“Skate straps,” said Fred, briefly.
He managed to strap a stave to each of his feet, using his skate straps, and then, slowly and gingerly, stepped out of the woodshed.
“The way to walk on snowshoes,” he announced, “is not to lift your feet and put ’em down again. You glide along.”
“All right, let’s see you glide,” said Artie, eagerly.
Fred struck out with what he fondly believed to be a gliding motion. He sunk one foot deeply into the snow, balanced there a precarious moment with his other foot waving wildly in the air and then crashed over into a handy drift.
“Of course there’s a knack in getting used to them,” he gasped, as the others pulled him out. “I’ll get it after a while.”
“Well, if I have to walk on those things to get home, I’m going to stay here,” said Jess.
“There’s the postman!” cried Margy. “Look, he’s putting something in the box!”
They ran down the path they had shoveled, Fred discarding his “snowshoes” as hindrances, and found the postman to be a jolly person wrapped in many mufflers and driving a large white horse harnessed to an old-fashioned sleigh.
“Say, there’s some one looking for you kids,” he said, as soon as he saw the children. “I met a team about a mile back, two men in a sleigh. They asked me if I’d seen anything of three boys and three girls. And then I hadn’t, and told them so.”