“You must have had quite a time up here,” said Mr. Bobbsey.
“We did,” Mrs. Watson said. “For a little while I thought surely some of the cows would come into the house. What happened?”
She was told about the bees and the dog.
What might have been a serious matter passed away safely, though the runaway cattle were the cause of something happening a little later to Mrs. Martin.
The stampede had interrupted the peach sorting, but no damage had been done, and Mr. Watson said Freddie had been a “brave little scout,” to warn so quickly about the danger of the onrushing cattle.
“If they’d once got into the barn here, among my fruit, they would have done a lot of damage,” the farmer said. “You are quite a cowboy, Freddie!”
“No, I’m going to be a fireman when I grow up,” was the answer. “Once I was going to be a cowboy, but my sister Flossie doesn’t like cows, so I’m going to be a fireman, and she can come and see me put out fires.”
“I didn’t know you kept bees, Mr. Watson,” said Nan, when quiet was once more restored in the barn.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I bought some from a man who didn’t make much of a success producing honey for the market. I left the bees over where he had them—that’s the reason you’ve never seen the hives around here.”
“Will there be some honey soon?” asked Freddie.