Nan Sherwoods Winter Holidays | Page 3

like swinging too high!" burst out flaxen-haired Lillie.
Nan and Bess had brought their skates slung over their shoulders by the straps. Before getting up off the sled the chums put these on and then were ready to draw the heavy sled back across the ice to the shore.
"Get aboard--all of you!" Bess cried. "All you lazy folks can have a ride!"
"And do hurry!" added Nan. "Here come some more bobs."
The second sled did not gain momentum enough to slide half-way across the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Hope. But now appeared the "Linda Riggs' crew," as Laura called them, and their shiny, new sled. Out of the enveloping grove which masked the side of Pendragon Hill it came, shooting over the last "thank-you-ma'am" and taking the ice with a ringing crash of steel on crystal.
"Got to hand it to 'em!" exclaimed Walter, with admiration. "That's some sled Linda's got."
"So's ours," Bess said stoutly. "See, they're not going to run farther than we did."
"I don't know about that," murmured Nan, honestly.
"Come on!" Bess cried. "Let's get back and try it again. I know those horrid things can't beat the _Sky-rocket_."
The other girls had already piled upon the bobsled. Walter started them with a push and called a "good-bye" after them. He was going to put on his own skates and skate up the strait to the Mason house. The family was staying here on the shores of Lake Huron much later than usual this year.
Nan Sherwood and Bess Harley had no trouble at all in dragging their mates across the ice upon the _Sky-rocket_. Linda's sled, the Gay Girl, did go farther than the first-named sled, and Bess was anxious to get to the top of the hill to try it over again.
"It will never do in this world to let them crow over us," Bess declared.
She and Nan slipped off their skates at the edge of the ice and all six laid hold of the long rope to pull the _Sky-rocket_ up the hill.
A fourth bobsled rushed past them, the girls screaming and laughing; and then a fifth flew by.
"Mrs. Gleason said she would come over before supper time," Laura Polk said. Mrs. Gleason was the physical instructor at the Hall.
"Let's get her on our sled!" cried Bess.
"Let's!" chorused the others.
But no teacher save Professor Krenner was on the brow of the hill when the _Sky-rocket_ was hauled into position again. This time Nan steered, with firmly braced feet, her mittened hands on the wheel-rim, and her bright eyes staring straight down the course.
"Are you ready?" cried the professor, almost as eager as the girls themselves. Then he blew the warning blast to tell all below on the hillside that the _Sky-rocket_ was coming.
Ta-ra! ta-ra! ta-ra-ra-ra! Ta-_rat!_
With a rush the sled was off. It disappeared around the evergreen clump. The hum of its runners was dying away when suddenly there sounded a chorus of screams, evidently from the _Sky-rocket_ crew. Following this, a crash and a turmoil of cries, expressing both anger and fright, rang out upon the lower hillside.
CHAPTER II
THE FAT MAN WITH HIS GROUCH
Nan Sherwood had steered this big bobsled down Pendragon Hill many times. She had no fear of an accident when they started, although the rush of wind past them seemed to stop her breath and made her eyes water.
There really was not a dangerous spot on the whole slide. It crossed but one road and that the path leading down to Professor Krenner's cabin. At this intersection of the slide and the driveway, Walter Mason had erected a sign-board on which had been rudely printed:
STOP! LOOK! LISTEN!
Few people traversed this way in any case; and it did seem as though those who did would obey the injunction of the sign. Not so a heavy-set, burly looking man who was tramping along the half-beaten path just as Nan and her chums dashed down the hill on the bobsled. This big man, whose broad face showed no sign of cheerfulness, but exactly the opposite, tramped on without a glance at the sign-board. He started across the slide as the prow of the _Sky-rocket_, with Nan clinging to the wheel, shot into view.
The girls shrieked in chorus--all but Nan herself. The stubborn, fat man, at last awakened to his danger, plunged ahead. There was a mighty collision!
The fat man dived head-first into a soft snow bank on one side of the slide; the bobsled plunged into another soft bank on the other side, and all the girls were buried, some of them over their heads, in the snow.
They were not hurt--
"Save in our dignity and our pompadours!" cried Laura Polk, the red-haired girl, coming to the surface like a whale, "to blow."
"Goodness--gracious--Agnes!" ejaculated the big girl, who was known as "Procrastination" Boggs. "What ever became