"I'm not cryin'," answered Laddie's brother. "I'm only hollerin' so somebody'll come and get me. My foot's stuck!"

And that is just what had happened to him. He had stepped into a soft part of the drift with one foot, and had nearly turned a somersault.

Then the long barrel stave, tied fast to his shoe, became caught crossways under the hole in the snow, and Russ couldn't pull his foot out.

He could not stand up, and so had to lie down, and one leg was out of sight down in the hole.

"I'll soon have you out!" cried d.i.c.k.

He was as good as his word. Reaching down in, he loosened the barrel-stave snowshoe from Russ's foot, and soon pulled the little boy up straight. Then he carried him to the porch.

"I wouldn't go in deep places with those queer things on my feet any more," said Grandma Ford.

"No, we won't," promised Russ.

So, when the snowshoe was again tied on his foot, he and Laddie shuffled about where the snow was not too deep. They had lots of fun, and the other little Bunkers came out to watch them. Mun Bun wanted a pair of the barrel-stave snowshoes for himself, but his mother said he was too little; but Russ made some for Rose and Vi.

Two days later, when the six little Bunkers got out of bed, they found that the weather had turned warmer, and that it was raining.

"Oh, now the nice snow will be all gone!" cried Rose.

"And we can't make any more snow men and forts," added Russ.

"But you can have fun when it freezes," said his father.

"How?" asked Laddie.

"You can go skating," was the answer. "There is a pond not far from Grandpa Ford's house, and when it freezes, as it will when the rain stops, you and the others can go skating."

"I can skate a little," announced Russ.

"So can I," said Laddie. "Did we bring any skates?"

"Yes, we packed some from home," replied his mother.

"I want to skate!" exclaimed Mun Bun.

"You can have fun sliding, you and Margy," said Rose. "And I'll pull you over the ice on a sled."

This satisfied the smaller children, and then, as the weather was so bad that they could not go out and play, the six little Bunkers stayed in the house and waited for the rain to be over and the ice to freeze.

They played around the house and up in the attic, and, now and then, Russ and Rose found themselves listening for the queer noise. They didn't call it the "ghost" any longer. It was just the "queer noise."

But they did not hear it, and they rather wanted to, for they thought it would be fun to find out what caused it.

After two days of rain the snow was all gone. The ground was bleak and bare, but the six little Bunkers did not mind that, for they were eager for ice to freeze.

Then, one morning, Daddy Bunker called up the stairs:

"Come on out, everybody! The freeze has come! The pond is frozen over, and we're all going skating!"

"Hurray!" cried Russ. "This will be more fun than snowshoes!"

Little did he guess what was going to happen.

CHAPTER XIX

THE ICE BOAT

"Now you must all eat good breakfasts," said Grandma Ford, as the six little Bunkers came trooping downstairs in answer to their father's call. "Eat plenty of buckwheat cakes and maple syrup, so you will not be cold and hungry when you go out on the ice to skate."

Russ, Laddie and the others needed no second invitation, and soon there was a rattle of knives, forks and spoons that told of hungry children eating heartily.

The house at Great Hedge was warm and cosy, and the smell of the bacon, the buckwheat cakes and the maple syrup would have made almost any one hungry.

"Are we all going out skating?" asked Rose, as she ate her last cake.

"Yes, I'll take you all," said Daddy Bunker. "d.i.c.k went over to the pond, and he says the ice is fine. It's smooth and hard."

"Is it strong enough to hold?" asked Mother Bunker. "I don't want any of my six little Bunkers falling through the ice."

"Nor I," added Daddy Bunker. "We'll take good care that they don't. Now wrap up well. I have skates for all but Margy and Mun Bun. I'm afraid they are a bit too small to try to skate yet, but we'll take over sleds for them."

"Russ and I are going to have a race!" boasted Laddie. "And if I win, you've got to guess any riddle I ask you, Russ."

"I will, if you don't make it too hard," said the older boy with a laugh.

As Daddy Bunker had said, there were skates for Russ, Rose, Laddie and Vi, these having been brought from home. Russ and Rose had learned to skate the winter before, and Laddie had made one or two attempts at it.

He felt that he could do much better now. Violet, not to be outdone by her twin, was to learn too. Of course, the children could not skate very far, nor very fast, but they could have fun, and, after all, that is what skates are for, mostly.

"Could we take something to eat with us? We may get hungry," said Russ, as they were about to start.

"Bless your hearts! Of course you may!" exclaimed Grandma Ford.

She put up two bags of cookies, and then Daddy Bunker, thrusting them into the big pockets of his overcoat, led the children out into the crisp December air.

It was cold, but the wind did not blow very hard, and the six little Bunkers were well wrapped up. Over the frozen ground they went to the pond, which was back of Grandpa Ford's barn. It was a pond where, in the summer, ducks and geese swam, and where the cows went to drink. But now it was covered with a sheet of what seemed to be gla.s.s.

"What makes the ice so smooth?" asked Vi, as she leaned down and touched it.

"Because it freezes so hard," answered her father.

"Well, the ground is frozen hard, too," said the little girl. "But it isn't smooth."

"That's because it wasn't smooth before it was frozen," said Mr. Bunker.