“Too bad,” commented Henry Burns, standing up on his skates. “He’s missing lots of fun. It scared my aunt, too, for a few days. She thought he might have got lost. Just as though Jack couldn’t take care of himself. But she remembered they said if he didn’t come back she could know he’d gone on the steamer to Europe. So she’s feeling all right now. I’d like to know what they offered Jack, to get him to go, though.”
Henry Burns’s companion, George Warren, having adjusted his skates, arose and glided down the bank to the ice.
“Come on, Arthur,” he said, calling to a brother, a year or two younger, who was still lingering by the fire; “we’ll give Henry a race up to the bend. He thinks he knows how to skate.”
The brothers started off, with Henry Burns soon in swift pursuit; the three went rapidly up the stream, the keen edges of their skates cutting the glare ice with a crisp, grinding hum. Henry Burns caught the two by the time they had gone half a mile, for he was a youth whose wiry muscles seemed never to tire; and the three linked arms and went on together.
Presently a still younger boy came hurrying down to the shore, in a state of activity that had left him short of breath. He was smaller, but heavier of build than the others who had gone before, with a plumpness of cheeks that told of evident enjoyment of good dinners; also, his was a temperament, one would have guessed, that was more inclined to ease than to any great exertion. But now he fastened on his skates hastily and joined the party of skaters in mid-stream.
“Seen George and Arthur?” he inquired of a group of boys.
“Gone up-stream with Henry Burns,” was the reply.
The boy started off, bending forward and making his best time. Some fifteen minutes later, the three, returning, saw him coming.
“There’s Joe,” said George Warren. “Looks as though he was skating for a dinner. He’ll get thin if he doesn’t take care. Let’s give him a surprise.”
The three quickly hid themselves behind some alder bushes and cedars that fringed the bank. Young Joe Warren came on, unconscious of their presence. He realized it presently as he came abreast. A snow-ball, thrown with accuracy by Henry Burns, neatly lifted his cap from his head; one from George Warren attached itself in fragments to his plump neck; the third smashed against his shoulder. The combined effect of which, with the surprise, so disturbed the equilibrium of the skater that his feet suddenly flew out from under him, and he came down with a thump, seated on the ice, and slid along in a sitting posture for nearly a rod.