emselves up from where
they had fallen and slid along the ice, the ice-boat, with Flossie and
Freddie snugly tucked in among the blankets and robes, was skimming down
the lake, blown by a strong wind.

At first the two small twins hardly knew what had happened. They had felt
the ice-boat tilt to one side, they remembered that they had nearly fallen
out, and then they had sailed on again. It was not until Flossie opened
her eyes (she always shut them when anything surprising was happening)
that she saw she and Freddie were alone in the _Bird_.

"Why! Why!" she exclaimed. "Where are Daddy and Mother?"

"Yes, and Bert and Nan?" added Freddie. "Where is everybody?"

Then the two small twins looked back over the icy lake and far behind them
saw their father and mother, with Bert and Nan, standing on the ice and
waving their hands.

"Oh, they've jumped off and left us to sail the boat alone!" cried
Freddie. "Now I can steer! Isn't that good?"

Flossie was not quite sure that this was "good," but, for a few seconds,
she believed what Freddie had said--that the others had jumped off the
ice-boat. She did not know that they had been spilled out, as Bert said
afterward.

"Now watch me steer!" cried Freddie, crawling back toward the tiller,
which was the last thing Bert had let go of, as he shot from the boat.

"Oh, can you?" asked Flossie. "Do you think you can steer?"

"Of course I can," was the answer. "You just watch me. I'll make this boat
go faster!"

"But you want to be awfully careful, Freddie."

"Oh, I'm always careful, ain't I?"

"Well, I s'pose you are--most times," answered Flossie, somewhat slowly.
She did not wish to hurt her twin's feelings.

"Oh, I know what I'm doing," was Freddie's confident reply. "You just
watch me! I'll make this boat go just as fast as anything!"

As it had happened, a rope had become caught around the tiller, or handle,
of the rudder, thus holding it so that the ice-boat sailed straight before
the wind. Otherwise it would have darted from side to side, and perhaps
Flossie and Freddie would have been tossed out as the others had been. But
it so happened that they sailed along nicely, no one being at the helm.

Straight down the lake sailed the _Bird_ with the two little twins aboard.
They had been a bit frightened at first, but now Freddie was thinking only
of how he could steer the craft, and Flossie was waiting to see what her
brother would do.

"I wonder what they're wav