"I thought we should find him," said Uncle Daniel. "I knew he couldn't be lost with all these circus people around. I say!" called Mr. Bobbsey's brother to one of the men who had been helping hunt for the missing boy. "Just tell them that we found him, will you, please? Freddie's found."
"Yes, sir, I'll tell 'em," said the man. "I'm glad he's all right.
I'll tell 'em!"
"But where were you, Freddie?" asked his mother, who by this time had him safely in her arms. "Oh, where were you?"
"I found him down by the edge of the creek, watching 'em water the elephants," explained the strange boy, who, Mrs. Bobbsey thought, had a good, kind face. "You see, we water the elephants every afternoon when the show is over," the boy went on, "and it was down there I found him."
"Oh, I can't thank you enough for bringing him back to us," said Mrs.
Bobbsey. "You were so good!"
"I didn't know just where he belonged," the strange boy explained. "But he told me his name, and where he lived, and of course I knew I could send word to his folks, though I didn't see, at first, how he got here all the way from Lakeport."
"Oh, we are visiting at his uncle's farm at Meadow Brook," explained
Mrs. Bobbsey.
"So he said," went on the boy. "I was bringing him to the lost tent, when he spied you and said you were his folks."
"And I saw 'em water the elephants!" cried Freddie, struggling to get loose from his mother's arms. "The elephant sucked the water up into his nose, ma, and then he squirted it down his throat just like my fire engine squirts water. Only, 'course an elephant squirts lots more water than my engine. But I'm goin' to get a bigger one that squirts as much as a elephant, that's what I goin' to do. And I saw one elephant, ma, he went right out in the water and laid down in it. What do you think of that!"
"The elephants often do that, ma'am," explained the strange boy. "They like to get a bath now and then, but we don't often have time to give it to them."