Nan Sherwoods Winter Holidays | Page 4

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 of that man who got in
our way?"
Nan Sherwood had already gotten out of the drift and had hauled her
particular chum, Bess Harley, with her to the surface. Grace Mason and
Lillie Nevins were crying a little; but Nan had assured herself at a
glance that neither of the timid ones was hurt.
She now looked around, rather wildly, at Amelia Boggs' question. The
fat man had utterly disappeared. Surely the bobsled, having struck him
only a glancing blow, had not throw him completely off the earth!
Bess was looking up into the snowy tree-tops, and Laura Polk
suggested that maybe the fat man had been only an hallucination.
"Hallucination! Your grandmother's hat!" exclaimed Amelia Boggs. "If
his wasn't a solid body, there never was one!"
"What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?"
murmured Laura.

"Both must be destroyed," finished Bess. "But I see the tail of our bob,
all right."
Just then Nan ran across the track. At the same moment a floundering
figure, like a great polar bear in his winter coat, emerged from the
opposite drift. The fat man, without his hat and with his face very red
and wet, loomed up gigantically in the snow-pile.
"Oh! Nan Sherwood!" cried Laura. "Have you found him?"
The fat man glared at Nan malevolently. "So your name is Sherwood, it
is?" he snarled. "You're the girl that was steering that abominable
sled--and you steered it right into me."
"Oh, no, sir! Not intentionally!" cried the worried Nan.
"Yes, you did!" flatly contradicted the choleric fat man. "I saw you."
"Oh, Nan Sherwood!" gasped Amelia, "isn't he mean to say that?"
"Your name's Sherwood, is it?" growled the man. "I should think I'd
had trouble enough with people of that name. Is your father Robert
Sherwood, of Tillbury, Illinois?"
"Yes, sir," replied the wondering Nan.
"Ha! I might have known it," snarled the man, trying to beat the snow
from his clothes. "I heard he had a girl up here at this school. The
rascal!"
Professor Krenner had just reached the spot from the top of the hill.
From below had hurried the crews of bobsleds number two and three.
Linda Riggs, who led one of the crews, heard the angry fat man
speaking so unfavorably of Nan Sherwood's father. She sidled over to
his side of the track to catch all that he said.
Nan, amazed and hurt by the fat man's words and manner, would have
withdrawn silently, had it not been for the last phrase the man used in
reference to her father. Nan was very loyal, and to hear him called

"rascal" was more than she could tamely hear.
"I do not know what you mean, sir," she said earnestly. "But if you
really know my father, you know that what you say of him is wrong. He
is not a rascal."
"I say he is!" ejaculated the man with the grouch.
Here Professor Krenner interfered, and he spoke quite sharply.
"You've said enough, Bulson. Are you hurt?"
"I don't know," grumbled the fat man.
"He can't tell till he's seen his lawyer," whispered Laura Polk,
beginning to giggle.
"Are any of you girls hurt?" queried the professor, his red and white
cap awry.
"I don't think so, Professor," Bess replied. "Only Nan's feelings. That
man ought to be ashamed of himself for speaking so of Mr. Sherwood."
"Oh, I know what I'm talking about!" cried the fat man, blusteringly.
"Then you can tell it all to me, Ravell Bulson," bruskly interposed the
professor again. "Come along to my cabin and I'll fix you up. Mrs.
Gleason has arrived at the top of the hill and she will take charge of you
young ladies. I am glad none of you is hurt."
The overturned crew hauled their bobsled out of the drift. Linda Riggs
went on with her friends, dragging the Gay Girl.
"I'd like to hear what that fat man has to say about Sherwood's father,"
the ill-natured girl murmured to Cora Courtney, her room-mate. "I
wager he isn't any better than he ought to be."
"You don't know," said Cora.

"I'd like to find out. You know, I never have liked that Nan Sherwood.
She is