr. "Now let's step
along lively."
Several persons had seen the gypsy caravan of gay yellow and red wagons
going through Lakeport, and had noticed them turn up along the farther
shore of Lake Metoka. There was a patch of wood several miles away from
the town, and in years past these same gypsies, or others like them, had
camped there. It was to these woods that Bert and his father were going.
"Do you think we'll find Helen's doll?" asked the boy.
"Well, maybe, Bert," answered his father. "And yet it may be that the
gypsies have it, but will not give it up. We'll just have to wait and
see what happens."
"If I get sight of it they'll give it up soon enough," said Policeman
Carr.
After about a two-hours' walk Bert, his father and Mr. Carr came to the
woods. Through the trees they looked and saw the red and yellow wagons
standing in a circle. Near them were tied a number of horses, eating
what little grass grew under the trees, while dogs roamed about here and
there.
"I'm glad we didn't bring Snap," said Bert. "There'd have been a dog
fight as sure as fate."
"Yes, I guess so," agreed his father.
By this time they had entered the gypsy camp, and some of the dark-faced
men, with dangling gold rings in their ears, came walking slowly forward
as if to ask the two visitors with the little boy what was wanted.
"We're after a big doll," said Mr. Bobbsey. "One was taken from a little
girl in our town yesterday. Perhaps you gypsies took it by mistake; and,
if so, we'd be glad to have it back."
"We haven't any doll," growled one big gypsy. "We have only what is our
own."
"I'm not so sure about that," said Mr. Carr. "We'll have a look about
the camp and see what we can find."
The gypsy growled and said something else, though what it was Bert
could not hear. The gypsies did not seem pleased to have visitors, nor
did the dogs who sniffed about the feet of Bert, his father and the
policeman. One dog growled, while others barked, and then the gypsy man
who had first spoken made them go away.
"You are wasting your time here," said this gypsy, who seemed to be the
leader, or "king," as he is sometimes called. "We have nothing but what
is our own. We have no little girl's doll."
"We'll have a look about," said Mr. Carr again.
But though the policeman and Mr. Bobbsey, to say nothing of Bert, who
had very sharp eyes, looked all about the gypsy camp, there was no sign
of the missing doll. If a gypsy man had taken it, of which Helen, at
least, was very sure, he had either hidden it well or, possibly, had
gone off by himself to some other camp in another part of the woods.
"If the doll would only talk now and tell us where she is, we could get
her," said Bert with a laugh to his father, when they had walked
through the camp and come out on the other side.
"That's right," agreed Mr. Bobbsey; "but I'm afraid the doll isn't smart
enough for that. Do you see anything else that the gypsies may have
taken?" asked the twins' father of the policeman.
"I'm not sure," answered Mr. Carr. "We had a report of two horses
missing, and they may be here, but most horses look so much alike to me
that I can't tell them apart. I guess I'll have to get the men who own
them to come here and see if they can pick them out."
For half an hour Bert, his father and Mr. Carr roamed through the gypsy
camp, the dark-faced men and women scowling at them, and the dogs now
and then barking. If there were any boys or girls in the camp Bert did
not see them, and he thought they might be hiding away in some of the
many wagons.
"Well, we didn't find the doll," said Mr. Carr when they were on their
way back to Lakeport. "But I'm sure some of the horses the gypsies have
don't belong to them. The chief of police is going to make them move
away from that camp anyhow, for the man who owns the land doesn't like
the gypsies there. He says they take his neighbors' chickens."
Flossie and Freddie, as well as Helen Porter, were much disappointed
when Mr. Bobbsey and Bert came back without the doll. Helen was sure
some gypsy had it, but as it could not be found, nothing could be done
about it.
"We'll help you look for your doll this afternoon," said Freddie to the
little girl, into whose eyes came tears whenever she thought of her lost
pet. "Maybe you left Mollie under some bush in Grace's yard."
"I looked under all the bushes," said Helen.
"Well, we'll look again," promised Freddie, and they did, but no doll
was found.
The next day the gypsies were made to move on with their gaily colored
wagons, their horses and dogs, and though they went (for they had no
right to camp on the land near the lake), they were very angry about it.
"They said they had camped there for many years," reported Mr. Carr,
telling about the police having driven the dark-faced men and women
away, "and that they would make whoever it was that drove them away
sorry that he had done such a thing."
"I suppose that means," said Mr. Bobbsey, "that they'll help themselves
from somebody's chicken coop."
"We haven't got any chickens," said Freddie.
"But we've got a dog and a cat," put in Flossie. "If those gypsies take
Snap or Snoop I--I'll go after 'em, I will!"
"So'll I!" declared her little fat brother.
"What'll you do when you get to where the gypsies are?" asked Bert.
"Why, I--I'll----" began Freddie.
"Oh, I'll just pick Snoop up in my arms and tell Snap to come with me
and we'll run home," answered Flossie.
"But maybe the gypsies----"
"Don't, Bert," admonished his father. "I do not believe that you little
twins need worry about your cat and your dog," he continued.
But for several days and nights after that Flossie and Freddie were very
much worried lest their pets should be taken away. But the gypsies did
not come back again--at least for a time, and though the small Bobbsey
twins again helped Helen hunt under many bushes for her talking doll it
could not be found.
"I just _know_ the gypsy man took my Mollie!" declared Helen.
"I'll help you get it back if ever I see those gypsies," declared
Freddie, but at that time neither he, Flossie nor Helen realized what
strange things were going to happen about that same talking doll.
It was about a week after this (and summer seemed to have come all of a
sudden) that, when the mail came one morning, Mrs. Bobbsey saw a postal
card that made her smile as she read it.
"What's it about, Momsie?" asked Freddie, when he noticed his mother's
happy face. "Are we going back to New York?"
"No, but this postal has something to do with something that happened in
New York," was Mrs. Bobbsey's answer. "It is from the express company to
your father, and it says there is, at the express office, a----"
Just then Mrs. Bobbsey dropped the postal, and as Nan picked it up to
hand to her mother the little girl saw one word.
"Oh!" cried Nan, "it's a postal about a goat!"
"A--a goat?" gasped Flossie.
"A goat!" shouted Freddie. "A live goat?"
"Why--er--yes--I guess so," and Nan looked at the postal again.
"Oh, I know!" cried Freddie. "It's that goat I almost bought in New
York--Mike's goat! Oh, did daddy get a goat for us as he promised?"
asked the little boy of his mother.