"He can b.u.t.t wif his horns," said Dinah.

"Yes, and he can make a bleating noise. That's what I'll do," said Bert.

"I'll use Whisker as a watch dog. Now don't say anything to father or mother about our knowing there're gypsies here," went on Bert.

"I won't--I won't say a word," promised Dinah. "But I'll keep mah ole eyes skinned fo' Flossie an' Freddie, an' so will Sam. It's got 't be mighty smart gypsies dat'll take away mah honey lambs!"

Bert was really much excited by what he had seen and heard. The smashing of the box, what his father and mother thought about it, the taking of the bacon and the scare the night before--all this was quite a surprise.

"Are you sure it's gypsies?" asked Nan when her older brother told her what had happened.

"I'm _sure_ of it," said Bert. "Now what you and I've got to do is to keep a good watch over Flossie and Freddie. Course we're too big for the gypsies to take, but they could easy walk away with those little twins."

"What d'you s'pose they'd do with 'em, Bert, if they did take Flossie and Freddie?"

"Oh, they wouldn't hurt 'em, of course. They'd just black up Flossie's and Freddie's faces with walnut juice to make 'em look dark, like real gypsies, and they'd keep 'em until dad paid a lot of money to get the twins back."

"How much money?"

"Oh, maybe a thousand dollars--maybe more."

"Oh!" exclaimed Nan. "Then we must be sure never to let Flossie or Freddie out of our sight. We've got to watch them every minute."

"Of course," agreed Bert. "We'll fool those gypsies yet."

Carrying out their plan to be very careful of their little brother and sister, Bert and Nan took the small twins in the boat with them when they went fishing an hour later. Bert would not go out far from the sh.o.r.e of Blueberry Island--indeed, his mother had told him he must not, for the lake was deep in places--and the older twins did about as much watching the bushes along the bank for signs of gypsies as they did fishing.

Flossie and Freddie, however, not worrying about any trouble, had lots of fun tossing their baited hooks into the water, and Freddie yelled in delight when he caught the first fish. Flossie also caught one, but it was very small, and Bert made her put it back in the lake.

The children caught enough fish for a meal, though when they started out neither their father nor mother thought they would. But the worms proved to be good bait.

"We'd have caught bigger fish if we'd had my tin bugs for bait," said Freddie.

"I don't want my bugs put on a hook," said Flossie. "When will you find them, Freddie, and make them go around and around?"

"I don't know," he answered.

The tents were put in good order and for two or three days the children had great sport playing, going fishing and taking walks in the woods with their father and mother, or going for trips on the lake. There were no more night scares.

"Maybe it wasn't gypsies after all," said Nan to her brother one day.

"Yes, it was," he said. "They were here, but they went away when they found out we knew about them. But they'll come back, and then they may try to take Flossie or Freddie. We've got to keep a good watch."

It was about a week after they had come to Blueberry Island that the Bobbsey twins--all four of them--went for a ride in the goat wagon.

There was a good road which ran the whole length of the island, and Whisker could easily pull the wagon along it.

The twins had taken their lunch and were to have a sort of picnic in the woods. They rode under the green trees, stopped to gather flowers, and Nan made a wreath of ferns which she put over Whisker's horns, making him look very funny, indeed. Then the twins found a nice gra.s.sy spot near a spring of water, and sat down to eat the good things Dinah had put up for their lunch.

Freddie had taken one bite of a chicken sandwich when, all of a sudden, there was a noise in the bushes near him, and a queer face peered out.

Freddie gave one look at it, and, dropping his piece of bread and chicken, cried:

"Oh, it's a blueberry boy! It's a blueberry boy! Oh, look!"

CHAPTER XII

THE DRIFTING BOAT

At first Nan and Bert did not know whether Freddie was playing some trick or not. Flossie had gone down to the spring to get a cupful of water, and so was not near her little brother when he gave the cry of alarm.

But Bert looked up and had a glimpse of what had startled Freddie.

Certainly there was a queer, blue face staring at the three twins from over the top of the bushes. And the face did not go away as they looked at it.

"A blueberry boy! What in the world is a blueberry boy?" asked Nan.

"There he is!" cried Freddie, pointing. "He's been picking blueberries.

That's why I call him a blueberry boy."

"Yes, and he's been eating them, too, I guess," added Bert. "Did you want anything of us?" he asked of the stranger.

By this time Flossie had come back with the water--that is, what she had not spilled of it--and she, too, saw the strange boy.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"My name's Tom," was the answer. "What's yours?"

"Flossie Bobbsey, an' I'm a twin an' we're campin' on this island, and we had some bugs that went around and around and----"

"Flossie, come here," called Nan. She did not want her little sister to talk too much to the strange boy. Nan had an idea the boy might belong to the gypsies.

"I saw him first," put in Freddie. "I saw his face all covered with blueberries, and I dropped my standwich--I did."

He began looking on the ground for what he had been eating, but finding, when he picked up the bread and bits of chicken, that ants were crawling all over the "standwich," he tossed it away again.

"Aw, what'd you do that for?" asked Tom, the blueberry boy. "That was good to eat! Ain't you hungry?"

"Yes, but I don't like ants," returned Freddie. "'Sides, there's more to eat in the basket!"

"Cracky!" exclaimed Tom. "That's fine! There isn't anything in _my_ basket but blueberries, and not many of them. You get tired of eatin'

'em after a while, too."

"Are you--are you hungry?" asked Bert. As yet no one else had appeared except the boy. He seemed to be all alone. And he was not much larger than Bert.

"Hungry? You'd better believe I'm hungry!" answered the boy with a laugh that showed his white teeth with his blueberry-stained lips and face all around them. "I thought I'd have a lot of berries picked by noon, so I could row back to sh.o.r.e, sell 'em and get somethin' to eat. But the berries ain't as ripe as I thought they'd be--it's too early I guess--so I've got to go hungry."

Nan whispered something to Bert who nodded.