“And ice-cream?” added Flossie.

“Dear me!” laughed Mr. Bobbsey, “I don’t know which will be worse for you.  Let’s look about a bit.”

“I’m thirsty!” announced Flossie.

“Well, we’ll have some lemonade—­that will be good for all of us, I think,” suggested Mr. Bobbsey.  Bert and Harry, coming back just then from having been to look at the balloon, were taken to the lemonade stand with the others.

If I were to tell you all the things the Bobbsey twins saw at the County Fair and all they did, it would take a larger book than this to hold it all.  So I can only tell you a few of the many things that happened.

After drinking the lemonade the children hardly knew at what to look next, there were so many things to see.  Presently Mr. Bobbsey said: 

“You have been among a lot of wooden animals on the merry-go-round, suppose we go see some real, live animals?”

“Oh, yes!” cried Nan.

“Let’s go to see the race horses,” suggested Bert.

“And I want to see cows and pigs!” announced Freddie.

“And sheeps!  I want to see sheeps!” exclaimed Flossie.

“They’re on the way to the racing horse stables,” explained Harry.  “All the live stock is together.”

There was a race track at the fair grounds and some races had been run off before the Bobbseys arrived.  More were to take place soon.

Mr. Bobbsey and the other children were so interested in looking at the prize cattle, at great hogs, some weighing nearly a thousand pounds, and at bulls weighing more than this, that they did not notice the absence of Freddie Bobbsey.  That little chap, however, had slipped away and, before he knew it, he was in the stable with the race horses.

As many of the stablemen were outside with their animals, some bringing their steeds back from the track and others taking racers over to have a part in the next contest, there were not many persons in the stable when Freddie wandered there.

“Oh, what a nice lot of horses!” he exclaimed, and indeed the racers were among the best of their kind.  “I like horses!” went on Freddie.

One beautiful animal leaned out of its stall and rubbed a velvet nose on Freddie’s shoulder.

“You like me, don’t you, horsie?” asked the little chap.  The horse whinnied, which might mean anything, but Freddie took it for “yes.”

“I guess maybe you’d like to have me get on your back,” he said.  “I got on one of Uncle Dan’s horses once.  I know how to ride.”

The horse was in a large box stall, and the door was not hard to open.  In walked Freddie, and, by standing up on a keg which was in the stall, he managed to scramble up on the back of the horse.  To keep from sliding off, though, Freddie had to clasp his arms around the neck of the animal.

Whether the horse took this for a signal to move along, or whether it just “happened,” I don’t know.  But the horse walked out of the stall, across the grass of the paddock, and, as the big gate happened to be open, he walked right out on the race track with Freddie clinging to his neck.