“He’ll never own up that he doesn’t know a thing,” whispered Eve to Laura and Jess, as the boys laughed over this statement of the Irishman. “He was planting potatoes in the upper field, and all by himself, last spring, and a man drove along the road, and stopped and asked him what kind of potatoes they were.
“‘Sure, I know,’ says Patrick.
“‘Then what kind are they?’ repeated the neighbor.
“‘Sure, they’re raw ones, Mr. Hurley,’ says he, and Hurley came to the house roaring with laughter over it. Nothing feazes Patrick.”
The long, sloping hill, under the chestnuts and oaks, would have made a splendid coasting place; only there was no snow on the ground.
“But when the snow does come,” cried Dora Lockwood, “if the pond is still frozen over, won’t it be a great course?”
“The ice is all right now, at any rate,” Eve reassured them. “And there isn’t a spring hole in the entire pond, Otto says.”
Patrick had brought an axe and, with the help of some of the boys, soon had a big bonfire burning on the edge of the pond. Meanwhile the other boys helped the girls with their skate-straps, and then got on their own skates.
The ice hadn’t a scratch on it. It was like a great plate of glass, and so clear in places that they could see to the bottom of the pond—where the bottom was sandy.
All the young folk were soon on the ice, the boys starting a hockey game at the far end, and the girls circling around in pairs at the end nearest to the fire.