The little boy seemed to be all right, and he was smiling, while in one hand he held a ripe banana.
“Where’ve you been, Freddie?” asked Flossie. “I was afraid you had gone back home.”
“Nope,” Freddie answered, as he started to peel the banana. “I was seeing how they did it.”
“How who did what?” asked his father.
“Carried the big baskets on their heads,” Freddie answered, and by this time he had part of the skin off the yellow fruit, and was breaking off a piece for Flossie. Freddie always shared his good things with his little sister, and with Bert and Nan if there was enough.
“What does he mean?” asked Bert of his mother. “Was he trying to carry something on his head?”
“No,” answered Mrs. Bobbsey with a laugh, “but he was following a big colored woman who had a basket of fruit on her head. I caught him halfway down the street in front of another hotel. He was walking after this woman, and he didn’t hear me coming. I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was waiting to see it fall off.”
“What fall off?” asked Nan, coming up just then.
“I thought maybe the basket would fall off her head,” Freddie answered for himself. “It was an awful big basket, and it wibbled and wobbled like anything. I thought maybe it would fall, but it didn’t,” he added with a sigh, as though he had been cheated out of a lot of fun.
“If it did had fallen,” he went on, “I was going to pick up her bananas and oranges for her. That’s why I kept walking after her.”