“I’ll loan you mine!” I offers. “But what if your Dad should find out? He gave us strict orders...!”
“Well,” considers Ronnie, starting up the steps. “I suppose the worst he could do would be to put you off again.”
“He wouldn’t be hard on us if Ronnie was along,” encourages Tommy.
“Okay!” I decides. “We’ll be there, Ronnie! From now on—you’re one of the gang!”
Ronnie’s face actually beams. Then he takes an anxious look up the stairs.
“If I don’t get home with these groceries...!” he says, “Mother’ll have the police looking for me.”
“You leave it to us,” I calls after him as he runs up the steps. “We’ll make a skier out of you!”
And the second Ronnie’s disappeared in the house, we all start to dancing jigs in the snow, with Mack patting himself on the chest and declaring: “I guess I put it over, eh ... what? Got Ronnie to take us back on the old hill! And say—maybe we were wrong. If we give this bird half a chance he may not turn out a mamma’s boy after all!”
The next afternoon we don’t feel quite so gay. It’s stopped snowing and the skiing ought to be swell but the thoughts of what Mr. Turner might do and say if he ever got wise that we were on the hill again without his permission has made us kind of shy and nervous. We’re not so sure that even Ronnie’s being there will help any in case...! In fact, Eddie suggests that maybe Mr. Turner would blame us for inveigling Ronnie into skiing and using the forbidden hill. Inveigle is a terrible sounding word and, while we’re crazy to ski, we’re not wild to ski into any more trouble.
“Besides,” points out Carl, “if Ronnie should get a bump like we all do, once in a while, we’re the guys who’ll have to answer for it.”