“Take Margy down first, Fred,” Polly suggested. “She has more fun before her feet get cold.”
Margy was apt to complain, midway in her outdoor sport, that her feet were “freezing.”
Fred obligingly took his sister on behind him, but neither one could be said to enjoy the ride down the hill. Margy shut her eyes tight and Fred declared she pinched him.
“I didn’t!” said the indignant Margy. “I had to hang on to something, didn’t I? Anyway, Fred Williamson, you go too fast.”
Polly said Margy should coast with her next, and amicable relations were restored, as Fred shot down the hill alone, deftly curving in and out to avoid the sleds that were flying down at the same time.
“I wish I could steer as well as Fred can,” sighed Polly, taking her place on her own sled with Margy back of her. “It’s because he isn’t afraid to take a chance. He will go around a sled or almost into the ditch. But I’m always thinking of a smash-up.”
Ward and Artie were enjoying themselves in their own way, which was a peculiar one, to say the least. Ward liked to lie flat on his sled with Artie perched on top of him, and if one or the other rolled off in the course of the descent, why, that was nothing at all! Snow, argued Ward and Artie, was soft and comfortable, and one could always get out of the way of an approaching sled by tumbling over and over till safe from the danger of being run down.
Jess, too, had a method, and she followed it faithfully. Hers was a sober enjoyment, for she went down the hill on her sled, turned around and trudged back, to do the same thing again. Left alone, Jess would coast contentedly a whole morning or afternoon, without mishap or apparent excitement.
Polly and Fred liked to try experiments. They tried Polly’s sled with Fred steering, and Fred’s sled with Polly guiding it. They went down backward once and landed in the ditch. They tried to see how many children they could pile on the two sleds, and they raced each other with enthusiasm.
It was when they were returning from one of these races that Harry Worden hailed them.