NICKNACK ON THE ICE
Janet Martin did not know what to do. In fact, a girl much older than Ted's sister would have been puzzled to know how to stop the little boy on his runaway sled from going across the railroad tracks. Of course he might get across before the train came, but there was danger.
"Oh, dear!" cried Jan. "Those big boys were mean to bunk into Ted, and push him over the second hill!"
She was tired now, and running down a slippery hill is not easy. So Jan stood still. Many of the other coasters did not know that Ted was in danger. They saw the larger boys coasting down the second hill, and perhaps they thought Teddy knew what he was about as long as his sled was going so straight down the same slope.
For Ted was steering very straight. With his feet dangling over the back of his sled he guided it down the hill, out of the way of other boys, some of whom he passed, for his sled was a fast one.
Teddy was frightened. But he was a brave little fellow, and some time before he had learned to steer a sled with his feet, so he was not as afraid as he might otherwise have been.
"Oh, what will happen to him?" wailed Janet, and tears came into her eyes. As soon as she had shed them she was sorry, for it is not very comfortable to cry wet, watery, salty tears in freezing weather.
"What is the matter, Curlytop?" asked a bigger girl of Jan. This girl had been giving her little brother and sister a ride on her sled.
"My brother is sliding down the second hill, and there's a train coming," sobbed Jan. "He'll be hurt! We never go on that hill!"
The big girl looked down at Ted. He was quite far away now, but he could easily be seen.
"Maybe he'll stop in time," said the big girl. "Oh, look!" she cried suddenly. "He's steered into a snow bank and upset!"
And this was just what Ted had done. Whether he did it by accident, or on purpose, Jan could not tell. But she was still afraid.
"He'll get hurt!" she said to the big girl.
"Oh, I guess not," was the answer. "The snow is soft and your brother would rather run into that, I think, than into a train of cars. Come on, I'll go down the hill with you and see if he is all right. You stay here, Mary and John," she said to her little brother and sister, placing them, with their sled, where they would be out of the way of the other coasters.
"I'll leave my sled here, too," said Jan, as she went down the hill with the older girl.
When they reached Teddy he was brushing off the snow with which he had become covered when he slid, head first, into the drift alongside the road.
"Are you hurt?" cried Jan, even before she reached him.
"Nope!" laughed Ted. "I'm all right, but I was scared. I thought I'd run over the track. Those fellows nearly did," and he pointed to the boys on the bobsled, which they had made by joining together two or three of their bigger sleds, tying them with ropes, and holding them together as they went down hill by their arms and legs.
The boys on this bobsled had stopped just before going over the track when the switchman at the crossing had lowered the gates. He was now telling the boys they must not coast down as far as this any more, as trains were coming. And, as he spoke, one rumbled by.
"You might have been hurt by that if you had not stopped your sled in time," said the big girl to Ted.
"That's what I thought," he answered. "That's why I steered into the snow bank."
"Those big boys were mean to shove you down the second hill," declared Janet.
"Well, maybe they didn't mean it," said the big girl.
"No, we didn't," put in one of the larger boys, coming up just then. "We're sorry if we hurt you, Curlytop," he added to Ted.
"You didn't hurt me, but you scared me," was the small boy's answer.
"You certainly know how to steer," said the bigger boy. "I watched you as we passed you on the hill. I knew if we got to the bottom first we could keep you from getting hurt by the train. Now you and your sisters sit on my big sled, and we'll pull you to the top of the hill to pay for the trouble we made."
"I'm not his sister," said the big girl.
"I am!" exclaimed Jan quickly.
"I might have known that. You two have hair just alike, as curly as a carpenter's shaving!" laughed the big boy. "Well, hop on the sled, and you, too," he added, nodding at the big girl. "I guess we can pull you all up."
"Course we can!" cried another big boy, and when Ted, Jan and the larger girl, whose name was Helen Dolan, got on the largest of the sleds that had made up the bob, they were pulled up the two hills by a crowd of laughing boys, Teddy's sled trailing on behind.
So the little incident did not really amount to much, though at one time both Ted and Jan were frightened. They coasted some more, being careful to keep out of the way of the bigger boys and girls and then, as it was getting dark, Jan said again they had better go home.
"One more coast!" cried Ted, just as he had said before. "It may rain in the night and melt all the snow."
"It's awful cold," shivered Janet, buttoning up her coat. "If it tries to rain it will freeze into snow. And it's snowing yet, Ted."
"Yes. And almost as hard as it was this morning. Say, maybe we'll be snowed in, Jan! Wouldn't it be fun?"
