Having caught no sight of the strange old woman, the children finally decided it must all have been an accident.
The brakes did not hold very well, as Nan said, and some movement of the baby in her sleep might have started the carriage to rolling. Down the hill it could easily coast and push its way in through the screen of green leaves, the branches springing back into place, thus hiding the carriage from view until Freddie happened to see it.
“Well, I’m glad everything is all right,” announced Nan, as they started back for the boarding house. “I wouldn’t want to go home without Baby May.”
It was not easy for Nan and Bert to tell their mother what had happened, but they knew they must. They feared she would blame them for being careless, but all Mrs. Bobbsey said was:
“You must be a little more careful. If you knew the brakes on the carriage didn’t hold, Nan, you should have blocked the wheels with a stone or a piece of wood. But I’ll have daddy fix the brakes.” And the next day Mr. Bobbsey tightened the brakes so they would hold better.
Mr. Bobbsey also went to the hill and looked at the place where it was supposed the carriage had rolled down by itself.
“Yes, it could have happened that way,” he said to his wife. “But I must make sure the old woman is not sneaking around here. She may have followed us.”
“But we didn’t tell any of the neighbors where we were going!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. “Just on that account we didn’t tell them—so if the old woman came back and inquired of the neighbors where we had gone, they couldn’t say.”
“All the same she may have found out and have come here,” returned Mr. Bobbsey. “I’ll make some inquiries.”
But as no one around Pine Hill had seen the stranger, the father of the Bobbsey twins began to feel a little easier in his mind.
“Probably it was just an accident,” he said.
The summer days at Pine Hill were happy ones for the Bobbsey twins. They played about in the woods and fields, and Mrs. Bobbsey sometimes went with them, taking Baby May in her carriage. Flossie and Nan had their dolls to play with, and many a little party they made up under the apple trees. There was a big swing, too, in the orchard, and there the twins had fun all day long.