“And pick oranges!” added Flossie.
“Please say you’ll go, Mother!” cried Nan. “Please do!”
“I want to go in big steamboat!” fairly shouted Freddie. “And I’ll take my fire engine with me and put out the fire!”
“Oh, children dear, do be quiet one little minute and let me think,” begged Mrs. Bobbsey. “Let me see the letter, dear,” she said to her husband.
Mr. Bobbsey handed his wife the sheets of paper, and she read them carefully.
“Well, they don’t tell very much,” she said as she folded them and handed them back. “Still your cousin does say something strange happened when he was shipwrecked, wherever that was. I think you had better go and see him, if you can leave the lumberyard, Dick.”
“Oh, yes, the lumber business will be all right,” said Mr. Bobbsey, whom his wife called Dick. “And would you like to go with me?” he asked his wife.
“And take the children?”
“Yes, we could take them. A sail on the ocean would do them good, I think. They have been shut up pretty much all winter.”
“Will we go on a sailboat?” asked Bert.