ing to us for?" asked Flossie, as she looked
back and saw the frantic signals of her father and mother, Bert and Nan.
"And they're running after us, too!" she added.

"Maybe they want us to come back," suggested Freddie. But as the ice-boat
was too far away for the older Bobbseys to make their voices heard by
Flossie and Freddie, Mr. Bobbsey and the others could only wave their
hands.

"We must catch that boat!" cried Bert. "No telling what it will do to them
if it upsets. Come on! Run, everybody!"

He set off as fast as he could go, his father with him, while Mrs. Bobbsey
and Nan came along more slowly.

"I guess they want us to come back and get them," said Freddie. "They must
be tired. Well, I'll steer the boat back and we'll give them a ride. Won't
it be fun, Flossie?"

"Ye-yes, maybe. If you can do it."

"Do what?"

"Steer the ice-boat back."

"Of course I can do it!" cried Freddie. "I can squirt water from my fire
engine, can't I? And that isn't any harder than this."

Freddie did not know so much about ice-boats as he thought he did, and
when he had crawled back to the tiller, still held fast in a loop of the
rope, the small boy found it harder to move than he had expected. Flossie
stayed among the rugs and robes.

Freddie knew enough about boats to be sure that to steer one the tiller
ought to move from side to side. So, finding that the rope, which was fast
to the sail, was keeping the rudder handle from moving, he began to loosen
the coils.

As soon as he did that the rudder moved from side to side, and this, of
course, made the ice-boat do the same thing.

"Oh, dear!" cried Flossie, "don't jiggle it so, Freddie!"

"I--I can't--help it!" chattered Freddie, his words coming jerkily, for he
was being "jiggled" himself, as the rudder shook from side to side in his
hand. "This--this is the way to--to steer an ice-boat."

"Well, I don't like it," Flossie announced, "It makes me homesick!"

"Do you mean--_seasick?_" asked Freddie, trying his best to hold the
tiller still.

"No, I mean homesick! I want to go home!"

"But we're having a nice ride, Flossie."

"I don't care! I want papa and mamma! I can't see them now!"

The ice-boat, sailing down the lake, had turned around a point of land,
and this hid from view the rest of the Bobbsey family.

"I'll turn around and go back and get them," Freddie said. By this time he
had taken the rope from the tiller, so the rudder handle moved freely from