CHAPTER II
MYSTERIOUS BELLS
“Children! What has happened?” cried Mrs. Bobbsey, running in from the kitchen where she was helping Dinah get supper. She gave one glance at the collapsed elevated toy railway, saw Flossie and Freddie buried under an overturned chair, the ironing board, the engine and cars and gasped: “Oh, are you hurt?”
Another loud clap of thunder drowned, for a moment, the answering voices of the children. Then from the toy railroad wreck came the faltering cry of Flossie as she said:
“Oh, I got a terrible bang on the head! Oh, dear!”
“You aren’t hurt much—you’re just frightened!” said Nan, soothingly, as she helped her small sister get out from beneath the ironing board.
“And I got banged on the knee!” exclaimed Freddie.
“Crickity grasshoppers!” exclaimed Bert, as he viewed the tangled mass of what, a moment before, had been a fine-running toy railroad system. “Everything’s gone to smash!”
“Oh, it’s a wreck! Let’s play it’s a railroad wreck!” shouted Freddie. “That’s what it is—and I’ll be a passenger that was hurt, and Flossie can be another passenger, and you must send for the amberlance, an’ Nan can be a trained nurse an’—an’—” He had to stop for breath, he was talking so fast.
“We don’t need to pretend it was a wreck—it sure is one!” declared Bert ruefully. “I hope my electric engine isn’t smashed!” he added. “Crawl out of there, Freddie, until I take a look!”
“Will I get a shock from the ’lectric battery?” faltered Flossie, as Nan picked her up.