“What is that? It looks like a great bundle of clothes.”
It was a bundle that moved and moaned as they drew near, and proved to be a girl, a little bigger than Lizzie. She looked up when they questioned her, though her face was pale with pain.
“I slipped and fell on the ice,” she explained, “and I’m afraid I’ve broken my leg, for it is all twisted under me, and I can’t move it or get up. I live in the village. That’s my father’s carpenter shop where you see the sign. I could see it all the time, and yet I was afraid I’d freeze here before any one saw me. Oh dear! it doesn’t seem as if I could lie here while you go for my father.”
“Why, you needn’t,” began Bob; but the girl shook her head.
“I can’t walk a step, and you two are not strong enough to carry me all the way. You’d let me fall, or you’d have to keep stopping to rest; and putting me down and taking me up again would almost kill me.”
“Oh, but we’ll only lift you into the chair, just as carefully as we can, then we can carry you easy enough,” said Will.
And in that way the poor girl was borne safely home; and the children lingered long enough to bring the surgeon and hear his verdict that “Young bones don’t mind much being broken, and she will soon be about again, as well as ever.”
“BUT THEN, IT’S ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE WOODS, YOU KNOW.”
“But I don’t see how you happened to have a chair so handy,” said her father to the boys. And when they explained that they were using it for a sled, he said, with a significant nod of his head,—“Your sled, was it? Well, I shall be surprised if my shop does not turn you out a better sled than that, just by way of thanks for your kindness.”