The Bobbsey Twins at the County Fair - Laura Lee Hope (top young adult novels txt) 📗

not to be dreamed of that Flossie and Freddie would be content with one ride. They had to stay on for the second. Mr. Bobbsey got off to buy more tickets.

"I don't need a ticket!" Nan called to him. "I have the brass ring, Daddy!"

"Oh, you were very lucky!"

"Bob gave it to me," she explained, telling how it came about.

"Well, I suppose it is all right to take it," her father said. "Bob knows what he is doing."

"But I want to get a brass ring my own self," Nan said. And she did, though not on the next trip. Her father had to buy her a ticket for that.

Then came the final ride, for though Flossie and Freddie would have remained and ridden all day, their father knew this was not good for them. And it was on the last ride that Nan got her brass ring.

"Oh, now I can ride again!" she gayly cried.

"Not now," her father told her. "If you ride, Flossie and Freddie will want to, and I'm afraid they'll be ill."

"But what shall I do with the ring?" asked Nan, slipping down off the wooden horse and holding up the brass ring.

"It'll be good to-morrow," said Bob Guess. "You can keep it, or I'll save it here for you."

"I guess you'd better keep it, Bob," said Nan, with a laugh. "I might lose it."

"I'll save it for you," promised Bob. "I'll look for you to-morrow. Get your tickets—your tickets for the merry-go-round!" he cried, as a new crowd surged up to get on.

"May we have some pop corn?" asked Freddie, when told there were to be no more rides that day.

"And ice-cream?" added Flossie.

"Dear me!" laughed Mr. Bobbsey, "I don't know which will be worse for you. Let's look about a bit."

"I'm thirsty!" announced Flossie.

"Well, we'll have some lemonade—that will be good for all of us, I think," suggested Mr. Bobbsey. Bert and Harry, coming back just then from having been to look at the balloon, were taken to the lemonade stand with the others.

If I were to tell you all the things the Bobbsey twins saw at the County Fair and all they did, it would take a larger book than this to hold it all. So I can only tell you a few of the many things that happened.

After drinking the lemonade the children hardly knew at what to look next, there were so many things to see. Presently Mr. Bobbsey said:

"You have been among a lot of wooden animals on the merry-go-round, suppose we go see some real, live animals?"

"Oh, yes!" cried Nan.

"Let's go to see the race horses," suggested Bert.

"And I want to see cows and pigs!" announced Freddie.

"And sheeps! I want to see sheeps!" exclaimed Flossie.

"They're on the way to the racing horse stables," explained Harry. "All the live stock is together."

There was a race track at the fair grounds and some races had been run off before the Bobbseys arrived. More were to take place soon.

Mr. Bobbsey and the other children were so interested in looking at the prize cattle, at great hogs, some weighing nearly a thousand pounds, and at bulls weighing more than this, that they did not notice the absence of Freddie Bobbsey. That little chap, however, had slipped away and, before he knew it, he was in the stable with the race horses.

As many of the stablemen were outside with their animals, some bringing their steeds back from the track and others taking racers over to have a part in the next contest, there were not many persons in the stable when Freddie wandered there.

"Oh, what a nice lot of horses!" he exclaimed, and indeed the racers were among the best of their kind. "I like horses!" went on Freddie.

One beautiful animal leaned out of its stall and rubbed a velvet nose on Freddie's shoulder.

"You like me, don't you, horsie?" asked the little chap. The horse whinnied, which might mean anything, but Freddie took it for "yes."

"I guess maybe you'd like to have me get on your back," he said. "I got on one of Uncle Dan's horses once. I know how to ride."

The horse was in a large box stall, and the door was not hard to open. In walked Freddie, and, by standing up on a keg which was in the stall, he managed to scramble up on the back of the horse. To keep from sliding off, though, Freddie had to clasp his arms around the neck of the animal.

Whether the horse took this for a signal to move along, or whether it just "happened," I don't know. But the horse walked out of the stall, across the grass of the paddock, and, as the big gate happened to be open, he walked right out on the race track with Freddie clinging to his neck.

CHAPTER XIII IN THE CORNFIELD

Just about this time a race was going to be run. There were a number of horses, with jockey lads on their backs, waiting for the signal to begin their fast pace around the track. Up in the booth, where the judges and the starter were standing to give the signal, everything was in readiness. The people around the race track were all excited, for they wanted to see which horse would win.

And then, just as the starter gave the word, and the jockey boys on their horses' backs called to their steeds to run fast, out on the track walked the horse to whose neck Freddie was clinging!

At first the little fellow had been so startled when the animal to whose back he had scrambled walked out of the barn with him that he had not known what to do. He just clung there.

But, finding that the horse was very gentle and did not try to reach back and bite his legs, Freddie began rather to like it.

"Go 'long, nice horsie! Go 'long!" called Freddie, and he clapped his heels against the sides of the animal.

