here were some strange happenings, as
there were also on the houseboat _Bluebird_. There was a stowaway boy--but
there! I had better let you read the book for yourself.

The Bobbsey twins spent some time at Meadow Brook, but there was always a
question whether they had better times there or "At Home," which is the
name of the book just before this one.

You, who have read that book, will remember that Flossie and Freddie
found, in a big snow storm, the lost father of Tommy Todd, a boy who lived
with his grandmother in a poor section of Lakeport. And it was still that
same Winter, after Tommy's father had come home, that we find the Bobbsey
twins skating on the ice, having just missed being run into by the
ice-boat.

"My! but that was a narrow escape!" exclaimed Nan, as she skated slowly
about. "My heart is beating fast yet."

"So's mine," added Flossie. "Did he do it on purpose?"

"No, indeed!" exclaimed Bert. "I guess Mr. Watson wouldn't do a thing like
_that!_ He was looking after the ropes of the sail, or doing something to
the steering rudder, and that's why he didn't see you and Freddie."

"What makes an ice-boat go?" asked Freddie.

"The wind blows it, just as the wind blows a sailboat," explained Bert,
looking down the lake after the ice-boat.

"But it hasn't any cabin to it like a real boat," went on Freddie. "And it
doesn't go in the water. Where do the people sit?"

"An ice-boat is like this," said Bert, and with the sharp heel end of his
skate he drew a picture on the ice. "You take two long pieces of wood, and
fasten them together like a cross--almost the same as when you start to
make a kite," he went on. "On each end of the short cross there are double
runners, like skates, only bigger. And at the end of the long stick, at
the back, is another runner, and this moves, and has a handle to it like
the rudder on a boat. They steer the ice-boat with this handle.

"And where the two big sticks cross they put up the tall mast and make the
sail fast to that. Then when the wind blows it sends the ice-boat over the
ice as fast as anything."

"It sure does go fast," said Tommy Todd. "Look! He's almost at the end of
the lake now."

"Yes, an ice-boat goes almost as fast as the wind," said Bert. "Maybe some
day----"

"Oh, come on!" cried Flossie. "I want to go home! I'm cold standing here."

"Yes, we had better go on," said Nan. "I'm all right now."

As the five children skated off, no longer thinking o