Of course, the dog could not answer the question that had been put to him, and neither did he show himself. That is, not at first. But presently, as Mr. Bobbsey looked first in one corner of the toolhouse and then in another, he saw the tip end of Snap"s tail waving slightly from behind a big barrel.
"Ah, so there you are!" he called out, and then pushed the barrel to one side.
There was Snap, and in front of him lay the doll with a short string attached to it. Whatever had been tied to the other end of the string was now missing.
"Snap, you"re getting to be a bad dog!" said Mr. Bobbsey sternly. "Give me that doll this instant!"
The dog made no movement to keep the doll, but simply licked his mouth with his long, red tongue, as if he was still enjoying what he had eaten.
"If you don"t behave yourself after this I"ll have to tie you up, Snap,"
warned Mr. Bobbsey.
And then, acting as if he knew he had done wrong, the big dog slunk out of sight.
"Here you are, Helen!" called Flossie"s father, as he came back. "Here"s your doll, all right, and she isn"t hurt a bit. But the cookie is inside of Snap."
"Did he like it?" Helen wanted to know.
"He seemed to--very much," answered Mr. Bobbsey with a laugh. "He made about two bites of it, after he got it loose from the string by which you had tied it to the doll."
Helen dried her tears on the backs of her hands, and took the doll which had been carried away by the dog. There were a few cookie crumbs sticking to her dress, and that was all that was left of the treat she had been taking to a make-believe poor lady.
"Snap, what made you act so to Helen?" asked Bert, shaking his finger at his pet, when the dog came up from the end of the yard, wagging his tail. "Don"t you know you were bad?"
Snap did not seem to know anything of the kind. He kept on wagging his tail, and sniffed around Helen and her doll.
"He"s smelling to see if I"ve any more cookies," said the little girl.
"I guess he is," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Well, come into the house, Helen, and I"ll give you another cookie if you want it. But you had better not tie it to your doll, and go anywhere near Snap."
"I will eat it myself," said the little girl.
"One cookie a day is enough for Snap, anyhow," said Bert.
The dog himself did not seem to think so, for he followed the children and Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey back to the house, as though hoping he would get another cake.
"Heah"s a bone fo" yo"," said Dinah to Snap, for she liked the big dog, and he liked her, I think, for he was in the kitchen as often as Dinah would allow him. Or perhaps it was the good things that the fat cook gave him which Snap liked.
"When we heard you crying, out in the yard," said Mr. Bobbsey to Helen, as they were sitting in the dining-room, "we didn"t know what had happened."
"We were afraid it was another dog fighting with Snap," went on Nan.
"Snap didn"t fight me," Helen said. "But he scared me just like I was scared when the gypsy man took Mollie, my talking doll."
I have told you about this in the Blueberry Island book, you remember.
"Well, I must get back to the office," said Mr. Bobbsey, after a while.
"From there I"ll write and tell Cousin Jasper that I"ll come to see him, and hear his strange story."
"And we"ll come too," added Bert with a laugh. "Don"t forget us, Daddy."
"I"ll not," promised Mr. Bobbsey.
The letter was sent to Mr. Dent, who was still in the hospital, and in a few days a letter came back, asking Mr. Bobbsey to come as soon as he could.
"Bring the children, too," wrote Cousin Jasper. "They"ll like it here, and if you will take a trip on the ocean with me they may like to come, also."
"Does Cousin Jasper live on the ocean?" asked Flossie, for she called Mr. Dent "cousin" as she heard her father and mother do, though, really, he was her second, or first cousin once removed.
"Well, he doesn"t exactly live on the ocean," said Mr. Bobbsey. "But he lives near it, and he often takes trips in boats, I think. He once told me he had a large motor boat."
"What"s a motor boat?" Freddie wanted to know.
"It is one that has a motor in it, like a motor in an automobile, instead of a steam engine," said Mr. Bobbsey. "Big boats and ships, except those that sail, are moved by steam engines. But a motor boat has a gasolene motor, or engine, in it."
"And are we going to ride in one?" asked Flossie.
"Well, we"ll see what Cousin Jasper wants us to do, and hear what his strange news is," answered her father.
"Are we going from here to Florida in a motor boat?" Freddie demanded.
"Well, not exactly, little fireman," his father replied with a laugh.
"We"ll go from here to New York in a train, and from New York to Florida in a steamboat.
"After that we"ll see what Cousin Jasper wants us to do. Maybe he will have another boat ready to take us on a nice voyage."
"That"ll be fun!" cried Freddie. "I hope we see a whale."
"Well, I hope it doesn"t b.u.mp into us," said Flossie. "Whales are awful big, aren"t they, Daddy?"
"Yes, they are quite large. But I hardly think we shall see any between here and Florida, though once in a while whales are sighted along the coast."
"Are there any sharks?" Bert asked.
"Oh, yes, there are plenty of sharks, some large and some small," his father answered. "But they can"t hurt us, and the ship will steam right on past them in the ocean," he added, seeing that Flossie and Freddie looked a bit frightened when Bert spoke of the sharks.
"I wonder what Cousin Jasper really wants of you," said Mrs. Bobbsey to her husband, when the children had gone out to play.
"I don"t know," he answered, "but we shall hear in a few days. We"ll start for Florida next week."
And then the Bobbsey twins and their parents got ready for the trip.
They were to have many strange adventures before they saw their home again.
CHAPTER V