laugh at other folks' misfortunes. Ough! how cold it is, and how my
fingers ache with the frost when I take off my mittens to strap on Laura's
skates! But, oh, how my cheeks burn! And how careful I am not to hurt
Laura, an' how I ask her if that's 'tight enough,' an' how she tells me
'jist a little tighter,' and how we two keep foolin' along till the others
hev gone an' we are left alone! An' how quick I get my _own_ skates
strapped on,--none o' your new-fangled skates with springs an' plates an'
clamps an' such, but honest, ol'-fashioned wooden ones with steel runners
that curl up over my toes an' have a bright brass button on the end! How I
strap 'em and lash 'em and buckle 'em on! An' Laura waits for me an' tells
me to be sure to get 'em on tight enough,--why, bless me! after I once got
'em strapped on, if them skates hed come off, the feet w'u'd ha' come with
'em! An' now away we go,--Laura an' me. Around the bend--near the medder
where Si Barker's dog killed a woodchuck last summer--we meet the rest. We
forget all about the cold. We run races an' play snap the whip, an' cut
all sorts o' didoes, an' we never mind the pick'rel weed that is froze in
on the ice an' trips us up every time we cut the outside edge; an' then we
boys jump over the airholes, an' the girls stan' by an' scream an' tell us
they know we're agoin' to drownd ourselves. So the hours go, an' it is
sun-up at last, an' Sister Helen says we must be gettin' home. When we
take our skates off, our feet feel as if they were wood. Laura has lost
her tippet; I lend her mine, an' she kind o' blushes. The old pond seems
glad to have us go, and the fire-hangbird's nest in the willer-tree waves
us good-by. Laura promises to come over to our house in the evenin', and
so we break up.

"Seems now," continued Ezra, musingly,--"seems now as if I could see us
all at breakfast. The race on the pond has made us hungry, and Mother says
she never knew anybody else's boys that had such capac'ties as hers. It is
the Yankee Thanksgivin' breakfast,--sausages an' fried potatoes, an'