I looked at my light brown, tight-fitting gloves.
“No, I thank you,” I said.
“You ought to see what fun it is to coast down on this box; it bumps and makes such a rattlety-bang noise—it’s awfully jolly.”
I suddenly had a burning desire to try this sport, forgot completely that the chest should be held out and the stomach in, took good hold of the box and pulled,—and there it was, up the hill. Then Karsten sat on the front of the box, I back of him and down the hill we went.
It might well be said that we bumped and thumped along. I felt as if I were being shaken to pieces, especially where the road turned at an angle half-way down the hill. Whether that turn caused it or not, smash went the box and thud! Out I tumbled on one side, Karsten on the other, while the remains of the box sped down and hit against Madam Land’s woodshed with a violent whack. My hands had struck the road with such force that both my light brown gloves had burst right across the middle of the palm and my left knee had such a horrid pain in it that I could scarcely get up.
The red-cheeked old woodchopper came out of Madam Land’s woodshed, hitching up his trousers.
“Did she fall off?” he asked. I did not deign to answer him.
Karsten was furious.
“It was your fault, you are so heavy and clumsy; and now the box is smashed that we were to use this afternoon in the snow-fight.”
“A fight? With whom?”