strange boy.

"I--I guess you folks don't ever come down to our part of Lakeport," he
said. "We live down near the dumps. It isn't very nice there."

Freddie had heard of the "dumps." It was on the farther side of the
city, a long distance from his nice home. Once, when he was very little,
he had wandered away and been lost. A policeman who found him had said
Freddie was near the "dumps."

Freddie remembered that very well. Afterward, he heard that the "dumps"
was a place where the ashes, tin cans, and other things that people
threw away were dumped by the scavengers. So Freddie was sure it could
not be a very nice place.

"I live out near the dumps, with my grandmother," went on Tommy Todd.

"We've a grandmother too," said Flossie. "We go to see her at Christmas.
We've two grandmas. One is my mother's mother, and the other is my
father's mother. That's my papa and my mother back there," and Flossie
pointed to where Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey were talking to the fresh air
lady.

"Doesn't your father live with you and your grandmother?" asked Freddie.

"I--I haven't any father," said Tommy, and once more the tears came into
his eyes. "He was lost at sea. He was a captain on a ship, and it was
wrecked."

"Oh, please tell us about it!" begged Freddie. "I just love stories
about the ocean; don't you, Flossie?"

"Yes, I do."

"I'm going to be a sea captain when I grow up," said Freddie. "Tell us
about your father, Tommy."

So while the train rushed on Tommy Todd told his sad little story.

CHAPTER II

A SUDDEN STOP

"I don't remember my father very well," said Tommy Todd. "I was real
little when he went away. That was just after my mother died. My
grandmother took care of me. I just remember a big man with black hair
and whiskers, taking me up in his arms, and kissing me good-bye. That
was my father, my grandmother told me afterward."

"What made him go away from you?" asked Flossie. "Didn't he like to stay
at home?"

"I guess maybe he did," said Tommy. "But he couldn't stay. He was a sea
captain on a ship, you know."

"Of course!" cried Freddie. "Don't you know, Flossie? A sea captain
never stays at home, only a little while. He has to go off to steer the
ship across the ocean. That's what I'm going to do."

"I don't want you to," returned Flossie, as she nestled up closer to her
brother. "I want you to stay with me. If you have to go so far off to be
a sea captain couldn't you be something else a