enough for them too, Freddie?”

“Yes, I guess so,” he answered. “You stop the steamboat, Flossie—and stop calling it a raft—and I’ll go back and get them. We’ll pretend they’re passengers. Stop the boat!”

“How can I stop the boat?” the little girl demanded.

“Toot the whistle! Toot the whistle!” answered her brother. “Don’t you ’member, Flossie Bobbsey?”

“Oh,” said Flossie. Then she went on:

“Toot! Toot!”

“Toot! Toot!” answered Freddie. He began pushing the other way on the pole and the raft started back toward the shore they had left.

“What are you doing?” asked Bert Bobbsey, as the mass of boards and rails came closer to him. “What are you two playing?”

“Steamboat,” Freddie answered. “If you want us to stop for you, why, you’ve got to toot.”

“Toot what?” asked Bert.

“Toot your whistle,” Freddie replied. “This is a regular steamboat. Toot if you want me to stop.”

He kept on pushing with the pole until Bert, with a laugh, made the tooting sound as Flossie had done. Then Freddie let the raft stop near his older brother and sister.

“Oh, Bert!” exclaimed Nan Bobbsey, “are you going to get on?”

“Sure I am,” he answered, as he began taking off his shoes and stockings. “It’s big enough for the four of us. Where’d you get it, Freddie?”

“It was partly made—I guess some of the boys from town must have started it. Flossie and I put more boards and rails on it, and we’re having a ride.”

“I should say you were!” laughed Nan.

“Come on,” said Bert to his older sister, as he tossed his shoes over to where Flossie’s and Freddie’s were set on a flat stone. “I’ll help you push, Freddie.”

Nan, who, like Bert, had dark hair and brown eyes, began to take off her shoes and stockings, and soon all four of them were on the raft—or steamboat, as Freddie called it.

Now you have met the two sets of the Bobbsey twins—two pairs of them as it were. Flossie and Freddie, the light-haired and blue-eyed ones, were the younger set, and Bert and Nan, whose hair was a dark brown, matching their eyes, were the older.

“This is a dandy raft—I mean steamboat,” said Bert, quickly changing the word as he saw Freddie looking at him. “It holds the four of us easy.”

Indeed the mass of boards, planks and rails from the fence did not sink very deep in the water even with all the Bobbsey twins on it. Of course, if they had worn shoes and stockings they would have been wet, for now the water came up over the ankles of all of them. But it was a warm summer day, and going barefoot especially while wading in the pond, was fun.

Bert and Freddie pushed the raft about with long poles, and Flossie and Nan stood together in the middle watching the boys and making believe they were passengers taking a voyage across the ocean.

Back and forth across the pond went the raft-steamboat when, all of a sudden, it stopped with a jerk in the middle of the stretch of water.

“Oh!” cried Flossie, catching hold of Nan to keep herself from falling. “Oh, what’s the matter?”

“Are we sinking?” asked Nan.

“No, we’re only stuck in the mud,” Bert answered. “You just stay there, Flossie and Nan, and you, too, Freddie, and I’ll jump off and push the boat out of the mud. It’s just stuck, that’s all.”

“Oh, don’t jump in—it’s deep!” cried Nan.

But she was too late. Bert, quickly rolling his trousers up as far as they would go, had leaped off the raft, making a big splash of water.

CHAPTER II—TO THE RESCUE

“Bert! Bert! You’ll be drowned!” cried Flossie, as she clung to Nan in the middle of the raft. “Come back, you’ll be drowned!”

“Oh,