"Helen's doll could talk," said Flossie. "I know, 'cause she let me make it talk one day. You wind up a winder thing in her back, and then you push on a shoe button thing in her front and she says 'Mamma' and 'Papa' and other things."
"Yes, that's right," said Nan. "Mollie is a talking doll. I guess she has a little phonograph inside her. Maybe that's the noise Johnnie heard when the gypsy man carried the doll past him, and Johnnie thought it was Helen crying."
"I guess that was it," agreed Mr. Bobbsey.
"Well, it's too bad to lose a big talking doll. I must see what I can do to help get it back. I'll call up the chief of police."
"It would be worse to lose your toy fire engine," declared Freddie.
"Why, Freddie Bobbsey!" exclaimed his little sister, "nothing could be worse than to lose your very best doll—your very own child!"
Mr. Bobbsey, being one of the most prominent business men in the town, had considerable business at times with the police and the fire departments, and the officers would do almost anything to help him or his friends.
So, after supper—at which Dinah had served the pudding with the shaved-up maple sugar over the top, Flossie and Freddie each having had two helpings—Mr. Bobbsey called up the police station and asked if anything more had been heard of the gypsies.
"Well, yes, we did hear something of them," answered Chief Branford, over the telephone wire. "They've gone into camp, where they always do, on the western shore of the lake, and as I've had several reports of small things having been stolen around town, I'm going to send on officer out there to the gypsy camp, and have him see what he can find. You say they took your little girl's doll?"
"No, not my little girl's," answered Mr. Bobbsey, "but the talking doll belonging to a friend of hers."