THE OLD WOODCHOPPER

While Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey, Bert and Nan picked themselves up from where they had fallen and slid along the ice, the ice-boat, with Flossie and Freddie snugly tucked in among the blankets and robes, was skimming down the lake, blown by a strong wind.

At first the two small twins hardly knew what had happened. They had felt the ice-boat tilt to one side, they remembered that they had nearly fallen out, and then they had sailed on again. It was not until Flossie opened her eyes (she always shut them when anything surprising was happening) that she saw she and Freddie were alone in the _Bird_.

"Why! Why!" she exclaimed. "Where are Daddy and Mother?"

"Yes, and Bert and Nan?" added Freddie. "Where is everybody?"

Then the two small twins looked back over the icy lake and far behind them saw their father and mother, with Bert and Nan, standing on the ice and waving their hands.

"Oh, they've jumped off and left us to sail the boat alone!" cried Freddie. "Now I can steer! Isn't that good?"

Flossie was not quite sure that this was "good," but, for a few seconds, she believed what Freddie had said--that the others had jumped off the ice-boat. She did not know that they had been spilled out, as Bert said afterward.

"Now watch me steer!" cried Freddie, crawling back toward the tiller, which was the last thing Bert had let go of, as he shot from the boat.

"Oh, can you?" asked Flossie. "Do you think you can steer?"

"Of course I can," was the answer. "You just watch me. I'll make this boat go faster!"

"But you want to be awfully careful, Freddie."

"Oh, I'm always careful, ain't I?"

"Well, I s'pose you are--most times," answered Flossie, somewhat slowly.

She did not wish to hurt her twin's feelings.

"Oh, I know what I'm doing," was Freddie's confident reply. "You just watch me! I'll make this boat go just as fast as anything!"

As it had happened, a rope had become caught around the tiller, or handle, of the rudder, thus holding it so that the ice-boat sailed straight before the wind. Otherwise it would have darted from side to side, and perhaps Flossie and Freddie would have been tossed out as the others had been. But it so happened that they sailed along nicely, no one being at the helm.

Straight down the lake sailed the _Bird_ with the two little twins aboard.

They had been a bit frightened at first, but now Freddie was thinking only of how he could steer the craft, and Flossie was waiting to see what her brother would do.

"I wonder what they're waving to us for?" asked Flossie, as she looked back and saw the frantic signals of her father and mother, Bert and Nan.

"And they're running after us, too!" she added.

"Maybe they want us to come back," suggested Freddie. But as the ice-boat was too far away for the older Bobbseys to make their voices heard by Flossie and Freddie, Mr. Bobbsey and the others could only wave their hands.

"We must catch that boat!" cried Bert. "No telling what it will do to them if it upsets. Come on! Run, everybody!"

He set off as fast as he could go, his father with him, while Mrs. Bobbsey and Nan came along more slowly.

"I guess they want us to come back and get them," said Freddie. "They must be tired. Well, I'll steer the boat back and we'll give them a ride. Won't it be fun, Flossie?"

"Ye-yes, maybe. If you can do it."

"Do what?"

"Steer the ice-boat back."

"Of course I can do it!" cried Freddie. "I can squirt water from my fire engine, can't I? And that isn't any harder than this."

Freddie did not know so much about ice-boats as he thought he did, and when he had crawled back to the tiller, still held fast in a loop of the rope, the small boy found it harder to move than he had expected. Flossie stayed among the rugs and robes.

Freddie knew enough about boats to be sure that to steer one the tiller ought to move from side to side. So, finding that the rope, which was fast to the sail, was keeping the rudder handle from moving, he began to loosen the coils.

As soon as he did that the rudder moved from side to side, and this, of course, made the ice-boat do the same thing.

"Oh, dear!" cried Flossie, "don't jiggle it so, Freddie!"

"I--I can't--help it!" chattered Freddie, his words coming jerkily, for he was being "jiggled" himself, as the rudder shook from side to side in his hand. "This--this is the way to--to steer an ice-boat."

"Well, I don't like it," Flossie announced, "It makes me homesick!"

"Do you mean--_seasick?_" asked Freddie, trying his best to hold the tiller still.

"No, I mean homesick! I want to go home!"

"But we're having a nice ride, Flossie."

"I don't care! I want papa and mamma! I can't see them now!"

The ice-boat, sailing down the lake, had turned around a point of land, and this hid from view the rest of the Bobbsey family.

"I'll turn around and go back and get them," Freddie said. By this time he had taken the rope from the tiller, so the rudder handle moved freely from side to side. And then, all of a sudden, the _Bird_ shot ahead more swiftly than before.

The wind was blowing more strongly, and when Freddie moved the rudder he steered the ice-boat so that the wind sent it straight ahead instead of a little to one side.

"Oh! oh!" cried Flossie, "this is too fast! How can we stop the ice-boat, Freddie?"

"I--I don't know," answered the little boy. "Don't you like to go fast, Flossie?"

"Not so fast as this. I can't make my nose work--I can't get any air!"

Indeed they were sailing even more swiftly than when Bert was steering, and Flossie was frightened. So was Freddie, but he was not so quick to say so.

"Please stop the boat!" cried Flossie again.

"Well, I'll try," promised Freddie. "I guess this is the rope you pull on," and he took hold of the one fast to the end of the sail--the rope that kept the big piece of white canvas from blowing away.

Freddie pulled on this, but it could not have been the right rope, or else he pulled it the wrong way, for, in an instant, the ice-boat seemed to "stand on its ear," as Bert spoke of it afterward. Flossie and Freddie were almost tossed out.

"Oh, don't do that!" cried the little girl.

"I--I didn't mean to," Freddie told her. "I guess I pulled on the wrong rope. Here's another. I'll try that."