The nuts had not been spread a great while, and the crew of loggers had gone up into the woods, when one day, well-clad for cold weather—the girls in their red cloaks and hoods and mittens, the boys in reefers and high boots and ear-laps—Charlie and Will swinging a parcel of glittering steel things led all the little southerners down to the lake.
“Oh!” cried Essie, “your Jack Frost has been here too, and has turned our blue lake into silver!”
“It’s like Achilles’ shield,” said Janet, who was tumbling round by herself, trying to slide.
“What do you know about Achilles?’ laughed Will.
“I’ve heard you reading to Uncle Billy. Perhaps I know as much as you do,” said Janet slyly.
“Well, then you don’t know much,” retorted Will, buckling his last strap.
What witchcraft it seemed to the younger children, when they themselves tottered this way and that, trying to keep their balance, falling and bumping and bruising themselves continually, to see Charlie and Will wheeling in figure-eights, leaning far over on the outer roll, cutting their names in the ice, and sliding off like flying-fish!
“Ho! I can do that!” cried Jack, stamping his skate into the ice. And over he went!
Aunt Rose took Ally and Essie by either hand, and swept off with them, their little feet close together, so that they really thought they were skating!
“It’s most like flying,” said Essie, delight in her eyes, her cheeks like red apples, while Ally, looking straight ahead, was silent with joy, her yellow hair streaming out behind her.
Janet went blundering about alone a long time, somehow, anyhow, and all at once finding herself firm on her feet, and making a stroke. Then the dinner-bell rang, and the skates had to come off. But after the lesson-hour they were out again, for the afternoon—except Will, who was behind with his Greek. And after they had spent all the spare hours of a week’s time on the ice, they were so expert that they felt like a flock of birds.
It was dark early at that time of the year, and one afternoon what was their surprise to see Uncle Billy and Charlie building a fire on the lake. “Oh, they are going to melt the ice!” cried Jack; and all the others echoed his words in alarm, and started for the shore.
“Pooh!” said Charlie. “How thick do you suppose this ice is?”
“An inch? Two inches?” inquired Janet.
“Will measured it at the outlet, and he says it’s twenty-four.”
“I wish Will knew his Greek as well as he knows a lot of other things,” said Uncle Billy.
“I don’t, though!” said Will. “And I don’t know that I want to, anyway. I don’t want to go to college. I want to go logging in the woods.”
“He wants to be a dunce. Would you believe it?” said Uncle Billy. “Essie, what do you suppose we are building this fire for? For fun, Ally? To warm your toes, Janet? Jack, what do you suppose lives under this ice?”
Near the fire Uncle Billy’s big chisel was cutting a hole through the solid floor, and Charlie was cutting another a little bigger.
“The most onluckiest hole ye iver cut, so it is,” Michael said afterward to Charlie.
When the holes were ready Uncle Billy began to bob strings in the dark unseen water. In a moment more Janet was bobbing one too.
“He’ll pull me under! Oh, he’ll pull me under!” she suddenly cried out, as she felt a big twitch on her hook. “Come help me, somebody! He’ll pull me down into the hole!”
Uncle Billy put his hands over Janet’s, and together they brought up a royal fighting pickerel.
All the other children, still flourishing round on their skates, swarmed up then to see the big creature Janet had caught, and to beg for hooks and lines themselves. And in a moment—oh, horror! what was this? Essie had skated straight into the hole Charlie had cut. There was a wild cry from Essie, as she plunged, a wilder one from all the others.
But on the instant Uncle Billy had flung himself across the hole, and with both arms down in the still cold water had caught hold of her. Then crawling away, with Charlie’s help he lifted her to the top and out upon the ice, quite conscious, but terribly scared, and as wet as any seal.
Accidents never come alone, says an old proverb; and it was not to be expected that Ally should not have her share in any dangers going.
Before Essie, shivering in every atom of her, had fairly been set upon her feet, another shriek rang upon the air.
“I’m all afire! Uncle Billy, I’m afire!”
And there was Ally wrapped in a blaze, that made every one, for a single heartbeat, stone still with terror!
For in moving quickly on her skates away from the hole where Uncle Billy was drawing poor little Essie out of the water, Ally had backed straight into the fire, which caught her skirts instantly; and no one knows what might have happened if Charlie had not rushed and thrown her down, and tossed his coat over her, and rolled and pressed and stamped out the flame, although not till it had scorched his good hands and burned poor Ally’s little legs. Perhaps he was not very much helped by Essie’s running and precipitating herself and all her wetness on them both.
“Well,” said Uncle Billy, “here’s a chapter of accidents!” And Essie, wet and freezing, and Ally with her two blistered legs and burned and ragged woolens, were huddled in the greatcoats and mounted one on each shoulder, and Uncle Billy ran with them as if he wore seven-league boots.
“I never cried at all!” exclaimed Ally, while Aunt Susan dressed and bandaged her burns—which, however, were not very severe.
Soon the poor twins were lying snugly in bed, Essie in an extra flannel-wrap, with hot-water bottles all around her, and hot catnip-tea inside her.
“But you screamed, Ally,” said Essie, “if you didn’t cry.”
“And so did you! But that was not crying! I was so exprised. I didn’t scream because it hurt. It hurt me more when you went down that hole!”
“And I thought I was afire when I saw you, for all I was so wet and cold,” said Essie. “O Ally! I’m so glad you’re saved all but the backs of your ankles! And they’ll grow again, you know.”
“Isn’t it good we’re both saved?” said Ally cosily. “Oh, Essie, keep your feet right on the hot soap-stone! Only, please don’t touch the back of my legs! They do smart a little. What you going to dream about? Are you awake? I’m going to dream I went into the garden and there—atop of a—big rose—I saw”—And Ally slipped away into dreamland, where Essie had gone before her.