“Tommy came back after a minute, and says:
“‘No, ma’am, it ain’t running; it’s standing still. But it’s wagging it’s tail!’”
“And there’s Lil putting on her hat in a hurry so as to meet the man when Miss Gould is through with him, and walk down the block——Did you ever?” exclaimed Jess.
“Poor Pretty Sweet!” groaned Bobby. “His nose is out of joint. He has been Lil’s bright and shining cavalier for months. Dear, dear me! The Duchess of Dusenberry—was that the name of Lil’s play?—sure does have her favorites, and like the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland,” has only one command for her discarded courtiers: ‘Off with their heads!’” and Bobby giggled as she peered from the window to watch the dapper Mr. Pizotti and Lily Pendleton walk down the street side by side.
CHAPTER XVIII—THE SKI RUNNERS
The New Year had ushered in the first big fall of snow—and it kept coming. Every few days, for the following fortnight, snow fell until Centerport’s street-cleaning department was swamped, and the drifts lay deep upon the vacant lots and against fences and blind walls.
Skating was done for, for the ice on the lake had become overloaded, and had broken up into a shifting mass of blocks, grinding against each other when the wind blew, and threatening the safety of any craft that tried to put out in it.
So traffic on Lake Luna ceased, and, of course, iceboating was likewise impossible. Chet and Lance Darby, had they not been so extremely busy learning their parts in the new play, could not have used their aero-iceboat during this time. Sleds were out in force, however—bobsleds, double-runners, toboggans, “framers,” and every sort of coasting paraphernalia. Even the Whiffle Street hill was made a coasting place by the young folk of the neighborhood, much to the despair of some grouty people who had forgotten their own youth, and who either telephoned their complaints to the police, or sprinkled ashes on the slide in the early morning hours.
It was at this time, however, that Mrs. Case, the girls’ physical instructor of Central High, took her class in ski running out into the open.
At first the dozen or more girls had practiced on their athletic field, which was now snow-covered, too. It was a particularly odd experience to stand upon narrow boards of ash, some ten feet in length, and then try to shuffle along on them without tipping sideways, or plunging head-first into a drift.