"Oh, I'll just pick Snoop up in my arms and tell Snap to come with me and we'll run home," answered Flossie.

"But maybe the gypsies----"

"Don't, Bert," admonished his father. "I do not believe that you little twins need worry about your cat and your dog," he continued.

But for several days and nights after that Flossie and Freddie were very much worried lest their pets should be taken away. But the gypsies did not come back again--at least for a time, and though the small Bobbsey twins again helped Helen hunt under many bushes for her talking doll it could not be found.

"I just _know_ the gypsy man took my Mollie!" declared Helen.

"I'll help you get it back if ever I see those gypsies," declared Freddie, but at that time neither he, Flossie nor Helen realized what strange things were going to happen about that same talking doll.

It was about a week after this (and summer seemed to have come all of a sudden) that, when the mail came one morning, Mrs. Bobbsey saw a postal card that made her smile as she read it.

"What's it about, Momsie?" asked Freddie, when he noticed his mother's happy face. "Are we going back to New York?"

"No, but this postal has something to do with something that happened in New York," was Mrs. Bobbsey's answer. "It is from the express company to your father, and it says there is, at the express office, a----"

Just then Mrs. Bobbsey dropped the postal, and as Nan picked it up to hand to her mother the little girl saw one word.

"Oh!" cried Nan, "it's a postal about a goat!"

"A--a goat?" gasped Flossie.

"A goat!" shouted Freddie. "A live goat?"

"Why--er--yes--I guess so," and Nan looked at the postal again.

"Oh, I know!" cried Freddie. "It's that goat I almost bought in New York--Mike's goat! Oh, did daddy get a goat for us as he promised?"

asked the little boy of his mother.

CHAPTER V

A b.u.mPY RIDE

The Bobbsey twins--all four of them--stood in a circle about their mother, looking eagerly at her and at the postal card which Nan had handed to her. Freddie and Flossie were smiling expectantly while Nan and Bert looked as though they were not quite sure whether or not it was a joke.

"Is it really a goat, Mother?" asked Bert.

"Well, that's what this postal says," answered Mrs. Bobbsey. "A goat and cart have arrived at the express office, and your father is asked to come to get them and take them away."

"Course he's got to take 'em away," said Freddie. "The goat'll be hungry there, for he can't get anything to eat."

"And he might b.u.t.t somebody with his horns," added Flossie.

"Daddy wouldn't buy a b.u.t.ting goat," Freddie declared. "Anyhow, let's go and get him. I want to have a ride."

"If there really is a goat outfit at the express office for us," said Bert, "we'd better get it I think. I'll take the postal down to the lumberyard office and ask daddy----"

"I'm going with you!" cried Freddie.

"I'm comin', too!" added Flossie.

"Suppose you all go," suggested Mrs. Bobbsey. "Your father will tell you what to do, for I'm sure I don't know what to say. I never had a goat.

Four twins, a dog and a cat are about all I can manage," she said laughingly, as fat Dinah came waddling into the room to ask what to order from the grocery.

"A goat! Good lan' ob ma.s.sy!" exclaimed the colored cook. "Dere suah will be trouble if de honey lambs takes t' playin' wif goats! Um! Um!

Um! A goat! Oh, landy!"

"I know how to drive a goat!" declared Freddie. "Mike, the red-haired boy in New York, showed me. Flossie and I had a ride in his wagon for two cents apiece. It was fun, wasn't it, Flossie?"

"Yep. I liked it. We had lots of fun in New York. Freddie rode on a mud turtle's back and we had bugs that went around and around and around."

"Maybe the goat will go around and around and around," said Nan, half laughing.

"Well, hurry down to your father's office with the postal," advised Mrs.

Bobbsey. "He'll know what to do."

And when the four excited Bobbsey twins--for even Bert was excited over the chance of owning a goat--reached their father's office he told them all about it.

"You remember," he said, "that when Freddie and Flossie 'almost' bought the goat in New York I promised that if I could find a good one for sale, with a harness and wagon I'd buy it for you this summer. Well, I heard of one the other day, and I got it, having it sent on here by express. Now we'll go down and see what it looks like."

"It's going to be my goat--Flossie's and mine, isn't it?" asked Freddie, as they started for the express office down near the railroad station.

"No more yours than it will be Nan's and Bert's, my little fat fireman,"

said Mr. Bobbsey with a laugh. "You must all be kind to the goat and take turns riding in the wagon."

"Can't we all ride at once?" asked Nan.

"Well I don't know how large the wagon is," answered Mr. Bobbsey, as he started from his lumberyard for the express office with the children.

"Maybe you can all get in at once if the goat is strong enough to pull you."

"I hope he's a big goat," said Freddie. "Then me and Bert will drive him and ride you and Flossie, Nan."

"Don't let him run away with me, that's all I ask!" begged Nan, laughing.

They found the goat in a crate on the express platform. Near him was a good-sized wagon, like those the children had seen in Central Park when on their visit to New York.

"Oh, we can all get in it!" cried Freddie, as he ran from the wagon over to where the goat was bleating in his crate. The animal was a large white one, and he seemed gentle when Flossie and Freddie put their hands in through the slats of the crate and patted him.

"I think he'd like to get out where he can walk around and have something to eat and drink," said Mr. Bobbsey. "We must take him out of his crate."

This was soon done with the help of the express agent, and, when the last piece of wood was taken off, the goat stepped out of his crate in which he had traveled from a distant city, and gave a loud,

"Baa-a-a-a-a!"