“It looks so easy,” sighed Meg, standing up on her skates and wobbling a little.  “I wish I could skate the way Dave can.”

“Well, we have to practice,” said Bobby sensibly.  “Daddy says if you keep at it, by and by you find you’re a good skater.  Come on, Meg, let’s take hold of hands.”

Twaddles and Dot stood watching their brother and sister skate for a few minutes, and wished that they, too, had skates.  Then they wisely decided to have as much fun as they could without.

“Smooth the snow down on this bank,” suggested Twaddles, “and we can play it’s a toboggan slide.  I wish we had brought the sled.”

Dot helped him to smooth down the snow, and then they joined hands and tried the first slide.  It was rather rough in spots, but a good slide for all of that, with a thrilling break at the end where they fell from the bank down on to the ice.

“Let me slide, too?” asked Ruth Ellis, coming up to them after the twins had been enjoying their slide for a few minutes.

Of course they were glad to have company, and in a short time a number of the younger children who had no skates were enjoying the slide.  Some of the girls were afraid of the tumble at the end, but Dot, who had always done everything Twaddles did, thought that was the best part of the fun.

Meg and Bobby skated back to them now and then to see that they were all right, and Bobby took off his skates once to try the slide while Twaddles tried to use the skates.  They were too large for him, and a fall on the ice dulled his interest.  He decided he would rather slide.

“They’re going to have a big bonfire to-night,” reported Bobby, on one of his trips back to the twins.  “Things to eat—­oh, everything!  I wish Mother would let us stay up to skate.”

“She won’t, though,” said Twaddles absently.

He was busy with a sled Marion Green had loaned him.  Marion had tired of playing with her sled, and Twaddles had exhausted all the thrill of sliding down his slide on his feet.  He wanted to play toboggan-riding, and when Marion offered him her sled he accepted gratefully.

“You’d better not try that,” said Bobby seriously, watching Twaddles carefully drag the sled into the position he wanted.  “Look out, Twaddles—­you’re foolish.  How are you going to stop it when you get down on the ice?”

Twaddles, seated on the sled, looked down the glistening slide to the clear ice below the bank.

“With my foot, of course,” he said carelessly.  “It’s just as easy.  You watch.”

Bobby watched, and so did Meg.  So did a dozen of the children who had been playing on the slide.  They saw Twaddles start himself with a little forward push, skim down the slide like a bird, take the jump at the end of the bank, and shoot out into the pond among the skaters.

“I knew he’d make a mess of it,” groaned Bobby.

Twaddles apparently had forgotten all about using his foot.  His sled swept across the ice, crashed into a skater, and Twaddles was sent flying in the opposite direction.  The sled brought up against a tree on the other side of the pond, but Twaddles continued to skim over the pond directly toward a patch of thin ice.