“Huh!” you scoff. “Steerin’’s easy.”
“Get on and I’ll haul you up,” you proffer.
“Won’t I be too heavy?” she objects, delighted.
“Naw,” you assert. “You’re nothin’.”
Ignoring jeers and flings you carry out your voluntary program, to the very end.
“Thank you ever so much,” pipes Lucy, nimbly running to rejoin her own kind.
Shamefacedly you lift your sled, and with a tremendous belly-buster are away again; and when once more you reach the crest your straggle from grace will have been forgotten.
And at last, wet through and through, countenance like a polished Spitzenburgh (you have a right to the simile, as the barrel in the cellar will testify), hands and feet like parboiled lobsters, reluctant to withdraw but monstrously hungry, you arrive at home to be fed.
“John! Don’t come in here that way! Go right into the kitchen and take off your boots. Mercy!” expostulates mother, as in you stamp, leaving a slushy trail and munching a doughnut as a sop to that clamorous stomach.
Wearily you return to the kitchen, and apply your oozy, slippery boots to the bootjack. Then, having abandoned your footgear, their once gay tops now a sodden maroon and their copper toes already showing effects of the friction whereby they steered you down the hill, to steam behind the kitchen stove, you obey orders to go upstairs and change into the dry clothing that mother has thoughtfully laid out.