"Oh, they'll be all right," declared Mr. Bobbsey. "I'll look around.

Perhaps they may have gone into one of these houses."

"Did you look under the seats?" asked Bert.

"Under the seats!" exclaimed Billy. "What good would that do? Your brother and sister couldn't be under there!"

"Pooh, you don't know much about Flossie and Freddie!" answered Bert.

"They can be in more places than you can think of; can't they, Nan?"

"Yes, they do get into queer places sometimes. But they aren't under my seat," and Nan looked, to make sure.

"Nor mine," added Nell, as she looked also.

Some of the other pa.s.sengers on the auto did the same thing. Mr. Bobbsey really thought it might be possible that Freddie and Flossie, for some queer reason, might have crawled under one of the seats when the big machine stopped for water. But the children were not there.

"Oh, what shall we do?" exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey.

"They'll be all right," her husband answered. "They can't be far away."

"That's right ma'am," said a fat, jolly-looking man.

"Some of you go and inquire in the houses near here," suggested the man who drove the auto. "And I'll go and telephone back to the office, and see if they're there."

"But how could they be at your automobile office?" Mrs. Bobbsey wanted to know.

"It might easily happen," replied the man. "We run a number of these big machines. One of them may have pa.s.sed out this way while I was stopping here for water, and perhaps none of us notice it, and the children may have climbed on and gone on that car, thinking it was this one."

"They couldn't get on if the auto didn't stop," said Billy.

"Well, maybe it stopped," returned the driver. "Perhaps it pa.s.sed up the next street. The children may have gone down there and gotten on.

Whatever has happened, your little ones are all right, ma'am; I'm sure of that."

"I wish I could be!" sighed Mrs. Bobbsey.

Several men volunteered to help Mr. Bobbsey look for the missing twins, and they went to the doors of nearby houses and rang the bells. But to all the answer was the same. Flossie and Freddie had not been seen.

And the reason for this was that the small Bobbsey twins, in following the stray cat, had turned a corner and gone down another street, and were on the block next the one where the auto stood. That was the reason the Walker cook, looking out in front, could see no machine, and why it was that none of those who helped Mr. Bobbsey look for the missing children could find them.

"Well, this is certainly queer!" exclaimed Mr. Bobbsey, when at none of the houses was there any word of Flossie and Freddie.

"But what are we to do?" cried his wife.

"I think we'd better notify the police," said Mr. Bobbsey. "That will be the surest way."

"Yes, I think it will," agreed the auto man. "I telephoned to the office, but they said no lost children had been turned in. Get aboard, every one, and I'll drive to the nearest police station."

Away started the big auto, leaving Flossie and Freddie behind in the home of Tom Walker on the next street. And though Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey, with Nan and Bert and Billy and Nell were much worried, Flossie and Freddie themselves, were having a good time.

For they were playing with Tom, who showed them his toys, and he told them about the rabbits he used to keep.

"I have had as many as six big ones at a time," Tom said. "And I had one pair that had the finest red eyes you ever saw."

"Red eyes!" cried Flossie. "What funny rabbits they must have been!"

"Oh, I know some rabbits have red eyes," declared Freddie. "But not very many. Bert said so."

"I don't believe I'd like to have red eyes," answered his twin sister.

"Everybody'd think I'd been crying."

"They're not red that way," explained Tom. "They just have the color red in them; just as some people have black eyes, blue eyes, and brown eyes--like that."

"Oh! Say, I heard Nan say once that a girl in her room at school had one black eye and one grey eye. Wasn't that funny?"

"It certainly was," answered Tom. And then he showed the little Bobbsey twins a number of picture books and a locomotive which went around a little track.

Freddie and Flossie were having such a good time that they never thought their father and mother might be worried about them.

But, after a while, Mrs. Walker came home. You can well imagine how surprised she was when she found the two lost, strayed children in her house.

"And so they got off one of the sight-seeing autos, did they?" cried Tom's mother. "Oh, my dears! I'm glad you're here, of course, and glad you had a good time with Tom. But your mother and father will be much frightened! I must telephone to the police at once."

"We'll not be arrested, shall we?" asked Freddie anxiously.

"No, indeed, my dear! Of course not! But your parents have probably already telephoned the police, who must be looking for you. I'll let them know I have you safe."

"Why, course we're safe!" cried Flossie.

So Mrs. Walker telephoned. And, just as she guessed, the police were already preparing to start out to hunt for the missing children. But as soon as they got Mrs. Walker's message everything was all right.

"They're found!" cried Mr. Bobbsey to his wife, when a police officer telephoned to the hotel to let the father of the small Bobbsey twins know that the children were safe. "They're all right!"

"Where were they?" asked his wife,

"All the while they were right around the corner and just in the next street from where our auto was standing."

"Oh, dear me!" cried Mrs. Bobbsey, "what a relief."

"I should say so!" agreed Mrs. Martin, who had gone to the hotel, where her friends were staying, to do what she could to help them.

"I'll get a taxicab and bring them straight here," said Mr. Bobbsey.

A little later Flossie and Freddie were back "home" again. That is, if you call a hotel "home," and it was, for the time, to the traveling Bobbseys.

"What made you do it?" asked Flossie's mother, when the story had been told. "What made you go after the stray cat?"

"It was such a nice cat!" said the little girl,

"And we wanted to see if it was like our Snoop," added Freddie.