CHAPTER X
FREDDIE’S CRASH
Somewhat alarmed by the crash, Mrs. Bobbsey and the others followed Mrs. Watson into the house. Mr. Watson, who, with Zeek and Mr. Bobbsey, had just arrived from the barn with some of the baggage, rushed in, exclaiming:
“My land, sounds like that youngster has had another fall!”
“Does she fall much?” asked Mr. Bobbsey.
“About three times a day, on the average,” explained the father. “But she’s very lucky—she hardly ever gets hurt. You see, she has just found out she can walk, and she takes too many chances.”
“I hope nothing has happened,” said Mr. Bobbsey.
A moment later they heard Mrs. Watson’s laugh from within the house and all felt sure that matters were all right.
“Oh, my dear, what a fright you gave me!” Mrs. Watson could be heard saying.
“What happened?” asked her husband, as his wife appeared carrying the little one.
“Oh, she just pulled over a chair and upset the basket of empty spools we keep for her to play with,” explained Mrs. Watson. “You ought to see how cute she looked, wondering what it was all about.”
“Mustn’t pull over chairs!” playfully warned Mr. Watson, as he held out his finger, which the little one grasped with a smile of delight. “You might break the furniture!”
“Break the furniture! As if that mattered!” cried his wife. “She might have hurt herself!”
“My, how she has grown!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey, taking the baby from its mother.
“She’s getting to be a big girl,” added Mr. Bobbsey. “She doesn’t look like the little stranger we found on our doorstep.”
“Cloverbank is a good place for children to grow up in,” remarked Mr. Watson. “Yours will be so big when they go back to Lakeport the neighbors won’t know them.”
“Well, I only hope they don’t grow out of their clothes,” said their mother, with a laugh. “I didn’t bring many suits with me.”
By this time the Bobbsey twins were gathered about Baby Jenny, or, as the smaller children often called her “Baby May.”
“Isn’t she cute!” murmured Nan.
“May I hold her?” begged Flossie.
“Yes, a little while, if you will sit down in a chair so you won’t drop her,” Mrs. Watson promised. Baby Jenny seemed glad to see the visitors and smiled and “jabbered” at them, as Bert said afterward, though the baby’s mother said:
“Just listen to her talk, would you? Isn’t she bright?”
“Indeed, yes!” agreed Mrs. Bobbsey.
“Could you understand what the baby said?” Bert asked Nan a little later.
“Not a word,” was the answer. “But I guess all babies talk like that. Only their mothers can understand them.”
Meanwhile Flossie, much to her delight, was allowed to hold the little one in her lap.
“It’ll be your turn pretty soon, Freddie,” said Flossie to her brother, for as the twosmaller twins always shared everything they had or did, naturally Flossie thought her small brother would want a part in holding Baby Jenny.
“I guess I rather let her play with my fire engine,” Freddie said, squirming around on one foot. “I don’t zazackly know how to hold babies.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want you to drop mine!” laughed the mother. “But make yourselves at home, folks,” she went on. “My, you must be tired with your long trip and sleeping in a cabin and then getting here in the rain. But it’s clearing off beautifully now,” she added.
So through the rooms of the big, pleasant farmhouse they went, and soon they were all made to feel at home by the kindness of Mr. and Mrs. Watson, not to mention the smiles and cooings of the baby.
The weather had cleared, following the heavy thunderstorm, and gave promise of many fair days to come.
“Won’t we have fun here?” said Bert to Nan, as the two put on their play suits ready to go out and explore the place.
“It’s just lovely!” Nan said. “I’m soglad we came! I’ve got a lot of things to write about for my composition already.”
“What composition?” Bert inquired.
“The one we are going to write to try to win the prize Miss Skell offered,” explained Nan. “Aren’t you going to write a composition about what happens this summer, Bert?”
“Oh, maybe,” he replied, not much interested, it appeared. “But I have to see something happen first.”
“Why, a lot has happened already!” exclaimed Nan. “There were the five kittens, and sleeping in the lonely cabin, and then the thunderstorm, and us not knowing it was the Cloverbank barn we drove into, and Mrs. Watson thinking the baby was hurt—all those things have happened and we haven’t really begun yet.”
“Oh, if you callthosehappenings—yes,” agreed Bert. “But they aren’t any good to put in a composition to win a prize.”
“Of course they are!” insisted Nan. “The teacher said it was better to write about the common, everyday happenings, if we did it well, than to try to write about something big we didn’t know anything about.”
“Um! Maybe,” admitted Bert. “Butthere’s plenty of time. We have all summer ahead of us. I’ll write my composition the last week when I see what has happened.”
“I’m going to write down the different things that happen every day, and then I’ll pick out the most interesting and write about them,” decided Nan. “I do hope I win that prize!”
“I hope you do, too,” said Bert kindly. “I guess I won’t try for it, and then it will be easier for you.”
“Oh, no, you must try, too,” declared Nan, and Bert said he would think it over.
Meanwhile, the other Bobbsey twins, who had also put on their everyday clothes, had come down to wander about the place to discover what there was with which they could play and have a good time.
“But I want to see the clover bank,” insisted Freddie. “Where is it?”
“There it is, little man,” said Zeek Trimmer, who was passing on his way back to the barn. The hired man pointed to a side hill not far away. It was green with growing clover which was washed clean by the recent rain.
“I don’t see any bank,” Freddie stated.“There’s a bank at home in Lakeport where Daddy puts his money. But I don’t see any place where they put clover.”
“Ho! Ho!” laughed Bert. “I guess he thought the clover bank was a building like the money bank at home.”
“Well, isn’t it?” Freddie inquired.
