the basket!"

"Cracky!" exclaimed Tom. "That's fine! There isn't anything in _my_
basket but blueberries, and not many of them. You get tired of eatin'
'em after a while, too."

"Are you--are you hungry?" asked Bert. As yet no one else had appeared
except the boy. He seemed to be all alone. And he was not much larger
than Bert.

"Hungry? You'd better believe I'm hungry!" answered the boy with a laugh
that showed his white teeth with his blueberry-stained lips and face all
around them. "I thought I'd have a lot of berries picked by noon, so I
could row back to shore, sell 'em and get somethin' to eat. But the
berries ain't as ripe as I thought they'd be--it's too early I guess--so
I've got to go hungry."

Nan whispered something to Bert who nodded.

"We've got more sandwiches here," Bert said to the blueberry boy. "Would
you like one?"

"Would I _like_ one?" asked the boy, who seemed to answer one question
by asking another like it. "Say, you just give me a chance. I ain't had
nothin' since breakfast, and there wasn't much of that."

With a bound he jumped through the bushes and stood in the little grassy
glade where the Bobbsey twins were having a sort of picnic by
themselves. They saw that Tom had on ragged clothes and no shoes.
Indeed, he looked like a very poor boy, but his face, though it was
stained with the blueberries he had eaten, was smiling and kind. The
Bobbsey twins thought they would like him.

"Here--eat this," and Bert held out some sandwiches. Dinah had put in
plenty, as she always did.

"And he can have some cake, too," said Freddie. "I don't want but two
pieces, and I told Dinah to put in three for me."

"Oh, what a hungry boy!" laughed Nan.

"And the blueberry boy can have one of my pieces of cake," said Flossie.
"Where did you get the blueberries?" she asked, looking into his basket.

"I didn't get many--that's the trouble," he said. "It's a little too
early for them. But the earlier they are the better price you can sell
'em for. So I came over alone to-day."

"Where do you live?" asked Bert, as the boy was hungrily eating the
sandwich.

"Over in Freedon," and Tom Turner, for such he said was his name,
pointed to a village on the other side of the lake from that where the
Bobbsey twins had their home. "Our folks come here every year to pick
blueberries, but never as early as this. I guess I've had my trouble for
nothing. I've eaten more berries than I put in my basket, I guess. But