digious cake you carried up here, Mr.
Harwood?" answered Peter, casting a devouring eye upon it; "the crust
seems as hard as a rhinoceros' skin, but I dare say it is very good. One
could not be sure though, without tasting it! I hope you are not going
to take the trouble of carrying that heavy load back again?"

"How very polite you are become all on a sudden, Peter!" said Laura,
laughing. "I should be very sorry to attempt carrying that cake to the
bottom of the hill, for we would both roll down, the shortest way,
together."

"I am not over-anxious to try it either," observed Charles Forrester,
shaking his head. "Even Peter, though his mouth is constantly ajar,
would find that cake rather heavy to carry, either as an inside or an
outside passenger."

"I can scarcely lift it at all!" continued Laura, when Mr. Harwood had
again tied it up in the towel; "what can be done?"

"Here is the very best plan!" cried Harry, suddenly seizing the
prodigious cake; and before any body could hinder him, he gave it a
tremendous push off the steepest part of Arthur's Seat, so that it
rolled down like a wheel, over stones and precipices, jumping and
hopping along with wonderful rapidity, amidst the cheers and laughter of
all the children, till at last it reached the bottom of the hill, when a
general clapping of hands ensued.

"Now for a race!" cried Harry, becoming more and more eager. "The first
boy or girl who reaches that cake shall have it all to himself!"

Mr. Harwood tried with all his might to stop the commotion, and called
out that they must go quietly down the bank, for Harry had no right to
give away the cake, or to make them break their legs and arms with
racing down such a hill: but he might as well have spoken to an east
wind, and asked it not to blow. The whole party dispersed, like a hive
of bees that has been upset; and in a moment they were in full career
after the cake.

Some of the boys tried to roll down, hoping to get on more quickly.
Others endeavoured to slide, and several attempted to run, but they all
fell; and many of them might have been tumblers at Sadler's Wells, they
tumbled over and over so cleverly. Peter Grey's hat was blown away, but
he did not stop to catch it. Charlie Hume lost his shoe, Robert Fordyce
sprained his ancle, and every one of the girls tore her frock. It was a
frightful scene; such devastation of bonnets and jackets as had never
been known before; while Mr. Harwood looked like the