DOWN ON THE POND
"A penny for your thoughts, Daughter," said Father Blossom presently.
Meg's lip quivered.
"I want my locket!" she sobbed, hiding her face against her father's
shoulder. "All the girls have lockets and mine was nicer than any of
them."
"Yes, it was," agreed Dot judicially, from her seat on the rug before
the fire. "It had such a cunning snap."
"I don't care about the snap," retorted Meg, sitting up and drying her
eyes on Father's nice big white handkerchief. "The forget-me-nots were
so lovely and besides it was great Aunt Dorothy's."
Father Blossom now proposed a plan.
"I'll advertise for your locket, Meg," he said. "We'll offer a reward,
and perhaps some one will find it. At any rate, it will encourage them
to look for it. Right after supper we'll get pencil and paper and
write out an advertisement for the _Oak Hill Herald_."
Father Blossom did not really believe that offering a reward for the
lost locket would bring it back. He thought likely that it was buried
under the deep snow beyond the sight of every one. But he knew that
Meg would feel better if she thought that everything possible was being
done to recover the pretty trinket.
After supper that night they wrote an advertisement, describing the
locket, telling where it was lost, and offering ten dollars reward to
the person who should bring it back. This advertisement was printed
for three weeks in the Oak Hill paper, but though a number of people
who read it did go out and scuffle about a bit in the snow on Wayne
Place hill, partly in the hope of earning the reward, partly with a
good-natured wish to help Meg, no one found the locket. The Blossom
family were forced to conclude that it was gone forever.
The Monday afternoon following the party Meg and Bobby came rushing
home from school with great news.
"Mother! Mother!" they shouted, flinging down lunch boxes and books in
the hall and tearing upstairs like small cyclones. "Oh, Mother!"
Mother Blossom, sewing in Aunt Polly's room, looked up at them and
laughed.
"Is there a fire?" she asked calmly.
Bobby was almost out of breath, but he still had a bit left to tell the
news.
"They've swept off Blake's pond!" he gasped. "Everybody's going
skating. The ice is great, Mother. Just like glass."
"Where are our skates? Can we go?" chimed in Meg. "It isn't a bit
cold, Mother."
"Just cold enough to skate, I suppose," smiled Mother Blossom. "Well,
of course you can't miss the first skating of the season. But I don't
believe they want such little folks on the pond, dear. Some of the big
boys will be likely to skate right over you."
"We'll keep near the edge," promised Bobby. "Come on, Meg. Where are
our skates?"
Meg and Bobby had double runner skates, which are very good to learn
on, and they had used them only once or twice because the winter before
there had been practically no skating. Mother Blossom said the skates
were in a dark green flannel bag, hanging in the hall closet, and the
children tumbled downstairs to find them. You would have thought that
they were afraid the ice would melt, if they didn't hurry.
Presently Mother Blossom and Aunt Polly heard sounds of argument.
"You can't go," cried Bobby. "You're too little."
"You haven't any skates," said Meg crossly.
"Mind your own business," shouted Twaddles, apparently making a rush at
some one, for there was the sound of a scuffle and then a wail from Dot.
Mother Blossom dropped her sewing and went out into the hall.
"Children!" she cried warningly, leaning over the railing.
"Oh, Mother!" Bobby's voice was filled with protest. "The twins want
to go skating!"
"Can't we, Mother?" said Dot eagerly, looking up at her mother
imploringly. "Bobby and Meg always have all the fun. Can't we go?"
"They're too little," insisted Meg. "They haven't any skates, either.
And Dot will get her feet cold and want to come home right away."
"Won't either," scolded Dot. "I am too going! Can't I, Mother?"
"Well, suppose you go till four o'clock," proposed Mother Blossom, who
could always see both sides of a question. "If Bobby and Meg do not
get cold, they may stay till half-past four. And you'll have to
promise to do as Bobby says, twinnies, and keep out of the path of
older boys and girls. You mustn't spoil good fun for other people who
really know how to skate."
"I suppose you might as well tag along," conceded Bobby rather
ungraciously. "Nobody let us go skating when we were only four years
old, did they, Meg?"
"No, they didn't," agreed Meg.
"Next year we're going to have skates," announced Twaddles importantly.
"Daddy said so."
Before they reached the pond, however, all ill feelings were forgotten,
and the sight of the glassy oval, well-filled with skaters, completely
restored the four little Blossoms to their usual good humor.
"Whee!" cried Dot, skipping with excitement. "Look how smooth! Let's
make a slide, Twaddles."
Meg and Bobby sat comfortably down in a snowbank to put on their
skates, and as they were working with the straps, Dave Saunders glided
up.
"You kids want to keep out of the center of the pond," he advised them,
not unkindly. "All the high school folks are out to-day, and when a
string of them join hands the line goes almost across the pond. If you
once slip, you're likely to be stepped on."
Meg and Bobby promised to stay near the outside edges of the pond, and
Dave skated off with long, even steps that carried him away from them
swiftly.
"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.
His cry, as he broke through, was heard by every one on the pond.
"He'll be drowned!" wailed Meg. "Oh, Bobby, hurry!"
"He can't drown in that water. It isn't deep," said a man, skating
past them and stopping to, reassure Meg. "Come on, youngster, you and
I can get him out."
Bobby put his hand into that of the stranger and was pulled along
rapidly toward the spot where the howling Twaddles stood in icy water
up to his knees.