The horse went along all right—fairly out on to the race track, and just as the race was starting!

"Here! Where you going?"

"Come back with that horse!"

"Look out! Stop him, somebody! That boy will be hurt!"

These were only a few of the many cries that rose from the grandstand and the space in front of it when the people saw Freddie right in the path of the rushing horses.

"Ring that bell!" cried one of the judges to the starter.

The starter pulled the cord of the big gong which is rung to bring the horses back if they have not made an even start, as very often happens.

Clang! went the gong. The jockeys on the backs of the horses knew what the ringing of the bell meant. Some of them had begun to guide their horses so as not to run into Freddie and his mount, but there were so many racers that one or two of them might have bumped into the little fellow. But when the jockeys heard the ringing of the bell they knew it was a false start and they pulled in their steeds and some turned back.

But now something else happened. While the horse Freddie had climbed up on was kind and gentle, yet he was a race horse. And as soon as he found himself out on the track he must have thought he had been ridden there to take part in a race.

At any rate, before Freddie could stop him, even if the little Bobbsey lad had been able to do this, the horse began to trot around the track. Perhaps he thought the ringing of the bell meant for him to start.

So away he ran, going faster and faster with poor Freddie bobbing up and down, but still clinging to the animal's neck. It was all Freddie could do, as there was no saddle horn to grasp.

"Whoa! Whoa!" begged the little chap. "Nice horsie! Whoa now!"

It was not so much fun as Freddie had at first thought to take a ride in this way. At the beginning he had an idea that he might some day be a jockey and wear a gayly colored silk blouse. But he never imagined race horses went so fast.

"Whoa! Whoa!" cried Freddie again. But his horse did not stop. Indeed, it only went faster.

"Somebody get after that boy!" yelled the starter, leaning from the judges' stand. "He'll be hurt if you don't get him!"

"I'll get him!" offered one of the jockeys. He called to his horse and was soon speeding around the track after Freddie. And now the horse on whose back the little Bobbsey boy was seated, hearing another steed coming after him, began to think it was a race in real earnest, and he commenced to go faster. All the "whoa" shouts Freddie uttered were of no use.

"Go on, Tomato! Go on!" cried the jockey to his horse. "Go on, Tomato!" Tomato was the name of his animal.

The shouts and the screams of the crowd attracted the attention of Mr. Bobbsey and the other children as they came from the animal tent. And as Mr. Bobbsey neared the race track he had a glimpse of his little son clinging to a horse and riding very fast, while a jockey on another horse chased him.

"Oh, look! Freddie's in a race!" cried Flossie! "Oh, maybe Freddie will win!"

"My goodness! how did this happen?" cried Mr. Bobbsey.

"Will he be hurt?" gasped Nan.

But just then, to the great relief of the Bobbsey family, the jockey managed to come up alongside of Freddie's galloping horse. The jockey reached over with one hand, caught Freddie by the seat of his little trousers, and fairly lifted him off the back of the now excited horse.

Then, placing Freddie on the saddle in front of him, the jockey turned his horse about and rode slowly back to the stand. Some of the stablemen then ran out and caught the other horse.

"Why, Freddie! what in the world were you trying to do?" asked his father, when the little boy was placed in his arms.

"I—I just wanted a ride," Freddie explained. "I got tired of ridin' on wooden lions. I wanted a live horse."

"Well, he picked a lively one all right!" laughed a man in the crowd. "That horse he rode has won every race, so far."

"You must never do such a thing again, Freddie," his father told him, when the excitement had died down and the racing was once more started. "Never again."

"No, I won't," Freddie promised. "But when I grow up I'm goin' to ride horses, I am!"

"That will be a good while yet," laughed Bert.

"I'm glad your mother wasn't here," said Mr. Bobbsey. "She would have almost fainted, I'm sure, if she had seen you out on the race track like a regular jockey."

"Did I look like a jockey?" Freddie asked, eagerly.

"Well, not exactly," Bert said. "You didn't have any silk blouse on."

"I'll get Dinah to make me one when I go home," Freddie declared. "I'll have a red one, I guess, and then if I get tired of ridin' horses I can be a fireman."

"Well, I think we've had excitement enough for one day," remarked Mr. Bobbsey. "We'll have something to eat, look around a little more, and then go home."

"But we can come back again, can't we?" asked Bert. "I haven't seen the balloon go up yet."

"Yes, we want to see that," added Harry.

"I'll bring you to the fair again to-morrow or next day," promised Mr. Bobbsey. "I want to come back myself. I've met a number of men to-day I'd like to talk with further. Then I'd like to have a talk with that Mr. Blipper."

That night, at Meadow Brook Farm, Mr. Bobbsey and his wife, after the children had gone to bed, talked over the strange disappearance of Mr. Bobbsey's coat and the auto lap robe.

"I'm sure that Blipper knows something about them," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Or perhaps that