Excerpt
CHAPTER I THE GYPSIES
"Oh, dear! I wish we weren't going home!"
"So do I! Can't we stay out a little while longer?"
"Why, Flossie and Freddie Bobbsey!" cried Nan, the older sister of the two small twins who had spoken. "A few minutes ago you were in a hurry to get home."
"Yes; they said they were so hungry they couldn't wait to see what Dinah was going to have for supper," said Bert Bobbsey. "How about that, Freddie?"
"Well, I'm hungry yet," said the little boy, who was sitting beside his sister Flossie in a boat that was being rowed over the blue waters of Lake Metoka. "I am hungry, and I want some of Dinah's pie, but I'd like to stay out longer."
"So would I," added Flossie. "It's so nice on the lake, and maybe to-morrow it will rain."
"Well, what if it does?" asked Nan. "You didn't expect to come out on the lake again to-morrow, did you?"
"Maybe," answered Flossie, as she smoothed out the dress of a doll she was holding in her lap.
"I'd like to come out on the lake and have a picnic every day," said Freddie, leaning over the edge of the boat to see if a small ship, to which he had fastened a string, was being pulled safely along.
"Don't do that!" cried Nan quickly. "Do you want to fall in?"
"No," answered Freddie slowly, as though he had been thinking that perhaps a wetting in the lake might not be so bad after all. "No, I don't want to fall in now, 'cause whenever I go in swimming I get terrible hungry, and I don't want to be any hungrier than I am now."
"Oh, so that's the only reason, is it?" asked Bert with a laugh. "Well, just keep inside the boat until we get on shore, and then you can fall out if you want to."
"How am I going to fall out when the boat's on shore?" asked Freddie. "Boats can't go on land anyhow, Bert Bobbsey!"
"That will be something for you to think about, and then maybe you won't lean over and scare Nan," said Bert, smiling.
"Do you want I should land you at your father's lumber dock, or shall I row on down near the house, Bert?" asked a man who was pulling at the oars of the boat. "It won't make any difference to me. I've got lots of time."
"Then, Jack, row us down near the house, if you don't mind," begged Nan. "I want to get these two fat twins ashore as soon as I can; Freddie especially, if he's going to almost fall overboard when I'm not looking."
"I'm not going to fall overboard!" cried the little fat fellow. "Can't I row, Jack?"
"Not now, Freddie. I'm in a hurry," answered the man, one of the workers from Mr. Bobbsey's lumberyard.
"But you told Bert, just now, that you had lots of time," insisted Freddie.
"Well—er—ahem—I haven't time to let you row, Freddie. Maybe I will some other day," and Jack looked at Bert and smiled, while he said to himself: "You've got to get up early in the morning to match a smart chap like him," meaning Freddie, of course.
A short time before, the Bobbsey twins had returned from the city of New York where they had spent a part of the winter. Now it was spring and would soon be summer, and, as the day was a fine, warm one, they had gone on a little picnic, taking their lunch with them and pretending to camp on one of the many islands in the lake....