“Then why don’t you send him?  He was so good to the children——­”

“I know he was, but he won’t go to the hospital.  He says he knows it costs money and he won’t let me spend any on him.  But when I come back from New York I’ll see what I can do.  I think he’ll be all right for a while, poor old man.”

Uncle Jack, sitting on top of his load of wood, saw the children in the automobile and waved to them.  The Bobbsey twins waved back.

“We must bring him something from New York,” said Freddie.

“We could get him a little toy chick, and then he wouldn’t be lonesome.  Maybe he’d like that,” added Flossie.

Little did the two small Bobbsey twins think what they would help to bring back from New York for the poor, old woodchopper.

The train for New York was on time, and soon the twins, each pair in one seat, with Father and Mother Bobbsey behind them, were looking out of the car windows, happy and joyous as they started on their journey.

They were on their way to the great city of New York.

I shall not tell you all that happened on the trip.  It was not really much, for by this time the twins had traveled so often that a railroad train was an old story to them.  But they never tired of looking out of the windows.

On and on clicked the train, rushing through the snow-covered country, now passing some small village, and again hurrying through a city.

Now and then the car would rattle through some big piece of woods, and then Flossie and Freddie would remember how they were tossed out of the ice-boat, and how they had been so kindly cared for by Uncle Jack in his lonely log cabin.

It was late in the afternoon when, after a change of cars, the Bobbsey family got aboard a Pennsylvania railroad train that took them over the New Jersey meadows.  They crossed two rivers and then Flossie and Freddie, who were eagerly looking out of the windows, suddenly found themselves in darkness.

“Oh, another tunnel!” cried Freddie.

“Is it, Daddy?” asked Flossie.

“Yes, it’s a big tunnel under the Hudson River.  In a little while you will be in New York.”

And not long afterward the train came to a stop.  The children found themselves down in a sort of big hole in the ground, for the Pennsylvania trains come into the great Thirty-third Street station far below the street.

Up the steps walked the Bobbsey family, red-capped porters carrying their hand-baggage, and, a little later, Flossie, Freddie and the others stood under the roof of the great station in New York.  They were in the big city, and many things were to happen to them before they saw Lakeport again.

CHAPTER VII

ON THE EXPRESS TRAIN