"Look out, Teddy! Look out, or you'll fall in same as I did!"
This is what Janet Martin called to her brother as she saw him sliding toward her when she was in the pond where she had broken through the ice. She stopped crying and shivering from the icy water long enough to say that.
"Stop, Teddy! Stop!" she shouted.
"I'm tryin' to!" he answered. He pressed hard with his mittened hands on the smooth ice on which he had thrown himself. It was very slippery. He was sliding ahead feet first and he could lift up his head and look at his sister.
Luckily the water was not deep in the pond—hardly over Janet's knees—and when she had fallen through the ice she had managed to stand up. Her feet, with the skates still on them, were down in the soft mud and ooze of the pond, the bottom of which had not frozen.
"I can't stop!" yelled Teddy, and it did seem as though he would go into the water also. But he stopped just in time, far enough away from the hole to prevent his going through the ice, which had cracked in three or more places.
"Crawl back to shore!" yelled the big boy, named Ford Henderson, who had come to look after his own little brother, whom he found safe. "Crawl back to shore, Curlytop. Don't stand up, or you might fall down where the ice is thin and crack a hole in it. Crawl back to shore!"
"But I want to help Janet!" said Teddy, who was almost ready to cry himself, since he saw in what plight his sister Janet now was.
"I'll get her out!" called Ford.
Then, while Teddy slowly crawled back over the ice, which every now and then cracked a little, as if the whole frozen top of the pond were going to fall in, Ford, the big boy, not in the least minding his feet getting wet, ran to where Janet stood up in the hole. Ford broke through the ice also, but as he was quite tall the water did not even come to his knees.