"Now! just for that," Nan declared, pretending to be angry, "I won't tell you—yet—what we were talking about."
"You and Walter?"
"Walter and I—yes."
"Secrets from your chum, Nan! You're always having something on the side that you don't tell me," pouted Bess.
"Nonsense! Don't you know Christmas is coming and everybody has secrets this time of year?"
"Hurry up, girls!" commanded the red-haired girl who was helping pull on the rope directly behind the chums. "I'm walking on your heels. It will be night before we get on the slide."
"We're in the lead," Bess flared back. "Don't be afraid, Laura."
"That may be," said Laura Polk, "but I don't want Linda Riggs and her crowd right on top of us. They're so mean. They came near running into us the other day."
"But the professor called 'em down for it," said the fourth girl dragging the bobsled, who was a big, good-natured looking girl with a mouthful of big white teeth and a rather vacuous expression of countenance when she was not speaking.
"He ought to send Linda Riggs and her friends down first," Nan Sherwood suggested.