t, they were on the track with faces turned hopefully toward
Wellington. Scarcely had they taken six steps, before three of the girls
tumbled flat, and while they were picking themselves up, Dr. and Mrs.
McLean sat down plump on the ice, hand in hand, like two astonished
children. It was quite impossible to keep from laughing at this
ludicrous situation, especially when the doctor's great "haw-haw" made
the air tremble. The ones who were standing helped the ones who had
fallen to rise and fell themselves in the effort.

"If we only had on skates," cried Judy, "wouldn't it be glorious? We
could skate anywhere, right across the fields or along the road. It's
just like a sea of solid ice."

For an hour they took their precarious way along the track, which was
now on the edge of a high embankment.

"A grand place for coasting," remarked Judy, peeping over the edge.

Suddenly her heels went over her head and her horrified friends beheld
her sliding backwards down the hill.

"Are you hurt at all, my lass?" called the doctor, peeping fearfully
over the side, and holding onto his wife as a drowning man catches at a
life preserver.

"Hurt? No," cried Judy, convulsed with laughter.

"Do you think you can crawl back?" asked Mrs. McLean doubtfully.

Then Judy began the most difficult ascent of her life, on hands and
knees. There was nothing to take hold of and, when she had got half-way
up, back she slipped to the bottom again.

A second time she had almost reached the top when she lost her footing
and once more slipped to the base of the embankment.

"You'd better go on without me," she cried, half sobbing and half
laughing.

The doctor was very uncomfortable. Not for worlds would he have put foot
outside the trolley rails, but something had to be done.

"Let's make a human ladder," suggested Molly, "as they do in melodramas.
I'll go first. Nance, you take my foot and someone hold on to yours and
so on. Then, Judy can climb up, catching hold of us."

The doctor considered this a good scheme and the human chain was
accordingly formed, the doctor himself grasping the ankle of the last
volunteer, who happened to be Judith Blount. But hardly had Judy
commenced the upward climb, when the doctor's heels went over his head
and the entire human ladder found itself huddled together at the foot of
the embankment.

"It's a case of every mon for himself and the divvel tak' the hindmost,"
exclaimed the doctor, sitting up stiff