"I'm here now!" said the "little fat fairy," laughing. "I can ride with you now, Freddie."
"No! There has been enough of riding," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "And you gave me a bad fright, Freddie. Why did you wander away?"
"'Cause I liked an elevator ride better than staying up so high where the wind blew," explained the little fellow.
And when they asked him more about it he said he had just slipped away from them while they were on the tower platform, gone back into the room and ridden down in the elevator with the other passengers. No one realized that Freddie was traveling all by himself, the elevator man thinking the blue-eyed and golden-haired boy was with a lady who had two other children by the hands.
Freddie rode to the ground floor, and then he just stayed in the express elevator, riding up and down and having a great time, until the second elevator man began to question him.
"Well, don't ever do it again," said Mr. Bobbsey, and Freddie promised that he would not.
After this there was a lunch, and then they all went up to Bronx Park, traveling in the subway, or the underground railway, which seems strange to so many visitors to New York. But the Bobbsey twins had traveled that way before, so they did not think it very odd.
"It's just like a big, long tunnel," said Bert, and so the subway is.
The Bronx Park is not such a nice place to visit in winter as it is in summer, but the children enjoyed it, and they spent some time in the elephant house, watching the big animals. There was also a hippopotamus there, and oh! what a big mouth he had. The keeper went in between the bars of the hippo's cage, with a pail full of bran mash, and cried:
"Open your mouth, boy!"