“I’ll wheel her out,” said Bert, and a moment later Baby May was surrounded by the Bobbsey twins. Everything was all right now—the lost baby had been found.
“Oh, Baby May! Baby May!” cried Nan, gathering the infant up in her arms. “Oh, if that old woman had taken you what would I have done?”
“Maybe the old woman did try to take her,” suggested Bert. “She may have come as far as this down the hill, and then she heard us coming and she hid the carriage here.”
“Maybe,” agreed Nan. And then, as she remembered how she and the two smaller twins had slipped down the pine needle hill she added: “And maybe the carriage rolled down by itself, Bert. I put the brake on, but sometimes it doesn’t hold.”
“Yes, maybe it did happen that way,” Bert admitted. “The carriage could have rolled down the hill, and it could have rolled in behind the bushes and we wouldn’t see it until we went down close and looked—as Freddie did. I guess maybe the carriage did roll down by itself. It could slide easy on the pine needles, and it wouldn’t wake up Baby May.”
Having caught no sight of the strange old woman, the children finally decided it must all have been an accident.
The brakes did not hold very well, as Nan said, and some movement of the baby in her sleep might have started the carriage to rolling. Down the hill it could easily coast and push its way in through the screen of green leaves, the branches springing back into place, thus hiding the carriage from view until Freddie happened to see it.
“Well, I’m glad everything is all right,” announced Nan, as they started back for the boarding house. “I wouldn’t want to go home without Baby May.”
“Nor I,” said Flossie.
It was not easy for Nan and Bert to tell their mother what had happened, but they knew they must. They feared she would blame them for being careless, but all Mrs. Bobbsey said was: