"She won't, though," said Twaddles absently.

He was busy with a sled Marion Green had loaned him. Marion had tired
of playing with her sled, and Twaddles had exhausted all the thrill of
sliding down his slide on his feet. He wanted to play toboggan-riding,
and when Marion offered him her sled he accepted gratefully.

"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.