“No, dear,” explained Nan. “That’s just a bank, or hill, of dirt, and the clover leaves and blossoms grow on it. I suppose it’s such a big bank, or side-hill field, of clover, that Mr. Watson named his farm Cloverbank. Isn’t that it?” she asked the hired man.
“That’s it,” was Zeek’s reply. “We’ve got the best field of side-hill clover on any farm for miles around. And we’ve got the best peach orchards, too,” he added proudly.
“Oh, do you grow peaches?” cried Bert.
“I should say we do. They’re almost ripe, too, and we’ll begin picking in a few days.”
“Does Mrs. Watson can the peaches?” Nan asked, for she had sometimes helped her mother at preserving time by washing the glass cans.
“There’s more peaches at Cloverbank thanMrs. Watson could ever can,” said Zeek. “Come and I’ll show you.”
With shouts of delight the Bobbsey twins followed the hired man, Flossie and Freddie already feeling so friendly with him that they had hold of his hands.
“Where are you going?” called Mrs. Bobbsey from the porch.
“I’m just taking them to one of the peach orchards,” answered Zeek.
“Is there more than one orchard?” asked Bert, in surprise.
“Oh, yes,” the hired man replied. “Mr. Watson has several large ones. Part of his business is raising peaches for the market. We’ll begin picking and shipping soon.”
Zeek took the children to one of the orchards where there were many rows of small trees, each one laden with peaches, many of which were beginning to show the yellow, pink, and red cheeks which told they were nearly ripe.
“And over the clover hill are more orchards, just like this,” the hired man said. “Now let’s see if we can find a few ripe ones.”
He picked a few, but would not let thechildren eat any until they were back at the house, when Mrs. Bobbsey gave permission for each of the twins to have one.
“If you eat any more you won’t be hungry when meal time comes,” said Mrs. Watson.
“I guess I’d be hungry if I ate five peaches,” declared Bert. “I have a big appetite to-day.”
“I’m glad of it,” said Mrs. Watson, with a laugh. “Then you’ll appreciate the roast chicken.”
“Oh—chicken—goodie!” cried Flossie and Freddie.
At the table a little later, not only Bert, but the other three Bobbsey twins proved that they had good appetites. It was a delightful meal.
The afternoon was spent in going about the farm, viewing the different buildings, fields, and peach orchards, and when night came four tired but happy children were ready for bed, where Baby Jenny had long since gone.
The next few days were happy ones. There seemed something new to do from the time the children were up in the morning until the sun went down at night. The twins wereout of doors all day long, for after the big thunderstorm the weather was delightful.
“When are you going to pick peaches?” asked Bert of Mr. Watson at the dinner table one day.
“I think we’ll begin to-morrow, if it doesn’t rain,” was the answer. “I have advertised for help, and if the day is fair the pickers will be here by sunrise, I expect.”
This is what happened, and when the children awoke, some time after sunrise, however, they looked upon a busy scene. A number of men and women and some large boys and girls had arrived to help gather the peach crop.
“Oh, let’s go down and see them!” cried Nan.
As their mother and father were as interested as the twins, soon the whole Bobbsey family were in one of the orchards.
In among the rows of trees were tall stepladders, and standing on these the pickers plucked the ripe fruit, putting the peaches into cloth bags that hung about their shoulders. When the bags were filled, the pickers climbed down and emptied the fruit into big boxes that stood about.
While some were doing this, other workers sorted out the best peaches into baskets which were put on a motor car and hauled to the big barn into which Mr. Bobbsey had driven the day of the storm.
“In the barn,” Mr. Bobbsey explained to the children, “the peaches are sorted again, wooden tops are fastened on the baskets, and they are then hauled to the big peach market in a distant city where they are sold.”
“Oh, could we go to the peach market?” asked Bert.
“Perhaps,” his father said.
“Why don’t they just shake the trees and let the peaches fall on the ground and then pick them up?” asked Freddie.
“That would never do,” said his father. “The peaches would become bruised by falling on the ground, and once a peach, apple, or other fruit is bruised it rots very quickly. Great care must be had in picking the best fruit if it is to be sold for a good price in the market. See how careful the pickers are.”
But in spite of all the care used, there were soft and bruised peaches. Some fell off the tree before they could be picked. These soft peaches were put in a separate bin.They could be sold to a near-by canning factory to be made into marmalade, the soft parts being cut out.
It was a busy and entertaining sight in the peach orchard, and as Nan looked on she said to Bert:
“I’m going to put this about peach-picking in my composition.”
“Well, I’m going to put a peach into myself,” said Bert, with a laugh.
“I wish we could help pick,” said Nan, after a while, and Mr. Watson, passing through the orchard, heard this and said:
“Of course you can help. Here, Zeek, put them at one of the low trees where they can reach without a ladder.”
And, to their delight, the Bobbsey twins, even Freddie and Flossie, were soon helping gather the peach crop. They picked the fruit carefully, put it in bags which were given them, and carried the full bags to the big boxes.
Then something happened. Freddie, not content to stand up on a box and reach the fruit just over his head, saw, not far away, a tall stepladder. Saying nothing to his brother or sisters about it, the little fellowslipped away by himself, and when Nan looked for him she saw him up on top of the ladder reaching up into the higher limbs of a peach-laden tree.
“Freddie! Freddie! Come down off that!” ordered Nan.
And then Freddie came down, but not in just the way Nan intended. For he reached too far to pick a red peach, overbalanced himself, and, a moment later, over went the ladder with a crash, little boy and all.
“Oh! Oh!” he cried.
“Oh! Oh!” gasped Nan.
“Look out!” shouted Bert.