“They often have Sunday-school excursions to Sunset Beach.”
“We will if we can,” answered Mabel, “but if I don’t see you there, I may call on you at Lakeport, when we go to the city.”
“Oh yes, do!” insisted Nan. “I’ll be home all winter I guess, but I might go to boarding school. Anyhow, I’ll write to you. Good-bye, girls!”
“Good-bye!” was the answering cry, and then the visitors left in a crowd, waving their hands as they disappeared around a turn of the road.
“What a perfectly lovely time we have had!” declared Nan to Bert.
“Oh, the country can’t be beat!” answered her twin brother. “Still, I’ll be glad to get to the seashore, won’t you?”
“Oh yes; I want to see Cousin Dorothy.”
“And I want to see the big ocean,” put in Freddie.
“I want to ride on one of the funny donkeys,” lisped Flossie. “And I want to make a sand castle.”
“Me too!” chimed in Freddie.
“Hurrah for the seashore!” cried Bert, throwing his cap into the air, and then all went into the house, to get ready for a trip they looked forward to with extreme pleasure. And here let us say good-bye, hoping to meet the Bobbsey Twins again.
THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT THE SEASHORE
CHAPTER I
Chasing the Duck
“Suah’s yo’ lib, we do keep a-movin’!” cried Dinah, as she climbed into the big depot wagon.
“We didn’t forget Snoop this time,” exclaimed Freddie, following close on Dinah’s heels, with the box containing Snoop, his pet cat, who always went traveling with the little fellow.
“I’m glad I covered up the ferns with wet paper,” Flossie remarked, “for this sun would surely kill them if it could get at them.”
“Bert, you may carry my satchel,” said Mrs. Bobbsey, “and be careful, as there are some glasses of jelly in it, you know.”
“I wish I had put my hat in my trunk,” remarked Nan. “I’m sure someone will sit on this box and smash it before we get there.”
“Now, all ready!” called Uncle Daniel, as he prepared to start old Bill, the horse.
“Wait a minute!” Aunt Sarah ordered. “There was another box, I’m sure. Freddie, didn’t you fix that blue shoe box to bring along?”
“Oh, yes, that’s my little duck, Downy. Get him quick, somebody, he’s on the sofa in the bay window!”
Bert climbed out and lost no time in securing the missing box.
“Now we are all ready this time,” Mr. Bobbsey declared, while Bill started on his usual trot down the country road to the depot.
The Bobbseys were leaving the country for the seashore. As told in our first volume, “The Bobbsey Twins,” the little family consisted of two pairs of twins, Nan and Bert, age eight, dark and handsome, and as like as two peas, and Flossie and Freddie, age four, as light as the others were dark, and “just exactly chums,” as Flossie always declared.
The Bobbsey twins lived at Lakeport, where Mr. Richard Bobbsey had large lumber yards. The mother and father were quite young themselves, and so enjoyed the good times that came as naturally as sunshine to the little Bobbseys. Dinah, the colored maid, had been with the family so long the children at Lakeport called her Dinah Bobbsey, although her real name was Mrs. Sam Johnston, and her husband, Sam, was the man of all work about the Bobbsey home.
Our first volume told all about the Lakeport home, and our second book, “The Bobbsey Twins in the Country,” was the story of the Bobbseys on a visit to Aunt Sarah and Uncle Daniel Bobbsey in their beautiful country home at Meadow Brook. Here Cousin Harry, a boy Bert’s age, shared all the sports with the family from Lakeport. Now the Lakeport Bobbseys were leaving Meadow Brook, to spend the month of August with Uncle William and Aunt Emily Minturn at their seashore home, called Ocean Cliff, located near the village of Sunset Beach. There they were also to meet their cousin, Dorothy Minturn, who was just a year older than Nan.
It was a beautiful morning, the very first day of August, that our little party started off. Along the Meadow Brook road everybody called out “Good-by!” for in the small country place all the Bobbseys were well known, and even those from Lakeport had many friends there.
Nettie Prentice, the one poor child in the immediate neighborhood (she only lived two farms away from Aunt Sarah), ran out to the wagon as Uncle Daniel hurried old Bill to the depot.
“Oh, here, Nan!” she called. “Do take these flowers if you can carry them. They are in wet cotton battin at the stems, and they won’t fade a bit all day,” and Nettie offered to Nan a gorgeous bouquet of lovely pure white, waxy lilies, that grow so many on a stalk and have such a delicious fragrance. Nettie’s house was an old homestead, and there delicate blooms crowded around the sitting-room window.
Nan let her hatbox down and took the flowers.
“These are lovely, Nettie,” she exclaimed; “I’ll take them, no matter how I carry them. Thank you so much, and I hope I’ll see you next summer.”
“Yes, do come out again!” Nettie faltered, for she would miss Nan, the city girl had always been so kind—even lent her one of her own dresses for the wonderful Fourth of July parade.
“Maybe you will come down to the beach on an excursion,” called Nan, as Bill started off again with no time to lose.
“I don’t think so,” answered Nettie, for she had never been on an excursion—poor people can rarely afford to spend money for such pleasures.
“I’ve got my duck,” called Freddie to the little girl, who had given the little creature to Freddie at the farewell party as a souvenir of Meadow Brook.
“Have you?” laughed Nettie. “Give him plenty of water, Freddie, let him loose in the ocean for a swim!” Then Nettie ran back to her home duties.
“Odd,” remarked Nan, as they hurried on. “The two girls I thought the most of in Meadow Brook were poor: Nettie Prentice, and Nellie the little cash girl at the fresh-air camp. Somehow, poor girls seem so real and they talk to you so close—I mean they seem to just speak right out of their eyes and hearts.”
“That’s what we call sincerity, daughter,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “You see, children who have trials learn to appreciate more keenly than we, who have everything we need. That appreciation shows in their eyes, and so they seem closer to you, as you say.”
“Oh! oh! oh!” screamed Freddie, “I think my duck is choked. He’s got his head out the hole. Take Snoop, quick, Bert, till I get Downy in again,” and the poor little fellow looked as scared as did the duck with his “head out of the hole.”
“He can’t get it in again,” cried Freddie, pushing gently on the little lump of down with the strange yellow bill—the duck’s head. “The hole ain’t big enough and he’ll surely choke in it.”
“Tear the cardboard down,” said Bert. “That’s easy enough,” and the older brother, coming to the rescue, put his fingers under the choking neck, gave the paper box a jerk, and freed poor Downy.
“When we get to the depot we will have to paste some paper over the tear,” continued Bert, “or Downy will get out further next time.”
“Here we are,” called Uncle Daniel, pulling up to the old station.
“I’ll attend to the baggage,” announced Mr. Bobbsey, “while you folks all go to the farther end of the platform. Our car will stop there.”
For a little place like Meadow Brook seven people getting on the Express seemed like an excursion, and Dave, the lame old agent, hobbled about with some consequence, as he gave the