CHAPTER VI

THE RUNAWAY

“Say, this is a fine thing!” exclaimed Bert Bobbsey, walking up to his sister Nan when recess was almost over.

“What’s a fine thing?” Nan wanted to know.

“Why, everybody knows about the baby at our house! I told Flossie and Freddie not to tell, and you let it out right in class!”

“Well, I couldn’t help it!”

“You could so!”

“I couldn’t! I whispered about it to Nellie and teacher heard me whisper and she asked me and I had to tell. I didn’t know I shouldn’t!”

“Gosh! That’s just like a girl—telling everything! What do you know about that!” and Bert turned to Danny Rugg.

“Sure! That’s right! Girls can’t keep a secret!” declared Danny.

“We can so—if we want to!” exclaimed Nan. “Anyhow, it would have to be known about the baby when father told the police.”

“Oh—all right—there’s no use worrying about it now,” and Bert walked off, shaking his head and talking with Danny Rugg about girls that couldn’t keep a secret.

After all no harm was done, since Mr. Bobbsey wanted the story known, as that might help find Baby May’s parents. And besides, as Nan had said, the report would soon get around town on account of the police alarm.

Once the story was known in the school, the Bobbsey twins, even Flossie and Freddie, had to answer many questions as to how Baby May Washington was found on the doorstep.

Nan was quite the heroine of the day, for had not she found the tiny infant crying in the basket?

“Say, Bert, I’ll tell you what we can do after school,” proposed Charlie Mason that afternoon.

“What?”

“We can scout around and see if we can find that old lady with the green umbrella. We could make her take the baby back.”

“Maybe she wouldn’t have the green umbrella now, ’cause it isn’t raining,” said Freddie, who overheard this talk.

“Well, we can look for her, anyhow,” went on Charlie. “Will you, Bert?”

“Maybe.”

“And maybe there’s a reward out for whoever takes this baby back where it lives,” suggested Danny Rugg. “Maybe we could get a hundred dollars that way!”

“Most of it would go to Bert, ’cause the baby was found at his house,” declared Charlie.

“Well, if we fellows found the old lady, that would count and we’d have part of the reward,” declared Tom Carter.

“I don’t believe you can find her,” said Bert. “I guess she ran away after she left the baby and rang our bell.”

This seemed to be the case, for search as the police did, no trace was found of the strange woman. She had vanished after arriving in Lakeport and leaving the baby on the Bobbseys’ doorstep.

Telephone calls to distant places and a diligent reading of the newspapers, failed to show any babies missing or kidnapped. Mr. Bobbsey advertised in the papers of neighboring towns, but when several days had passed and no claim was made for Baby May Washington, Mr. Bobbsey and his wife talked the matter over again.

“There is no trace of who this child is or to whom she belongs,” said the twins’ father. “I suppose I had better arrange to have the police take her to an orphanage.”

“Well—” began Mrs. Bobbsey slowly, but she was interrupted by a chorus of cries from the children.

“Oh, don’t send the baby away!”

“Let us keep her!”

“I’ll wheel her in my carriage that I don’t use any more,” offered Flossie.

“I like her a little—even if she isn’t a boy!” faltered Freddie.

“Please, Mother, let us keep her! Mayn’t we, Daddy?” begged Nan.

“She’s a cute little thing,” murmured Bert. “Hey, Mother! Look! Nan’s taking her out of the cradle!” And Nan was doing just this.

“Pooh! don’t you think I know how to hold a baby?” asked Nan.

“You might if you had a net under you, like the man in the circus, so she wouldn’t hit the floor if you dropped her,” chuckled Bert.

“Pooh! you think you’re smart, don’t you?” sneered Nan. This was as near as she and Bert ever came to having a fuss.

“Now, children,” chided Mrs. Bobbsey gently, “be polite, please!”

“But what are we going to do with the baby?” asked Mr. Bobbsey. “Nearly a week has gone past now, and we haven’t learned any more than we knew the first day. What do you say, Mother?” he asked his wife.

“Of course the baby isn’t ours, and we don’t know where she belongs,” Mrs. Bobbsey said.

“But I have grown to love the little thing, and the children are very fond of her. Suppose we keep Baby May a while longer. Something may turn up then. I couldn’t bear to send her to an orphanage.”

“All right,” agreed Mr. Bobbsey, with a smile. “Then we’ll keep the baby.”

“And we’ll call her Bobbsey, ’cause she’s going to be one of us,” added Nan.

“Only she isn’t a twin!” added Freddie.

“No, and it’s just as well she isn’t!” laughed his mother. “I don’t know that I’d want to keep _two_ little babies, unless they were my own. But I can manage this one very well.”

“We’ll take care of her,” offered Nan, who was quite proud, as she rocked the baby in her arms.

“Could I wheel her in the carriage some time?” asked Flossie.

“I’ll see,” promised Mrs. Bobbsey.

“She can take my roller skates when she wants them,” offered Freddie, and then he wondered why they all laughed. His mother explained:

“Baby May Washington Bobbsey isn’t able to walk yet, dear, to say nothing of roller skating. But it was kind of you to offer, Freddie.”

“Um!” he murmured. “She’d be better if she was a boy,” and he ran out to play.

