Bobby watched, and so did Meg. So did a dozen of the children who had been playing on the slide. They saw Twaddles start himself with a little forward push, skim down the slide like a bird, take the jump at the end of the bank, and shoot out into the pond among the skaters.
"I knew he'd make a mess of it," groaned Bobby.
Twaddles apparently had forgotten all about using his foot. His sled swept across the ice, crashed into a skater, and Twaddles was sent flying in the opposite direction. The sled brought up against a tree on the other side of the pond, but Twaddles continued to skim over the pond directly toward a patch of thin ice.
His cry, as he broke through, was heard by every one on the pond.
"He'll be drowned!" wailed Meg. "Oh, Bobby, hurry!"
"He can't drown in that water. It isn't deep," said a man, skating past them and stopping to, reassure Meg. "Come on, youngster, you and I can get him out."
Bobby put his hand into that of the stranger and was pulled along rapidly toward the spot where the howling Twaddles stood in icy water up to his knees.
CHAPTER IX
A NEW KIND OF JAM
As the man said, there was no danger that Twaddles would be drowned. Cold and wet and miserable, he certainly was, but the stranger rescued him easily, stretching out a long, thin arm across the ice and lifting the boy bodily out of the water, over the thin ice, and on to thick, firm foothold.