“They got safely back to Washington, did they?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey.

“Yes,” her husband answered.  “And they said they had had a very nice visit here.  They are anxious to have us come to Washington to see them.”

“Can we go?” asked Nan.

“Well, perhaps, some day,” said her father.

“I’d like to go now,” murmured Bert.  “Maybe we might see that tramp in Washington, and get back Miss Pompret’s dishes.”

“Rare china,” muttered Nan, half under her breath.

“What tramp is that, and what about Miss Pompret’s dishes?” asked Daddy Bobbsey, as he took his cup of tea from Dinah.

Then he had to hear the story of that afternoon’s visit of Nan and Bert.

“Oh, I guess Miss Pompret will never see her two china pieces again,” said Mr. Bobbsey.  “If the tramp took them he must have sold them, if he didn’t smash them.  So don’t think of that hundred dollars, Bert and Nan.”

“But couldn’t we go to Washington, anyhow?” Bert wanted to know.

“Well, not right away, I’m afraid,” his father answered.  “You have to go to school, you know.”

But a few days after that something happened.  About eleven o’clock in the morning Bert, Nan, Flossie and Freddie came trooping home.  Into the house they burst with shouts of laughter.

“What’s the matter?  What is it?  Has anything happened?” cried Mrs. Bobbsey.  “Why are you home from school at such a time of day?”

“There isn’t any school,” explained Nan.

“No school?” questioned her mother.

“And there won’t be any for a month, I guess!” added Bert.  “Hurray!”

“What do you mean?” asked his surprised mother.  “No school for a month?”

“No, Mother,” added Nan “The steam boiler is broken and they can’t heat our room.  It got so cold the teacher sent us home.”

“An’ we came home, too’” added Flossie.  “We couldn’t stay in our school ’cause our fingers were so cold!”

“Was any one hurt when the boiler burst?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey.

“No,” Bert said.  “It didn’t exactly burst very hard, I guess.”

But Mrs. Bobbsey wanted to know just what the trouble was, so she called up the principal of the school on the telephone, and from him learned that the heating boiler of the school had broken, not exactly burst, and that it could no longer heat the rooms.

“It will probably be a month before we can get a new boiler, and until then there will be no more school,” he said.  “The children will have another vacation.”

“A vacation so near Christmas,” murmured Mrs. Bobbsey.  “I wonder what I can do with my twins?”

Just then the telephone rang, and Mrs. Bobbsey listened.  It was Mr. Bobbsey telephoning.  He had heard of some accident at the school, and he called up his house, from the lumberyard, to make sure his little fat fairy and fireman, as well as Nan and Bert, were all right.