“Well, I’m going to put a peach into myself,” said Bert, with a laugh.
“I wish we could help pick,” said Nan, after a while, and Mr. Watson, passing through the orchard, heard this and said:
“Of course you can help. Here, Zeek, put them at one of the low trees where they can reach without a ladder.”
And, to their delight, the Bobbsey twins, even Freddie and Flossie, were soon helping gather the peach crop. They picked the fruit carefully, put it in bags which were given them, and carried the full bags to the big boxes.
Then something happened. Freddie, not content to stand up on a box and reach the fruit just over his head, saw, not far away, a tall stepladder. Saying nothing to his brother or sisters about it, the little fellow slipped away by himself, and when Nan looked for him she saw him up on top of the ladder reaching up into the higher limbs of a peach-laden tree.
“Freddie! Freddie! Come down off that!” ordered Nan.
And then Freddie came down, but not in just the way Nan intended. For he reached too far to pick a red peach, overbalanced himself, and, a moment later, over went the ladder with a crash, little boy and all.
“Oh! Oh!” he cried.
“Oh! Oh!” gasped Nan.
“Look out!” shouted Bert.