gypsies did not come back again—at least for a time, and though the small Bobbsey twins again helped Helen hunt under many bushes for her talking doll it could not be found.

"I just know the gypsy man took my Mollie!" declared Helen.

"I'll help you get it back if ever I see those gypsies," declared Freddie, but at that time neither he, Flossie nor Helen realized what strange things were going to happen about that same talking doll.

It was about a week after this (and summer seemed to have come all of a sudden) that, when the mail came one morning, Mrs. Bobbsey saw a postal card that made her smile as she read it.

"What's it about, Momsie?" asked Freddie, when he noticed his mother's happy face. "Are we going back to New York?"

"No, but this postal has something to do with something that happened in New York," was Mrs. Bobbsey's answer. "It is from the express company to your father, and it says there is, at the express office, a——"

Just then Mrs. Bobbsey dropped the postal, and as Nan picked it up to hand to her mother the little girl saw one word.

"Oh!" cried Nan, "it's a postal about a goat!"

"A—a goat?" gasped Flossie.

"A goat!" shouted Freddie. "A live goat?"

"Why—er—yes—I guess so," and Nan looked at the postal again.

"Oh, I know!" cried Freddie. "It's that goat I almost bought in New York—Mike's goat! Oh, did daddy get a goat for us as he promised?" asked the little boy of his mother.