Then Freddie kissed Sandy good-bye. It was not the kind of a caress that girls give, but the two little fellows said good-bye, kissed each other very quickly, then looked down at the ground in a brave effort not to cry.
Mrs. Bobbsey gave Sandy a real mother's love kiss, and he said:
"Oh, I'm comin' beck—to-morrow. I won't stay in the city. I'll just run away and come back."
So Sandy was gone to another home, and we hope he will grow to be as fine a boy as he has been a loving child.
"How lonely it seems," said Nan that afternoon. "Sandy was so jolly."
Freddie followed John all over the place, and could not find anything worth doing. Even Dinah sniffed a little when she fed the kittens and didn't have "dat little buttercup around to tease dem."
"Well," said Uncle Daniel next day, "we are going to have a very poor crop of apples this year, so I think we had better have some cider made from the early fruit. Harry and Bert, you can help John if you like, and take a load of apples to the cider mill to-day to be ground."
The boys willingly agreed to help John, for they liked that sort of work, especially Bert, to whom it was new.
"We'll take the red astrachans and sheepnoses to-day," John said. "Those trees over there are loaded, you see. Then there are the orange apples in the next row; they make good cider."
The early apples were very plentiful, and it took scarcely any time to make up a load and start off for the cider mill.