They all came over to look at Flossie’s find.  Surely enough, there were a number of the brown nuts in a little hollow in the ground.

“How did they get there?” asked Nellie.

“Some squirrel or chipmunk must have gathered them in a heap, ready to carry to its nest,” said George.  “Well, we’ll just take them, as it will save us the trouble of hunting for them.  Put them in your bag, Flossie.”

“But won’t the squirrel be hungry?” asked the little girl.

“Well, don’t take quite all of them.  But there are lots of chestnuts this Fall, and the squirrels can find and gather them more easily than we can.  Take them, Flossie.”

“I’ll give Freddie some too,” she said, and the two small Bobbsey twins divided most of the nuts between them.

By this time Nan, Bert and Nellie had also found some of the nuts under different trees, though none were nicely piled up like those Flossie happened upon.  The nuts were down under the dried leaves, which had fallen from the trees earlier in the season.  By brushing the leaves to one side with a stick the nuts could be seen.

“This is too slow for me,” said George Parks at last.  “I want to pick nuts up faster than this.”

“How can you do it?” asked Charley Mason.

“By shaking some down from a tree.  Let’s find a tree that has a lot of nuts on it, and shake it.  Then the nuts will fall down, and they won’t get under the leaves.  We can easily pick them up then.”

“Good!” cried Bert Bobbsey.  “We’ll do it.”

They searched through the woods until they found just the tree they wanted.  Looking up they could see the burrs clinging to the branches.  The frost had opened the burrs and the brown nuts could be seen, just ready to fall.

“If there was a good wind,” said George, “that would blow the nuts down:  but, as there isn’t, we must shake the tree.”

“It’s too big to shake,” remarked Nan.  “Why, you never could shake that tree.  I can’t even reach around it.”

“You can’t shake it by standing on the ground and pushing against it,” said George.  “I’ll climb up among the branches and shake them.  I’ve often done it.”

“How are you going to climb such a big tree, when you can’t get your arms around it?” Bert demanded.

“I’ll show you,” answered George.  “Do you see this little thin tree, growing close to the big chestnut?”

“Yes,” Bert answered.

“Well, I’m going to climb up the little tree until I get high enough to step from it into the branches of the big one,” went on George.  “Then we’ll have plenty of nuts.”

“And after we pick up all we want, can we eat?” asked Freddie.

There was a laugh at this.

“Hungry already; are you?” asked George.  “Well, it does give one an appetite to come out on a crisp, cold day like this.  Yes, after we gather up the nuts I’m going to shake down we’ll see what mother put in the box.”