"We'll show 'em how to speed a bobsled, if you'll give us a chance," she complained. "That thing of the Mason's didn't get to the island. We'll show 'em!"
Nan Sherwood and her friends piled off the first sled upon the ice with great delight and much hilarity.
"I declare!" gasped Laura. "I left my breath at the top of the hill.
O-o-o! What a ride!"
"It's ju-just like swinging too high!" burst out flaxen-haired Lillie.
Nan and Bess had brought their skates slung over their shoulders by the straps. Before getting up off the sled the chums put these on and then were ready to draw the heavy sled back across the ice to the shore.
"Get aboard—all of you!" Bess cried. "All you lazy folks can have a ride!"
"And do hurry!" added Nan. "Here come some more bobs."
The second sled did not gain momentum enough to slide half-way across the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Hope. But now appeared the "Linda Riggs' crew," as Laura called them, and their shiny, new sled. Out of the enveloping grove which masked the side of Pendragon Hill it came, shooting over the last "thank-you-ma'am" and taking the ice with a ringing crash of steel on crystal.
"Got to hand it to 'em!" exclaimed Walter, with admiration. "That's some sled Linda's got."
"So's ours," Bess said stoutly. "See, they're not going to run farther than we did."