ith us? We may get hungry," said Russ,
as they were about to start.
"Bless your hearts! Of course you may!" exclaimed Grandma Ford.
She put up two bags of cookies, and then Daddy Bunker, thrusting them
into the big pockets of his overcoat, led the children out into the
crisp December air.
It was cold, but the wind did not blow very hard, and the six little
Bunkers were well wrapped up. Over the frozen ground they went to the
pond, which was back of Grandpa Ford's barn. It was a pond where, in the
summer, ducks and geese swam, and where the cows went to drink. But now
it was covered with a sheet of what seemed to be glass.
"What makes the ice so smooth?" asked Vi, as she leaned down and touched
it.
"Because it freezes so hard," answered her father.
"Well, the ground is frozen hard, too," said the little girl. "But it
isn't smooth."
"That's because it wasn't smooth before it was frozen," said Mr. Bunker.
"When cold comes it freezes things into just the shapes they are at the
time. The ground was cut up into ruts and furrows, and it froze that
way. The pond of water was smooth, as it always is except when the wind
blows up the waves, and it froze smooth."
"Would my face freeze smooth?" asked Violet, trying to look down at her
nose.
"I hope it doesn't freeze at all," her father told her with a laugh.
"But if it did your nose would be all wrinkled, as it is now."
"Then I'm going to smooth it," said Violet, and she did.
Russ could put on his own skates, as could Rose, but Laddie had to have
help. Then the three children began gliding about the ice, their father
watching them.
"Don't go too far over toward the middle," he warned them. "Dick said he
thought it was safe there, but it may not be. Stay near shore."
The children promised that they would, and they had great fun gliding
about on the steel runners.
Then Daddy Bunker put the skates on Vi and held her up while he taught
her how to take the strokes. It was very wabbly skating, you may be
sure.
Finally, however, she began to do very well for such a little girl and
for such a short time. But after a while she said she was tired.
"Very well, Vi," said Daddy Bunker, "you sit on one sled and take Mun
Bun in your lap. Margy can sit on the smaller sled, and I'll fasten the
two together with ropes. Then I can pull both."
And Daddy Bunker did this. Over the ice along the shore he pulled the
sleds with the three children on them, while Rose,
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