“Oh, you mean a ventilator pipe!” cried Mrs. Bobbsey. “If Freddie crawled down in one of those he’ll have a dreadful fall! Flossie, call your father!”
Flossie did not exactly know what a ventilator pipe was, but I’ll tell you that it is a big iron thing, like a funnel, that lets fresh air from above down into the boiler room where the firemen have to stay to make steam to push the ship along. But, though Flossie did not quite know what a ventilator pipe was, she knew her mother was much frightened, or she would not have wanted Mr. Bobbsey to come.
Flossie saw her father about halfway down the deck, talking to some other men, and, running up to him, she cried:
“Freddie’s down in a want-you-later pipe!”
“A want-you-later pipe?” repeated Mr. Bobbsey. “What in the world do you mean, Flossie?”
“Well, that’s what mother said,” went on the little girl. “Me and Freddie were playing hide-and-go-seek, and he hid down in a pipe painted red, and mother said it was a want-you-later. And she wants you now!”
“A want-you-later pipe!” exclaimed one of the men. “Oh, she must mean a ventilator. It does sound like that to a little girl.”
“Yes, that’s it,” said Flossie. “And please come quick to mother, will you, Daddy?”
Mr. Bobbsey set off on a run toward his wife, and some of the other men followed, one of them taking hold of Flossie’s hand.
“Oh, Dick!” cried Mrs. Bobbsey as her husband reached her, “something dreadful has happened! Freddie is down a ventilator pipe, and I don’t know what to do!”