“They yelled as best they could, and some boys who were near them hollered, and the boys who were skating heard them and came tearing along to see what was the matter.  Jack Smith, here, was fixing a strap or somethin’, and was the last one to get started.  The whole bunch of them were standin’ ’round watching those poor Anderson kids drown, so scared they didn’t know what to do.  The poor little tots were hanging onto the sled right out in the middle of an open space about thirty yards wide.”

[Illustration:  “Jack ... never stopped a second”]

“Jack, here, never stopped a second.  He saw what was up as he came skatin’ along, and he legged it all the harder, and in he went—­skates, overcoat, comforter, mittens and all.  It’s no easy job swimmin’ with such an outfit, to say nothin’ of rescuin’ two half-drowned youngsters, and I don’t know how he did it, and I don’t reckon you do either, Jack.  But anyhow, he got to them, paddled along to the edge of the ice, and held on to them until the other boys pushed out boards and finally got the whole caboodle of ’em up on solid ice.”

“Bully for you, Smith!” exclaimed Chilvers, “didn’t know it was in you.”

“Mr. Chilvers is jealous of you,” declared Miss Lawrence.  “I think it was real heroic.”

“So do I,” asserted Miss Harding, “but I cannot imagine how you acquired so absurd a nickname as ‘Socks Smith’ from that incident.”

“Was the water cold?” asked Marshall.

“I hav’n’t finished my story,” said Mr. Bishop, after these and other comments had-been made.  “I reckon the water was some cold, and the air colder; at any rate I happened along in my wagon just as they were draggin’ them out, and before I could get them up to Smith’s father’s house the whole bunch of them was frozen so stiff that I had to pack ’em into the kitchen like so much cordwood.”

“But boys of that age are tough, and when they had been thawed out, boiled in hot baths, and blistered with mustard poultices they was as good as new, and I reckon the Anderson kids was a mighty sight cleaner than they had been since the last time they went in swimmin’.”

“Now, as I said before, these Andersons were desperate poor, but they were good folks, and what you might call appreciative.  Jack had saved the lives of two of the family, and they wanted to show what they thought of him in some way or other.  There was twelve children in the Anderson family, six boys and six girls, and the older girls and the old lady went to work, and blamed if they didn’t knit a dozen pair of woollen socks and sent them to Jack as a Christmas present.”

“And that is how Jack got the name of ‘Socks Smith,’” concluded Mr. Bishop, when the laughter had subsided.  “For riskin’ his life he got all those nice warm socks and a nickname that uster make him so darned mad that I suppose he’s had a hundred fights on account of it, and I’m not certain he won’t poke me in the jaw when he gets me alone for tellin’ this yarn on him.”