“Do you still run errands for Mr. Fitch?” asked Bert.

“I do when he has any.  And I did some for your father.  He says I have earned the quarter he gave me, and I’m glad, for I don’t want to owe any money.  I’m hoping your father will have more errands for me to do after school.  I’m going to stop in and ask him on Saturday.  I like Saturdays for then I can work all day.”

“Don’t you like to play?” asked Nan.

“Oh, yes, of course.  But I like to earn money for my grandmother too, so she won’t have to work so hard.”

Bert and Nan felt sorry for Tommy, and Bert made up his mind he would ask his father to give the fresh air boy some work to do so he could earn money.

It was now October, and the weather was beautiful.  The Bobbsey twins had much fun at home and going to and from school.  The leaves on the trees were beginning to turn all sorts of pretty colors, and this showed that colder weather was coming.

“We’ll have lots of fun this Winter,” said Bert one day, as he and his brother and sisters went home from school together, kicking their way through the fallen leaves.  “We’ll go coasting, make snow men and snow forts and go skating.”

“I’m going to have skates this year.  Mother said so,” cried Freddie.

“You’re too little to skate,” declared Bert.

“Oh, I’ll show him how, and hold him up,” offered Nan.  “Skating is fun.”

“It isn’t any fun to fall in the ice water though,” Flossie said.

“Well, we won’t go skating until the ice is good and thick,” said Bert, “then we won’t break through and fall in.”

When the children reached the house they found Mrs. Bobbsey and Dinah busy taking the furniture out of the parlor, and piling it in the sitting room and dining room.

“What’s the matter?” asked Bert in surprise.  “Are we going to move?”

“No.  But your father has sent up a man to varnish the parlor floor, and we have to get the chairs and things out of his way,” said Mrs. Bobbsey.

“An’ yo’ chilluns done got t’ keep outen dat parlah when de varnish-paint is dryin’,” said Dinah, shaking her finger at the twins.  “Ef yo’ done walks on de varnished floors when dey’s not dry, yo’ all will stick fast an’ yo’ can’t get loose.”

“That’s right,” laughed the children’s mother.  “You will have to keep out of the parlor while the floors are drying.”

The Bobbsey twins watched the painter put the varnish on the floor.  The varnish was like a clear, amber paint and made the floor almost as shiny as glass, so it looked like new.

“There!” exclaimed the painter when he had finished.  “Now don’t walk on the floor until morning.  Then the varnish will be dry and hard, and you won’t stick fast.  Don’t any of you go in.”

“We won’t,” promised the twins.  Then they had to study their lessons for school the next day, and, for a time, they forgot about the newly varnished floor.