“Say!” growled Bobby, who was having trouble, too. “It beats the ‘debutante slink,’ that came in with narrow skirts. I feel as if I was tumbling down every second.”
But they gained confidence in time. They reached the top of the bluff and then the long, easy slope, right beside the speedway, spread, spotless, before them. Mrs. Case showed them how to start, and after a fashion several of the bigger girls reached the bottom of the hill, and then panted up again, pronouncing it the best ever!
Bobby would not be outdone, as she said, “by anything in skirts,” and so she ventured. Halfway down the hill one of her skis must have struck something—perhaps the stub of a bush sticking out of the snow. Whew! Bobby turned almost a complete somersault!
She was buried so deep in a drift—and head first, at that—that it took both Laura and Mrs. Case to pull her out.
“Oh-me-oh-my!” cried Bobby, who looked like an animated snow-girl for the moment. “And just as I was getting on so well, too! Wasn’t that mean?”
“Perhaps you’d better not try any more to-day, Clara” said the instructor.
“And let those other girls get ahead of me? Well! I guess not!” declared Miss Hargrew, and she ploughed back to the top of the hill, fastened her feet upon the skis again, and started once more.
Laura and Jess Morse were on the hilltop, looking out upon the white track over which the sleighs were flying.
“Look there!” gasped Jess, seizing her chum’s arm. “Isn’t that the Pendletons’ sleigh?”
“Of course it is. With the big plumes and the pair of dappled grays? And that stiff and starched coachman driving? No mistake,” admitted Laura.