“But I guess it’s for Daddy’s birthday,” exclaimed Freddie. “And I got——”
He stopped just in time. He had been about to speak of the “’riginal” present he himself had hidden down cellar.
“Well, if it’s for Daddy we must let it alone until he comes home,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “Come now and get ready for supper. It will not be long before Daddy arrives, and he will open the box.”
“I wonder what’s in it,” murmured Bert as he moved away, with a backward look at the mysterious package.
“And I wonder where it’s from,” said Nan, who was as curious as her brother.
But they would not think of trying to open it, or of trying to pry off one corner to look inside. Indeed, this would have been hard to do, since the box was strongly made.
Flossie and Freddie were as eager as their older brother and sister to know about the box. But perhaps they were thinking so much of their own presents that they did not say much about the package the expressman had delivered.
While the four are getting ready for the evening meal I will beg just a few moments of the time of my new readers to introduce them to the Bobbsey twins. There were four of the twins, as you have learned by this time. Bert and Nan, who had dark hair and eyes, were the older pair, and Flossie and Freddie, whose eyes were blue and whose hair was golden, came next. Their father was Richard Bobbsey, who owned a large lumberyard in the eastern city of Lakeport on Lake Metoka.
“The Bobbsey Twins” is the name of the first book which tells about these children and what happened to them and their friends. After that Bert and his brother and sisters had many adventures in the country, at the seashore, and at school.
From Snow Lodge the twins went on a voyage in a houseboat and then to Meadow Brook. Happenings at home, in a great city, on Blueberry Island and, later, on the deep, blue sea, kept the boys and girls busy for several vacations, and then they went to Washington, where some strange happenings occurred. But no more strange, perhaps, than in the great West or at Cedar Camp.