"She won't, though," said Twaddles absently.

He was busy with a sled Marion Green had loaned him. Marion had tired of playing with her sled, and Twaddles had exhausted all the thrill of sliding down his slide on his feet. He wanted to play toboggan-riding, and when Marion offered him her sled he accepted gratefully.

"You'd better not try that," said Bobby seriously, watching Twaddles carefully drag the sled into the position he wanted. "Look out, Twaddles--you're foolish. How are you going to stop it when you get down on the ice?"

Twaddles, seated on the sled, looked down the glistening slide to the clear ice below the bank.

"With my foot, of course," he said carelessly. "It's just as easy.

You watch."

Bobby watched, and so did Meg. So did a dozen of the children who had been playing on the slide. They saw Twaddles start himself with a little forward push, skim down the slide like a bird, take the jump at the end of the bank, and shoot out into the pond among the skaters.

"I knew he'd make a mess of it," groaned Bobby.

Twaddles apparently had forgotten all about using his foot. His sled swept across the ice, crashed into a skater, and Twaddles was sent flying in the opposite direction. The sled brought up against a tree on the other side of the pond, but Twaddles continued to skim over the pond directly toward a patch of thin ice.

His cry, as he broke through, was heard by every one on the pond.

"He'll be drowned!" wailed Meg. "Oh, Bobby, hurry!"

"He can't drown in that water. It isn't deep," said a man, skating past them and stopping to, rea.s.sure Meg. "Come on, youngster, you and I can get him out."

Bobby put his hand into that of the stranger and was pulled along rapidly toward the spot where the howling Twaddles stood in icy water up to his knees.

CHAPTER IX

A NEW KIND OF JAM

As the man said, there was no danger that Twaddles would be drowned.

Cold and wet and miserable, he certainly was, but the stranger rescued him easily, stretching out a long, thin arm across the ice and lifting the boy bodily out of the water, over the thin ice, and on to thick, firm foothold.

"There, there, you're just as good as ever," he a.s.sured the shivering Twaddles. "You want to run home as fast as you can go and get into dry shoes and stockings, and then you won't ever know you fell into the pond. Scoot, now!"

But Twaddles delayed.

"Is it--is it--four o'clock?" he asked, his teeth chattering. "Mother said we could stay out till four o'clock."

"It's five minutes after four," announced the stranger, consulting his watch. "You'll have to run every step of the way to make up for lost time. Run!"

Dot, of course, would run with Twaddles, and Meg and Bobby promised to return the sled to Marion. They had to walk all the way around the pond to get it for her.

"I fell in," said Twaddles beamingly, when he and Dot reached home.

Mother and Aunt Polly rubbed him dry and had him in dry stockings and sandals in a hurry, and then Aunt Polly and Dot decided to walk uptown and match some wool for the sweater auntie was finishing. Twaddles wanted to go, but Mother Blossom decided he had done enough for that day and had better stay at home with her.

"What are you doing, Mother?" asked Twaddles, watching her curiously, after his sister and aunt had gone down the walk. "Could I do that?"

"Now, Twaddles, you've seen me fill my fountain pen hundreds of times,"

answered Mother Blossom patiently. "You always ask me that, and you know I can't have you spilling ink all over my desk. Run away and find something pleasant to do till I finish this letter, and then we'll toast marshmallows over the fire."

Twaddles set out to amuse himself. He wished he had Philip to play with, but the dog was out in the garage and Twaddles had been forbidden to make the journey through the snow in his sandals. To be sure there was Annabel Lee, but the cat was in a sleepy mood and refused to wake up sufficiently to be amusing.

"Oh, dear," sighed Twaddles. "There's nothing to do. I wonder where Norah is?"

He scuttled down to the kitchen, which was in beautiful order, but no Norah was in sight She was up in her room changing her dress, but Twaddles did not know that.

"I'm hungry!" he decided, opening the pantry door. "Skating always gives you such an appet.i.te."

He had heard some one say this.

As in most pantries, the favorite place for the Blossom cake box was on the highest shelf. Why this was so, puzzled Twaddles, as it has puzzled many other small boys and girls.

"I should think Norah might leave it down low," he grumbled, dragging a chair into the pantry with some difficulty and proceeding to climb into it.

By stretching, he managed to get his fingers on the cake box lid and pull it down. He opened it.

The box was perfectly empty.

"Why, the idea!" sputtered the outraged Twaddles, who felt distinctly cheated. "I wonder if Mother knows we haven't any cake. I'd better go and tell her."

But he didn't--not right away. For there were other boxes on the various shelves, and Twaddles felt it was his duty to peep into these to see what he could find. He was disappointed in most of them because they held such uninteresting things as rice and barley and coffee, nothing that a starving person could eat with any pleasure.

Then at last he thought he had found something he could eat. It was in a smooth, round gla.s.s jar with a screw lid and was a clear jelly-like substance that looked as though it might be marmalade or honey or some kind of jam.

He opened the jar without trouble and sniffed at the contents. It smelled very good indeed. Twaddles plunged in an investigating finger.

The jam stuck to his finger. Still, Twaddles could not get enough off to taste, and he had liberally covered all the other fingers on that hand before he pulled away from the jar.

"That certainly is funny jam," he puzzled, trying to sc.r.a.pe his fingers clean with the other hand.

"Twaddles!" called Mother Blossom. "Oh, Twaddles, where are you?

Aren't you going to help me toast marshmallows?"

Twaddles backed out of the pantry, into Norah who had come downstairs, freshly gowned, to start her supper.

"Glory be!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Twaddles, what have you been up to now?

If you've been messing in my pantry, I'll tell your mother. What's that all over your hands?"

"Jam," said Twaddles meekly.

Norah eyed him with suspicion.

"There's no jam there," she said. "Come over here to the light where I can see ye."

Norah took Twaddles' wrists in her hands gingerly, for he was a very sticky child, and turned his hands over to examine them.