ddles--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.

CHAPTER IX

A NEW KIND OF JAM

As the man said, there was no danger that Twaddles would be drowned.
Cold and wet and miserable, he certainly was, but the stranger rescued
him easily, stretching out a long, thin arm across the ice and lifting
the boy bodily out of the water, over the thin ice, and on to thick,
firm foothold.

"There, there, you're just as good as ever," he assured the shivering
Twaddles. "You want to run home as fast as you can go and get into dry
shoes and stockings, and then you won't ever know you fell into the
pond. Scoot, now!"

But Twaddles delayed.

"Is it--is it--four o'clock?" he asked, his teeth chattering. "Mother
said we could stay out till four o'clock."

"It's five minutes after four," announced the stranger, consulting his
watch. "You'll have to run every step of the way to make up for lost
time. Run!"

Dot, of course, would run with Twaddles, and Meg and Bobby promised to
return the sled to Marion. They had to walk all the way around the
pond to get it for her.

"I fell in," said Twaddles beamingly, when he and Dot reached home.