“Come in, Nan and Bert.  I want you to meet these Washington children!”

CHAPTER IV

MISS POMPRET’S CHINA

Bert and Nan looked at one another in some surprise as they stood in the door of their father’s private office.  What did he mean by saying that they were to come in and meet the “Washington children?” Who were the “Washington children?”

Nan and Bert were soon to know, for their father spoke again.

“Come on in.  These are two of my twins, Mr. Martin,” he added to the gentleman who was sitting near his desk.  The two “Washington children,” looked up from the lumber books they had been reading.  No, I am wrong, they had not been reading them—­only looking at the pictures.

“Two of your twins?” repeated Mr. Martin, with a smile.  “Do you mean to say you have more twins at home?”

“Oh, yes, another set.  Smaller than these.  I wish you would see Flossie and Freddie.  Come here, Bert and Nan.  This is my friend, Mr. Martin,” he continued, “and these are his children, Billy and Nell.  They live in Washington, D.C.”

So that was what Mr. Bobbsey meant.  At first, Nan said afterward, she had a little notion that her father might have meant the boy and girl were the children of General George Washington.  But a moment’s thought told Nan that this could not be.  General Washington’s children, supposing him to have had any, would have been grown up into old men and women and would have passed away long ago.  But Billy and Nell Martin lived in Washington, District of Columbia (which is what the letters D.C. stand for) and, Bert and Nan knew, Washington was the capital, or chief city, of the United States.

“Mr. Martin came in to see me on business,” explained Daddy Bobbsey.  “He is traveling for a lumber firm, and on this trip he brought his boy and girl with him.”

“They aren’t twins, though,” said Mr. Martin with a nod at Nan and Bert.

“I think it’s lovely to be a twin!” said Nell, with a smile at Nan.  “Don’t you have lots of fun?”

“Yes, we do,” Nan said.

“I should think you could have fun in this lumberyard,” remarked Billy Martin.  “I’d like to live near it.”

“Yes, we play in it,” said Bert; and now that the “ice had been broken,” as the grown folks say, the four children began to feel better acquainted.

“Did you come down for anything special?” asked Mr. Bobbsey of Bert.

“Yes, Daddy.  Here’s a letter mother gave us for you,” the boy answered.

“Oh, this is the one I have been expecting,” said Mr. Bobbsey to Mr. Martin.  “Now we can talk business.  Bert and Nan, don’t you want to take Billy and Nell out in the yard and show them the lake?  But don’t fall in, and don’t climb on the lumber,” he added.

“Oh, I’d love to look at the lake!” cried Nell.

“And I like to see big piles of lumber,” said her brother Billy.