X. ST. VALENTINE'S DAY 169

XXI. THE RESCUE OF SNOOP, THE KITTEN 178

XXII. THE LAST OF THE GHOST--GOOD-NIGHT 187

THE BOBBSEY TWINS

CHAPTER I

THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT HOME

The Bobbsey twins were very busy that morning. They were all seated
around the dining-room table, making houses and furnishing them. The
houses were being made out of pasteboard shoe boxes, and had square
holes cut in them for doors, and other long holes for windows, and had
pasteboard chairs and tables, and bits of dress goods for carpets and
rugs, and bits of tissue paper stuck up to the windows for lace
curtains. Three of the houses were long and low, but Bert had placed his
box on one end and divided it into five stories, and Flossie said it
looked exactly like a "department" house in New York.

There were four of the twins. Now that sounds funny, doesn't it? But,
you see, there were two sets. Bert and Nan, age eight, and Freddie and
Flossie, age four.

Nan was a tall and slender girl, with a dark face and red cheeks. Her
eyes were a deep brown and so were the curls that clustered around her
head.

Bert was indeed a twin, not only because he was the same age as Nan, but
because he looked so very much like her. To be sure, he looked like a
boy, while she looked like a girl, but he had the same dark complexion,
the same brown eyes and hair, and his voice was very much the same, only
stronger.

Freddie and Flossie were just the opposite of their larger brother and
sister. Each was short and stout, with a fair, round face, light-blue
eyes and fluffy golden hair. Sometimes Papa Bobbsey called Flossie his
little Fat Fairy, which always made her laugh. But Freddie didn't want
to be called a fairy, so his papa called him the Fat Fireman, which
pleased him very much, and made him rush around the house shouting:
"Fire! fire! Clear the track for Number Two! Play away, boys, play
away!" in a manner that seemed very lifelike. During the past year
Freddie had seen two fires, and the work of the firemen had interested
him deeply.

The Bobbsey family lived in the large town of Lakeport, situated at the
head of Lake Metoka, a clear and beautiful sheet of water upon which the
twins loved to go boating. Mr. Richard Bobbsey was a lumber merchant,
with a large yard and docks on the lake shore, and a saw and planing
mill close by. The house was a quarter of a mile away, on a fashionable
street and had a small but