ay sat down on him.

"Oh!" grunted Teddy.

The reason they both grunted was because their breaths were jolted out
of them. But they were not hurt, and when the sled with the two boys on
it kept on sliding downhill all the other boys and girls laughed to see
the funny sight.

"Well!" cried Teddy when he reached the bottom of the hill and got up,
"I didn't know I was going to have that ride."

"Neither did I," said the little boy, whose name was Wilson Decker. "Me
and my sister were having a race," he went on, "and now she beat me."

"I'm sorry," said Teddy. "I didn't mean to get in your way. My sister
and I are going to have a race, too, and that's what we were walking up
to do when I sat on you. Don't you want to race with us? We're going to
have a new kind."

"What kind, Curlytop?" the little boy asked.

"To see who can go the longest but not the fastest," answered Teddy.
"Come on, it'll be a lot of fun!"

So the little boy and his sister, whose sled, with her on it, had first
gotten to the bottom of the hill, went up together with Teddy, to where
Jan was waiting for him.

"Oh, Teddy!" cried the little Curlytop girl, laughing, "you did look
_so_ funny!"

"I--I sort of _felt_ funny!" replied Teddy. "They're going to race with
us," he went on, as he pointed to Wilson Decker and his sister.

"That'll be nice," returned Janet. "Now we'll all get on our sleds in a
line at the top of the hill. It doesn't matter who goes first or last,
but we must start even, and the one who makes his sled go the longest
way to the bottom of the hill beats the race."

They all said this would be fair, and some of the other children
gathered at the top of the hill to watch the race, which was different
from the others.

"All ready! I'm going to start!" cried Janet, and away she went,
coasting down the hill. The other three waited a little, for there was
no hurry, and then, one after the other, Wilson, Teddy and Elsie (who
was Wilson's sister) started down the hill.

Janet's sled was the first to stop at the bottom, as she had been the
first to start, and she cried:

"Nobody can come up to me!"

But Elsie on her sled was exactly even with Janet.

"Well, if Teddy or your brother don't go farther than we did then we win
the race--a half of it to each of us," said Janet.

And that's just what happened. Teddy's sled went a little farther than
did Wilson's, but neither of the boys could come up to the girls, so Jan
and Elsie