"There is Mr. Gifford," said Nan. "Let us watch him."
The gentleman mentioned was a fine skater and had once won a medal for making fancy figures on the ice. They watched him for a long while and so did many of the others present.
"It's beautiful to skate like that," cried Nan, when they skated away. "It's just like knowing how to dance everything."
"Only better," said Bert, who did not care for dancing at all.
Presently Nan found some girls to skate with and then Bert went off among the boys. The girls played tag and had great fun, shrieking at the top of their lungs as first one was "it" and then another. It was hard work for Nan to catch the older girls, who could skate better, but easy enough to catch those of her own age and experience on the ice.
The boys played tag, too, and "snapped the whip," as it is termed. All of the boys would join hands in a long line and then skate off as fast as they could. Then the boy on one end, called the snapper, would stop and pull the others around in a big curve. This would make the boys on the end of the line skate very fast, and sometimes they would go down, to roll over and over on the ice. Once Bert was at the end and down he went, to slide a long distance, when he bumped into a gentleman who was skating backwards and over went the man with a crash that could be heard a long distance off.
"Hi! you young rascal!" roared the man, trying to scramble up. "What do you mean by bowling me over like that?"
"Excuse me, but I didn't mean to do it," answered Bert, and lost no time in getting out of the gentleman's way. The gentleman was very angry and left the ice, grumbling loudly to himself.
Down near the lower end of Mr. Bobbsey's lumber yard some young men were building an ice-boat. Bert and Charley Mason watched this work with interest. "Let us make an ice-boat," said Charley. "I can get an old bed-sheet for a sail, if you will get your father to give you the lumber."
"I'll try," answered Bert, and it was agreed that the ice-boat should be built during the following week, after school.