Bert and his chums stood looking at the steam engine and listening to the organ, while Nan and the smaller children danced.  Then up came Mr. Blipper.

“I guess this is a dollar’s worth of music,” he announced.

“I believe so,” agreed Mr. Bobbsey, with a smile.  “The children have enjoyed it.  Thank you!”

“Um!” grunted Mr. Blipper.  “Here you, Bob!” he roared.  “Come and shut off this steam.  We’re going to travel!”

He climbed up on the seat, and Bob, after hanging the water pail on a hook beneath the truck, shut off the engine.  The organ ceased playing, and the trucks containing the merry-go-round lumbered off.

“Good-by!” called the Bobbsey twins.

“Good-by!” echoed Bob Guess.

“I wonder if we’ll ever see him again,” murmured Bert.

And he was to see the strange lad again, under queer circumstances.

“Come, children, your ice cream will get cold!” called Mrs. Bobbsey, who had come from the pavilion to summon the little guests.

“Ice cream get cold!  Ha!  Ha!” laughed Grace Lavine.

“I like mine cold,” chuckled Dannie Rugg.

Back across the fields ran the merry, laughing children.  The Sunday school picnic, in spite of the danger at the bridge, had turned out most wonderfully.

Soon the caravan of the merry-go-round was but a series of faint specks down the dusty road.  It was taking a route that would not take it across the broken bridge.

The Bobbsey twins and their friends sat about eating ice cream and cake, and some of them talked about the strange boy and the organ that was played by steam.

“I’m going to have an organ like that when I grow up,” said Freddie.

“An’ I’m goin’ to help you play it, an’ ride on a lion,” added Flossie, and the others laughed.

Picnics, however delightful, cannot go on forever, and this one came to an end as the afternoon shadows were falling.  Mr. Bobbsey had been very busy helping his wife and the other ladies, and now, as the time came for him to go home in the small auto in which he and his wife had ridden to the grove, he rolled down his sleeves, and looked about him.

“What are you after?” his wife asked.

“My coat.  I hung it on a tree limb right here, I thought.”

“Yes, I saw you,” said Nan.

“But it isn’t here now!” her father went on.

“Here’s some sort of coat,” announced Bert, picking up one from the ground under a tree near the ice cream pavilion.

“That’s where I hung my coat,” said Mr. Bobbsey.  “And this coat isn’t mine.  Mine was a good, new one.  This is an old, ragged one.  Dear me!  I hope my coat hasn’t been stolen!  It had some money in one pocket, and also some papers I need at the lumber office!  Where is my coat?”

CHAPTER V

SAM IS WORRIED