Meg was immediately surrounded by little girls who wanted her to “take us down.” Meg was only six years old, but she could steer a sled as well as Bobby and her small friends knew it.
“Don’t take Hester,” said Marion Green to Meg. “She always screams and makes folks think she is hurt. And once she grabbed my brother and pulled him right over backward.”
Marion Green and Hester Scott were both in Meg’s class at school. Hester was a fat little girl and generally smiling. But now she looked ready to cry.
“I haven’t been down the hill once this whole afternoon,” she declared. “I’ll lend Dot my sled, Meg, if you’ll take me down. And I won’t scream a tiny bit, honestly I won’t.”
“All right, I’ll take you,” said Meg briefly. “Let Dot have your sled and she can play round with it till I come back. She can’t coast down alone either.”
Hester knelt on the sled behind Meg, and Bobby obligingly gave them a send-off push. The moment she felt the rush of air, Hester forgot her promise.
“Stop it!” she begged. “Oh, Meg, please stop. I can’t breathe! Ow! Somebody stop us! Ow, we’re going to hit that red sled! Oh, Meg, please, please——”
She flung her arms around Meg’s neck and leaned back with her whole weight. Up came Meg’s hands, the sled shot to one side and the two girls tumbled off into the snow.
“I told you so! I told you so!” Marion kept saying as she ran down toward them, and Dot and Twaddles and Bobby came running, too. “She always does that.”
“I don’t either!” protested Hester. “But I couldn’t breathe or anything, and I was scared.”