Without telling Uncle Toby anything about it, and saying nothing to the girls, the boys drew this new invention of theirs out on the coasting hill one morning. Tom and Harry took their places toward the front of the toboggan, inside the tent. There was a hole in the bagging so they could look out. Ted sat behind to steer.
"All ready?" he asked his chums.
"Let her go!" cried Tom.
Ted pushed off, and for a little way the toboggan went down the hill all right. The boys were laughing and shouting, for it was fun to coast inside a tent that kept off the cold wind.
"It's like riding in a closed auto!" yelled Tom.
But just then something happened. The toboggan struck a lump of ice on the hill, slued around, though Ted did his best to steer it, and began going sideways.
Just then the three girls, with Trouble, came out to see what the boys were doing, and seeing the strange tent-covered toboggan going downhill sideways Janet, Lola, and Mary, all three, screamed, while Trouble yelled in delight, as he always did at anything new or strange.
Ted declared afterward that the girls' screams made him steer crooked, but in the girls' opinion the toboggan would have upset anyhow. And that's what it did.
Over it turned, when half way down the hill. The bean poles snapped and broke, and a moment later the boys were tangled up in the pieces of carpet and bagging, rolling off the toboggan which coasted the rest of the way downhill by itself, and probably it was very glad to be rid of the tent-house.
"Oh, are you hurt?" cried Jan, as she saw the tangled mass of boys.