"All right, Mr. Gilpin, here am I! And I do hope it won't be any true _back_ sliding we shall do on this thing. You'd ought to have put a little handrail on the sides like I told you there always was; but--"

"But that'll do, Robin. In my young days knee-high boys didn't know more'n their elders. That'll do!"

The old farmer's imitation of his wife's manner seemed very funny to all the young folks, but his anxiety was evident, as he glanced from his own hand-made "toboggan" to the professional ones of the others.

Upon his was not even the slight rod to hold on by and the least jar might send him off upon the ice. Peering down, it seemed to him that glazed descent was a straight road to a pit of perdition and his old heart sank within him.

But--He had set out to go tobogganing and go he would, if he perished doing it. Dame had besought him with real tears not to risk his old bones in such a foolhardy sport, and he had loftily a.s.sured her that "what his Reverence can do I can do. Me and him was born in the same year, I've heard my mother tell, and it's a pity if I can't ekal him!"

Moreover, there were all these youngsters makin' eyes at him, plumb ready to laugh, and thinkin' he'd back out. Back out? He? John Gilpin?

Never!

"Come on, Robin! Let's start!"

Gwendolyn and Dorothy were also ready to "start" upon what they intended should be their last descent of that morning. Alas! it proved to be! Five seconds later such a scream of terror rent the air that the hearts of all who heard it chilled in horror.

CHAPTER XIII

A BAD DAY FOR JOHN GILPIN

What had happened!

Those who were sliding down that icy incline could not stop to see, and those who were on the ground below covered their eyes that they might not. Yet opened them again to stare helplessly at the dangling figure of a girl outside that terrible slide. For in a moment, when the clutching fingers must unclose, the poor child must drop to destruction. That was inevitable.

Then they saw it was Dorothy, who hung thus, suspended between life and death. Dorothy in her white and pink, the daintiest darling of them all, who had so enjoyed her first--and last!--day at this sport.

Fresh shudders ran through the onlookers as they realized this and the Lady Princ.i.p.al sank down in a faint. Then another groan escaped them--the merest possibility of hope.

Behold! The girl did not fall! Another's small hand reached over the low side of the toboggan and clutched the blanket-covered shoulder of the imperiled child. Another hand! the other shoulder, and hope grew stronger. Someone had caught the falling Dorothy--she and her would-be-rescuer were now moving--moving--slowly downward along the very edge--one swaying perilously with the motion, the other wholly unseen save for those outstretched hands, with their death-fast grip upon the snowy wool.

Down--down! And faster now! Till the hands of the tallest watchers could reach and clasp the feet, then the whole precious little body of "Miss Dixie," their favorite from the Southland.

But even then, as strong arms drew her into their safe shelter, the small hands which had supported her to safety clung still so tight that only the Bishop's could loose their clasp.

"Gwendolyn! You brave, sweet girl! Let go--let go. It's all right now--Dorothy did not fall--You saved her life. Look up, my daughter.

Don't faint now when all is over. Look up, you n.o.ble child, and hear me tell you: Dorothy is safe and it is you who saved her life. At the risk of your own you saved her life."

Clasped close in his fatherly arms, Gwendolyn shuddered but obeyed and looked up into the Bishop's face.

"Say that again. Please. Say that again--very slow--if it's the--the truth."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "SOMEONE HAD CAUGHT THE FALLING GIRL." _Dorothy at Oak Knowe._]

"Gwendolyn, I tell you now, in the presence of G.o.d and these witnesses, it has been your precious privilege to save a human life, by your swift thought and determined action you have saved the life of Dorothy Calvert, and G.o.d bless you for it."

"Then we are quits!"

For another moment after she had said those words she still rested quietly where she was, then slowly rose and looked about her.

Dorothy had been in the greater peril of the two, yet more unconscious of it. She had not seen how high above the ground she hung, nor how directly beneath was the lake with the thinly frozen spots whence the thicker ice had been cut for the ice-houses; nor how there were heaped up rocks bordering the water, left as nature had designed to beautify the scene.

She was the quickest to recover her great fright and she was wholly unhurt. Her really greater wonder was that poor Miss Muriel should happen to faint away just then.

"I'm glad she did, though, if it won't make her ill, 'cause then she didn't see me dangling, like I must have, and get scared for that.

Likely she stayed out doors too long. She isn't very strong and it's mighty cold, I think."

So they hurried her indoors, Gwendolyn with her, yet neither of them allowed to discuss the affair until they were both warmly dressed in ordinary clothes and set down to a cute little lunch table, "all for your two selves," Nora explained: "And to eat all these warm things and drink hot coffee--as much of it as you like. It was Miss Muriel herself who said that!"

This was a treat indeed. Coffee at any meal was kept for a special treat, but to have unlimited portions of it was what Dolly called "a step beyond."

Curious glances, but smiling and tender, came often their way, from other tables in the room, yet the sport, and happily ended hazard of the morning had given to every girl a fine appet.i.te, so that, for once, knives and forks were more busily employed than tongues.

Neither did the two heroines of the recent tragic episode feel much like speech. Now that it was all over and they could think about it more clearly their hearts were filled with the solemnity of what had happened; and Gwendolyn said all that was needed for both, when once laying her hand on Dorothy's she whispered:

"You saved my life--the Bishop says that I saved yours. After that we're even and we must love each other all our lives."

"Oh! we must, we must! And I do, I shall!" returned Dorothy, with tears rising.

Then this festive little lunch dispatched, they were captured by their schoolmates and led triumphantly into the cheerful library, the scene of all their confabs, and Winifred demanded:

"Now, in the name of all the Oak Knowe girls, I demand a detailed history of what happened. Begin at the beginning and don't either of you dare to skip a single moment of the time from where you started down the old toboggan alongside of John Gilpin and that boy. I fancy if the tale were properly told his ride would outdo that of his namesake of old times. Dorothy Calvert, begin."

"Why, dear, I don't know what to say, except that, as you say, we started. My lovely toboggan went beautifully, as it had all the time, but theirs didn't act right. I believe that the old man was scared so that he couldn't do a thing except meddle with Robin, who doesn't know much more about 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 pa.s.sed: '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 ill.u.s.trated 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 practicing, leaving Dorothy and Gwendolyn alone. After a moment, they also left the library, bound kitchenwards, to visit old John and see if Robin were still thereabouts.

"I wish there were something I could do for that boy," said Gwen. "I feel so grateful to him for helping us and he looked so poor. Do you suppose, Dolly, if Mamma offered him money for that new coat he jested about, that he would be offended."

"Of course, Gwen, I don't know about _him_. You never can tell about other folks, but Uncle Seth thinks it's a mighty safe rule 'to put yourself in his place'; and if I were in Robin's I'd be 'mad as a hatter' to have money offered me for doing a little thing like that.

Wouldn't you?"