"Maybe. I never was snowed in; were you?"
"No. But I'd like to be."
The time was to come, though, when Ted and Janet were to find that to be snowed in was not quite so much fun as they expected.
They reached home with rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes, to find supper ready for them.
"Did you have a good time?" asked their mother.
"Fine!" answered Janet.
"And I got run away with," added Ted, who always told everything that happened.
"Run away with!" exclaimed his father. "I thought they didn't allow any horses or automobiles on the coasting hill."
"They don't," Ted answered. "My sled ran away with me, but I steered it into a snow bank and upset," and he told of what had happened.
"You must be very careful," said his father, when Ted had finished. "Coasting is fun, but if everyone is not careful you may get hurt, and we wouldn't like that."
It was still snowing hard when Ted and Jan went to bed, and it was with eager faces that they looked out into the night.
"Do you s'pose we'll be snowed in?" asked Jan.
"I hope so—that is, if we have enough to eat," answered Ted. "That's what grandpa said to do—buy lots to eat, 'cause the hermit said it was going to be an awful bad winter."
"Did you ever see a hermit, Ted?"
"No. Did you?"
"No. But I'd like to, wouldn't you?"
"Yes, I would, Jan."
"Maybe I'll be a hermit some day," went on the little girl, after she had gotten into bed, her room being across the hall from Ted's.
"Huh! You can't be a hermit."
"I can so!"
"You can not!"
"Why?"
"'Cause hermits is only men. I'll be the hermit!"
"Well, couldn't I live with you—wherever you live?"
"Maybe I might live in a dark cave. Lots of hermits do."
"I wouldn't be afraid in the dark if you were there, Teddy."
"All right. Maybe I'd let you live with me."
"Does a hermit like snowstorms, Teddy?"
"Children, you must be quiet and go to sleep!" called Mrs. Martin from downstairs. "Don't talk any more."
Ted and Janet were quiet for a little while, and then Janet called in a loud whisper:
"Teddy, when you're a hermit will you have to eat?"
"I guess so, Jan. Everybody has to eat."
"Children!" warned Mrs. Martin again, and then Jan and Ted became quiet for the rest of the night.
It was very cold when the children awoke in the morning, and as soon as they were up they ran to the windows to look out. It had stopped snowing and the air was clear and bright with sunshine.
"We didn't get snowed in," called Janet, in some disappointment.
"No," answered Ted. "But it's so cold I guess the pond is frozen and we can go skating."
"Oh, that'll be fun!" cried Jan. "Will you help me skate, Ted? 'Cause I can't do it very well yet." She had just learned the winter before.
"I'll help you," her brother promised.
There was a pond not far from the Martin home, and it was so shallow that it froze more quickly than the larger lake, which was just outside the town, and where the best skating was. The smaller boys and girls used the little pond, though sometimes they went to the lake when it was perfectly safe.
After school Jan and Ted, taking their skates, went to the pond. There they found many of their little friends.
"How's the ice?" asked Teddy of Harry Kent.
"Slippery as glass," was the answer.
"Then I'll fall down!" exclaimed Jan.
And she did, almost as soon as she stood up on her skates. But Ted and Harry held her between them and before long she could strike out a little. Then she remembered some of the directions her father had given her when he taught her to skate the year before, and Jan was soon doing fairly well. Ted was a pretty good skater for a boy of his age.
"You're doing fine, Curlytop!" called Harry Morris, one of the big boys who had pulled Ted and Jan up the hill on his sled the previous night. He had come to see how thick the ice was. "You're doing fine. But why don't you hitch up your goat and make him pull you on the ice?"
"Oh, Ted, we could do that!" cried Janet, as the big boy passed on.
"Do what?"
"Harness Nicknack to a sled and make him give us a ride. Maybe he could pull us over the snow as well as on the ice."
"We'll try it!" cried Teddy.
He took off his skates and hurried home, telling Janet to wait for him at the pond, which was not far from the Martin house. In a little while Teddy came back driving Nicknack hitched to Ted's sled. The goat pulled the little boy along over the snow much more easily than he had hauled the small wagon.
"This is great!" cried Ted. "I'm going to drive him on the ice now. Giddap, Nicknack!"
Teddy guided the goat to the ice-covered pond. Nicknack took two or three steps on the slippery place and then he suddenly fell down, the sled, with Ted on it, gliding over his hind legs.
"Baa-a-a-a!" bleated Nicknack, as if he did not at all like this.