another week!” he told the girls, and so they continued to watch for weeds and kept the ground soft around the plants as John had told them.
Freddie’s radishes were above ground now, and growing nicely, but they thought it best not to tell him, as he might pull them up too soon. Nan and Flossie weeded his garden as well as their own and showed they loved to see things grow, for they did not mind the work of attending to them.
“Papa will come up from Lakeport tonight,” Nan told Flossie; “and won’t he be pleased to see our gardens!”
That evening when Mr. Bobbsey arrived the first thing he had to do was to visit the garden.
“Why, I declare!” he exclaimed in real surprise. “You have done splendidly. This is a fine lettuce patch.”
Mrs. Bobbsey and Aunt Sarah had also come up to see the girls’ garden, and they too were much surprised at the result of Nan’s and Flossie’s work.
“Oh!” screamed Freddie from the other side of the garden. “See my redishes! They growed!” and before anyone could stop him he pulled up a whole handful of the little green leaves with the tiny red balls on the roots.
“They growed! They growed!” he shouted, dancing around in delight.
“But you must only pick the ripe ones,” his father told him. “And did you really plant them?” Mr. Bobbsey asked in surprise.
“Yep! John showed me,” he declared, and the girls said that was really Freddie’s garden.
“Now I’ll tell you,” Aunt Sarah remarked. “We will let our little farmers pick their vegetables for dinner, and then we will be able to say just how good they are.”
At this the girls started in to pick the very biggest heads of lettuce, and Freddie looked carefully to get the very reddest radishes in his patch. Finally enough were gathered, and down to the kitchen the vegetables were carried.
“You will have to prepare them for the table,” Mrs. Bobbsey said. “Let us see, girls, what a pretty dish you can make.”
This was a pleasant task to Nan and Flossie, who both always loved to play at housekeeping, and when at last Nan brought the dish in to the dinner table everybody said how pretty it looked.
“Them’s my redishes!” exclaimed Freddie, as he saw the pretty bright red buttons peeping out from between the lettuce leaves.
“But we can all have some, can’t we, Freddie?” his father asked.
“Yes, ’course you can. But I don’t want all my good redishes smothered in that big dish of green stuff,” he pouted.
“Now, Nan, you can serve your vegetables,” Aunt Sarah said, and then Nan very neatly put a few crisp lettuce leaves on each small plate, and at the side she placed a few of Freddie’s radishes, “with handles on” as Dinah said, meaning the little green stalks.
“Just think, we’ve done it all from the garden to the table!” Nan exclaimed, justly proud of her success at gardening.
“I done the radishes,” put in Freddie, gulping down a drink of water to wash the bite off his tongue, for his radishes were quite hot.
“Well, you have certainly all done very nicely,” Mrs. Bobbsey said. “And that kind of play is like going to school, for it teaches you important lessons in nature.”
The girls declared they were going to keep a garden all summer, and so they did.
It was an unusually warm night, and so nearly all the doors were left open when the folks went to bed. Freddie was so worked up over his success as a gardener he could not go to sleep.
At last he dozed off, but presently he awoke with a start. What was that strange sound ringing in his ears? He sat up and listened.
Yes, somebody must surely be playing the piano. But what funny music! It seemed to come in funny runs and curious thumps. He called out sharply, and his mother came at once to his side.
“I heard piano-playing,” said Freddie, and Mrs. Bobbsey started, for she remembered how Flossie had once told her the same thing.
“Oh, Freddie, are you sure?” she asked.
“Sure,” repeated the little fellow. “But it wasn’t very good playing.”
Mrs. Bobbsey called Uncle Daniel, and the latter lit a lamp and went below into the parlor. Nobody was at the piano or in the room.
“I’ve made a careful examination,” he said, on coming back. “I can see nothing unusual. Some of the children left a piece of cake on the keys of the piano, that’s all.”
“Well, cake can’t play,” put in Freddie. “Maybe it was a ghost.”
“No, you must have been dreaming,” said his mother. “Come, go to sleep,” and presently Freddie dropped off. Mrs. Bobbsey was much worried, and the next day the older folks talked the matter over; but nothing came of it.
CHAPTER XII
Tom’s Runaway
“Tom Mason is going to bring his colt out this afternoon,” said Harry to Bert, “and we can all take turns trying him.”
“Oh, is it that pretty little brown horse I saw in the field back of Tom’s home?” asked Bert.
“That’s him,” Harry replied. “Isn’t he a beauty!”
“Yes, I would like first-rate to ride him, but young horses are awful skittish, aren’t they?”
“Sometimes, but this one is partly broken. At any rate, we wouldn’t have far to fall, for he is a little fellow,” said Harry.
So the boys went down to Tom’s home at the appointed time, and there they met Jack Hopkins.
“We’ve made a track around the fields,” Tom told his companions, “and we will train him to run around the ring, for father thinks he may be a race-horse some day, he’s so swift.”
“You may go first,” the boys told him, “as he’s your horse.”
“All right!” Tom replied, making for the stake where Sable, the pony, was tied. Sable marched along quietly enough and made no objections to Tom getting on his back. There was no saddle, but just the bit in the horse’s mouth and attached to it a short piece of rein.
“Get app, Sable!” called Tom, snapping a small whip at the pony’s side.
But instead of going forward the little horse tried to sit down!
“Whoa! whoa!” called the boys, but Tom clung to Sable’s neck and held on in spite of the pony’s back being like a toboggan slide.
“Get off there, get off there!” urged Tom, yet the funny little animal only backed down more.
“Light a match and set it under his nose,” Harry suggested. “That’s the way to make a balky horse go!”
Someone
