Page:Betty Gordon at Boarding School.djvu/205

Rh Edentown and bought a little toy affair, the best she could get there, and Frances Martin had sent home for her big, comfortable Vermont-made sled that made up in dependability what it lacked in varnish and polish. Counting Betty's, this gave them four sleds.

There was a conventional hill half a mile away from the school, toward which most of the girls turned their steps. On the first afternoon it was crowded. The Salsette cadets had come coasting, too, for on their side of the lake there was not so much as a mound of earth, and whoever would coast must perforce cross the lake.

"We'll go up to the woods," announced Betty. "There will be more room, and it's much more exciting to go down a steep hill."

So it proved. The cleared space to which Betty had referred demanded careful steering, and Frances Martin at the first glance relinquished the control of her sled.

"I can't judge distances," she explained, touching her glasses, "and I'd be sure to steer straight for a tree. Libbie, you'll have to be the skipper."

So Libble took Frances, Betty took Bobby, Constance took Norma on her sled, and Alice steered for Louise, using Bobby's sled.

Such shrieks of laughter, such wild spills! If Ada Nansen had been there to see she would certainly have been confirmed in her statement that