So the abandoned baby was kept at the Bobbsey house.

“Oh, I think it’s terribly romantic to have a strange baby at your house, Nan,” said Julia Clark, when she and some other girls were talking about the matter one day at recess. “Just think, she may turn out to be an heiress to a million dollars!”

“And she might turn out to be a gypsy,” suggested Grace Lavine.

“She isn’t dark enough for a gypsy,” said Nan. “And I don’t believe she’ll ever have a million dollars. Daddy says if she belonged to a wealthy family the papers would be filled with the story about her, and detectives would be searching all over for her.”

“Who do you s’pose she is?” asked Nellie.

“Nobody knows,” Nan answered, and that was about all that could be said.

There surely was a mystery about Baby May.

As for the little girl herself, she was wonderfully sweet and good-natured. She cried hardly at all, but sat on a blanket on the floor and cooed and gurgled, kicked her rosy feet, fluttered her tiny hands, now and then smiling at the Bobbsey twins who bent over her or played with her.

“When will she be big enough to walk?” asked Freddie.

“Oh, in a few weeks she may begin to toddle,” his mother answered. “I don’t know just how old she is, but she isn’t much over a year. She is growing fast, though.”

“She’s suttinly de fastest growin’ chile whutever I seed!” declared Dinah. “She jes’ seem to swell all up when she take her milk. She suah am de mostest darlin’ baby! Oh, ain’t she cute!” she murmured, bending over the infant.

And “cute” was just the word that described Baby May—Baby May Washington Bobbsey, to give her the name which had been bestowed on her, for the twins now regarded her as one of themselves.

They took care of her after school hours—that is, Flossie and Nan did, for Bert was getting too old to look after babies, he thought. As for Freddie—well, he hardly could be trusted to do this, as he was such a “splutter-budget,” as Dinah called him. She meant he was always hurrying away to have fun, and he might have left Baby May alone to do this.

So to Nan and Flossie fell the happy task of taking care of the baby after school hours. Mrs. Bobbsey would wrap the little one warmly in blankets and put her in Flossie’s old carriage. Then Nan or Flossie would wheel her up and down in front of the house, stopping, now and then, to let the other children have a look at Baby May.

As for the little one, she would gaze about, smile and twinkle her blue eyes and say:

“Goo!”

Or perhaps she might, on occasions, say:

“Da!”

And when she said either of these things, whatever they may be called, Flossie or Nan would run into the house or call Mrs. Bobbsey and say, most excitedly:

“Oh, she talked! She talked!”

Once when Bert heard this “talk” he laughed at his sisters for thinking it meant anything.

“It’s just jabbering,” he said.

“It isn’t!” insisted Nan. “A lot you know! She said ‘no’ as plain as anything this morning when I offered her some milk, and I’m teaching her to say Nan, and she says ‘Na’ just as nice!”

“Pooh!” chuckled Bert, as he went out to play ball.

One day, when Mrs. Bobbsey had dressed Baby May and put her out in the baby carriage on the sunny side of the house, Flossie came home from school ahead of Nan.

“Mother, I’m going to wheel Baby May out on the sidewalk!” called Flossie.

Mrs. Bobbsey was busy upstairs with Dinah, and did not hear what Flossie said. If she had heard she might have told Flossie to be very careful.

So, without her mother knowing it, though meaning no wrong, Flossie wheeled Baby May out in the street. The baby was asleep, and Flossie was careful to make no noise as she rolled the carriage to and fro. Then along came Freddie. He had stopped to play with some of his boy chums, which was the reason Flossie had reached home ahead of him.

“I’m going to get my roller skates,” Freddie said. “Flossie!” he called, “I can’t get the front gate open. Come and help me!”

“Hush! Don’t make so much noise! You’ll wake Baby May!” whispered Flossie, for Freddie had shouted his request.

“Well, I can’t get the gate open!” he repeated.

“I’ll help you, but keep quiet!” commanded Flossie. “Don’t wake the baby!”

The front gate stuck sometimes, but Flossie knew that she and Freddie together could push it open. So, leaving the baby carriage with May in it on the sidewalk, the little girl went to help her brother.

Now, as it happened, the sidewalk ran a little downhill just at this point. And Flossie, not knowing it, did not put the brake on the baby-carriage wheels. So, as soon as she walked away, the carriage, with Baby May in it, started to roll toward the street at the point where there was a slanting place to allow Mr. Bobbsey’s automobile to come up over the curbstone.

Down into the street rolled the carriage with the sleeping baby in it, going faster and faster. And up the street, running very fast, came a team of horses hitched to an empty coal wagon. The rumble of the big wagon made Flossie and Freddie, pushing in order to open the gate, look around.

“Oh, look!” shouted Freddie. “It’s a runaway! There’s nobody in the wagon!”

This was true, and the horses were running faster and faster as they came on up the street toward the Bobbsey house.

“A runaway! A runaway!” cried Freddie, jumping up and down in his excitement.

It was then that Flossie thought of Baby May. She gave one look toward the carriage, and saw it rolling across the street, almost in the path of the dashing horses and the rumbling coal wagon.

“Oh! Oh, dear!” gasped Flossie.