were short and fat, with light hair and blue eyes. So it would have been
easy to tell the twins apart, even if one pair had not been older than
the other. Besides the children and their parents there were in the
"family" two other persons--Dinah Johnson, the fat, good-natured colored
cook, and Sam, her husband, who looked after the furnace in the Winter and
cut the grass in Summer.

Then there was Snoop, and Snap. The first was a fine black cat and the
second a big dog, both great pets of the children. Those of you who have
read the first book of this series, entitled "The Bobbsey Twins," do not
need to read this explanation here, but others may care to. In the second
volume I told you of the fun the twins had in the country. After that they
went to the seashore, and this subject has a book all to itself, telling
of the adventures there.

Later on the Bobbseys went back to school, where they had plenty of fun,
and when they were at Snow Lodge there were some strange happenings, as
there were also on the houseboat _Bluebird_. There was a stowaway boy--but
there! I had better let you read the book for yourself.

The Bobbsey twins spent some time at Meadow Brook, but there was always a
question whether they had better times there or "At Home," which is the
name of the book just before this one.

You, who have read that book, will remember that Flossie and Freddie
found, in a big snow storm, the lost father of Tommy Todd, a boy who lived
with his grandmother in a poor section of Lakeport. And it was still that
same Winter, after Tommy's father had come home, that we find the Bobbsey
twins skating on the ice, having just missed being run into by the
ice-boat.