“Ah, ha!  And so my little fat fireman had a ride in an ice-boat, did he?” cried Mr. Bobbsey that night, when he came home from the office and heard the story.  “And how did my little fat fairy like it?” And he lifted up first Freddie and then Flossie to kiss them.  “Fat fireman” and “fat fairy” were Mr. Bobbsey’s pet names for the smaller twins.  Bert and Nan had had pet names when they were small, but they were too large for them now, growing out of them as they grew out of their clothes.

“Oh, it was glorious!” cried Nan.  “Sailing in an ice-boat must be like the way it feels to be in an airship.”

“I’m going up in an airship when I get big!” cried Freddie, making a dive after Snoop, the cat, who was hiding under the table.

“Have you heard yet whether you are to go?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey, of her husband, when the noisy greetings to the children were over.

“No, not yet,” he answered, and he made a motion with his head, as if to tell his wife not to speak of a certain matter before the children.

“Oh, I saw you wink!” cried Nan, clapping her hands.  “What does it mean?  Is it a secret, Momsey?”

“Well, yes, Nan.  You shall be told in plenty of time, if anything comes of it.”

“Oh, that’s two secrets!” cried Nan.  “Bert has one and now there’s one here.”

“What is Bert’s secret?” asked Nan’s mother.

“I don’t know yet; he won’t tell me.”

“Yes, I’ll tell you to-morrow,” said her brother.  “But what’s this about Father going away, Mother?  Are we going too?”

“Supper am ready, chilluns!” exclaimed the voice of Dinah, the cook, and that ended the talk about secrets for the time being.

“But when are you going to tell me yours?” Nan managed to whisper to her brother when the dessert was being served.

“Come down to the lumberyard to-morrow afternoon,” he whispered.  “It’s almost done.”

Without telling Flossie or Freddie anything about it, Nan slipped off by herself the next afternoon, and from the watchman in her father’s lumberyard learned that Bert and another boy were in one of the sheds.  As Nan came closer she could hear the noise of hammering and sawing.

“Oh, Bert, what are you making?” cried Nan, as she saw her brother and Tommy Todd busy with sticks, boards, hammer and nails.

“This is the Bird!” cried Bert, waving a hammer at something that, so far, did not look like much of anything.

“A bird?” cried Nan.  “It looks more like a scare-crow!”

“Just wait until it’s finished!” said Tommy Todd.  “When we get the sail on——­”

“Oh, Bert! is it a boat?” cried Nan eagerly.

“Yes, it’s going to be an ice-boat, and I’ve called it the Bird,” was the answer.  “I got the idea of building it after I’d seen Mr. Watson’s.  Father said I might, and he gave me the lumber, and let me have a carpenter to help, for Tommy and I couldn’t do it all.  But now the ice-boat is almost done and in a few days I’ll sail it.”