ut sliding than I do, or did. He--"

"I saw he was getting on the wrong side, right behind you two, as we
shot past on ours," interrupted Serena Huntington, "and we both called
out: 'steer! steer right!' but I suppose they didn't hear or
understand. We were so far down then that I don't know."

"Gwen, dear, you tell the rest," begged Dorothy, cuddling up to the
girl she now so dearly loved.

It wasn't often that Gwendolyn was called to the front like this, but
she found it very pleasant; so readily took up the tale where Dorothy
left it, "at the very beginning" as "Dixie" laughingly declared.

"It seems as if there was nothing to tell--it was all so quick--it
just happened! Half way down, it must have been, the farmer's sled hit
ours. That scared me, too, and I called, just as Serena had, and as
everybody on the slide was doing as they passed: 'Steer right!' I
guess that only confused the poor old man, for he kept bobbing into us
and that hindered our getting away from him ourselves.

"Next I knew, Dolly was off the sled and over the edge of the slide,
clinging to it for her life. I knew she couldn't hold on long and so I
rolled off and grabbed her. Then we began to slide and I knew somebody
was trying to help by pushing us downward toward the bottom. I don't
know who that was. I don't know anything clearly. It was all like a
flash--I guessed we would be killed--I shut my eyes and--that's all."

To break the too suggestive silence which followed with its hint of a
different, sorrowful ending, Florita Sheraton exclaimed:

"I know who did that pushing! It was our little Robin Adair, or
whatever his name is. Fact. That home-made toboggan of his came to
grief. The old man has told me. He's out in the kitchen now warming up
his bruises. You see, there wasn't anything to hang on by, on the
sides. He had scorned Robin's advice to nail something on and he
nearly ground his fingers off holding on by the flat bottom. It went
so swift--his fingers ached so--he yanked them out from under--Robin
screeched--they ran into you--they both tumbled off--Robin lodged
against you but John Gilpin rode to the bottom--thus wise!"

Florita illustrated by rolling one hand over and under the other; and
thus, in fact, had John Gilpin taken his first toboggan slide.

Laughter showed that the tension of excitement which had held these
schoolgirls all that day had yielded to ordinary feelings, and now
most of them went away for study or prac