"You'd better not try that," said Bobby seriously, watching Twaddles
carefully drag the sled into the position he wanted. "Look out,
Twaddles--you're foolish. How are you going to stop it when you get
down on the ice?"
Twaddles, seated on the sled, looked down the glistening slide to the
clear ice below the bank.
"With my foot, of course," he said carelessly. "It's just as easy.
You watch."
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.
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