The Bobbsey Twins in the Country | Page 9

Freddie! Let go!" called Aunt I Sarah as she saw Frisky
heading for the apple tree.
The next minute Frisky made a dash around the tree, once, then again,
winding the rope as she went, and throwing Freddie out with force
against the side of the terrace.
"Oh," Freddie moaned feebly.
"Are you dead?" cried Flossie, running up with tears in her eyes.
"Oh," moaned the boy again, turning over with much trouble as Aunt
Sarah lifted him.
"Oh," he murmured once more, "oh--catch--Frisky!"
"Never mind her," Aunt Sarah said, anxiously. "Are you hurt, dear!"
"No--not--a bit. But look! There goes Frisky! Catch her!"
"Your poor little hands!" Flossie almost cried, kissing the red blisters.
"See, they're cut!"
"Firemen have to slide on ropes!" Freddie spoke up, recovering himself,
"and I'm going to be a fireman. I was one that time, because I tried to
save somebody and didn't care if I got hurted!"
"You are a brave little boy," Aunt Sarah assured him. "You just sit here
with sister while I try to get that naughty Frisky before she spoils the
garden."
By this time the calf was almost lost to them, as she plunged in and out
of the pretty hedges. Fortunately Bert and Harry just turned in the gate.
"Runaway calf! Runaway calf!" called the boys. "Stop the runaway!"
and instantly a half-dozen other boys appeared, and all started in
pursuit.
But Frisky knew how to run, besides she had the advantage of a good

start, and now she just dashed along as if the affair was the biggest joke
of her life.
"The river! The river!" called the boys
"She'll jump in!" and indeed the pretty Meadow Brook, or river, that
ran along some feet lower than the Bobbseys' house, on the other side
of the highway, was now dangerously near the runaway calf.
There was a heavy thicket a few feet further up, and as the boys
squeezed in and out of the bushes Frisky plunged into this piece of
wood.
"Oh, she's gone now, sure!" called Harry "Listen!"
Sure enough there was a splash!
Frisky must be in the river!
It took some time to reach the spot where the fall might have sounded
from, and the boys made their way heavy-hearted, for all loved the
pretty little Frisky.
"There's footprints!" Bert discovered emerging from the thick bush.
"And they end here!" Harry finished, indicating the very brink of the
river.
"She's gone!"
"But how could she drown so quickly?" Bert asked.
"Guess that's the channel," Tom Mason, one of the neighbors' boys,
answered.
"Listen! Thought I heard something in the bushes!" Bert whispered.
But no welcome sound came to tell that poor Frisky was hiding in the
brushwood. With heavy hearts the boys turned away. They didn't even

feel like talking, somehow. They had counted on bringing the calf back
in triumph.
When Flossie and Freddie saw them coming back without Frisky they
just had to cry and no one could stop them.
"I tried to be a fireman!" blubbered Freddie. "I didn't care if the rope
hurted my hands either!"
"If only I didn't go in to see the chickens nests," Flossie whimpered, "I
could have helped Freddie!"
"Never you mind, little 'uns," Dinah told them. "Dinah go and fetch dat
Frisky back to-morrer. See if she don't. You jest don't cry no more, but
eat you supper and take a good sleep, 'cause we're goin' to have a picnic
to-morrer you knows, doesn't youse?"
The others tried to comfort the little ones too, and Uncle Daniel said he
knew where he could buy another calf just like Frisky, so after a little
while Freddie felt better and even laughed when Martha made the white
cat Fluffy and Snoop play ball in the big long kitchen.
"I'm goin' to pray Frisky will come back," Nan told her little brother
when she kissed him good-night, "and maybe the dear Lord will find
her for you."
"Oh, yes, Nannie, do ask Him," pleaded Freddie, "and tell Him--tell
Him if He'll do it this time, I'll be so good I won't never need to bother
Him any more."
Freddie meant very well, but it sounded strange, and made Aunt Sarah
say, "The Lord bless the little darling!" Then night came and an
eventful day closed in on our dear little Bobbseys.
"Seems as if something else ought to happen to-night," Bert remarked
to Harry as they prepared to retire. "This was such a full day, wasn't
it?"

"It's early yet," Harry answered, "and it's never late here until it's time
to get early again."
"Sounds so strange to hear--those--those--"
"Crickets," Harry told him, "and tree toads and katydids. Oh, there's
lots to listen to if you shouldn't feel sleepy."
The house was now all quiet, and even the