“What makes the ice so smooth?” asked Vi, as she leaned down and touched it.

“Because it freezes so hard,” answered her father.

“Well, the ground is frozen hard, too,” said the little girl.  “But it isn’t smooth.”

“That’s because it wasn’t smooth before it was frozen,” said Mr. Bunker.  “When cold comes it freezes things into just the shapes they are at the time.  The ground was cut up into ruts and furrows, and it froze that way.  The pond of water was smooth, as it always is except when the wind blows up the waves, and it froze smooth.”

“Would my face freeze smooth?” asked Violet, trying to look down at her nose.

“I hope it doesn’t freeze at all,” her father told her with a laugh.  “But if it did your nose would be all wrinkled, as it is now.”

“Then I’m going to smooth it,” said Violet, and she did.

Russ could put on his own skates, as could Rose, but Laddie had to have help.  Then the three children began gliding about the ice, their father watching them.

“Don’t go too far over toward the middle,” he warned them.  “Dick said he thought it was safe there, but it may not be.  Stay near shore.”

The children promised that they would, and they had great fun gliding about on the steel runners.

Then Daddy Bunker put the skates on Vi and held her up while he taught her how to take the strokes.  It was very wabbly skating, you may be sure.

Finally, however, she began to do very well for such a little girl and for such a short time.  But after a while she said she was tired.

“Very well, Vi,” said Daddy Bunker, “you sit on one sled and take Mun Bun in your lap.  Margy can sit on the smaller sled, and I’ll fasten the two together with ropes.  Then I can pull both.”

And Daddy Bunker did this.  Over the ice along the shore he pulled the sleds with the three children on them, while Rose, Russ and Laddie skated about not far away.  Finally Laddie called: 

“Come on, Russ!  Let’s have a race!  Let’s see who can skate all the way across the pond first!”

“Oh, you mustn’t skate across the pond!” exclaimed Rose.  “Daddy said we must stay near the edge.”

“But the ice is smoother out in the middle,” said Russ.  “It’s all humpy and rough here, and you can’t skate fast.  I want to go out in the middle!”

“So do I,” added Laddie.  “Come on, Russ.  I’ll race you, but you ought to give me a head-start ’cause you’re older than I am and you can skate better.”

“All right, I will,” said Russ.  “I’ll let you go first, Laddie.”

“Oh, I’m going to tell Daddy you’re going out in the middle and across the lake!” cried Rose.  “He said you mustn’t!”

“All right, go on and be a tattle-tale if you want to!” exclaimed Russ.

Now, of course, it wasn’t nice of him to speak to his sister that way, and it wasn’t right for him to go where his father had told him not to go.  Of course Rose didn’t want to be a tattle-tale, but still it was better to be that than to let her brother do what he intended.  So, while Russ and Laddie got ready for their race, Rose skated, as quickly as she could, to the other end of the pond, where her father was giving Violet, Mun Bun and Margy some of Grandma’s cookies, which they had brought along.