The little boy tried to steer out of the way, but he was too late, and the next Teddy knew, he was sitting partly on the little boy and partly on the sled, sliding down the hill up which he had been walking a little while before.
"Oh!" grunted the little boy when Teddy part way sat down on him.
"Oh!" grunted Teddy.
The reason they both grunted was because their breaths were jolted out of them. But they were not hurt, and when the sled with the two boys on it kept on sliding downhill all the other boys and girls laughed to see the funny sight.
"Well!" cried Teddy when he reached the bottom of the hill and got up, "I didn"t know I was going to have that ride."
"Neither did I," said the little boy, whose name was Wilson Decker. "Me and my sister were having a race," he went on, "and now she beat me."
"I"m sorry," said Teddy. "I didn"t mean to get in your way. My sister and I are going to have a race, too, and that"s what we were walking up to do when I sat on you. Don"t you want to race with us? We"re going to have a new kind."
"What kind, Curlytop?" the little boy asked.
"To see who can go the longest but not the fastest," answered Teddy.
"Come on, it"ll be a lot of fun!"
So the little boy and his sister, whose sled, with her on it, had first gotten to the bottom of the hill, went up together with Teddy, to where Jan was waiting for him.
"Oh, Teddy!" cried the little Curlytop girl, laughing, "you did look _so_ funny!"
"I--I sort of _felt_ funny!" replied Teddy. "They"re going to race with us," he went on, as he pointed to Wilson Decker and his sister.
"That"ll be nice," returned Janet. "Now we"ll all get on our sleds in a line at the top of the hill. It doesn"t matter who goes first or last, but we must start even, and the one who makes his sled go the longest way to the bottom of the hill beats the race."
They all said this would be fair, and some of the other children gathered at the top of the hill to watch the race, which was different from the others.
"All ready! I"m going to start!" cried Janet, and away she went, coasting down the hill. The other three waited a little, for there was no hurry, and then, one after the other, Wilson, Teddy and Elsie (who was Wilson"s sister) started down the hill.
Janet"s sled was the first to stop at the bottom, as she had been the first to start, and she cried:
"n.o.body can come up to me!"
But Elsie on her sled was exactly even with Janet.
"Well, if Teddy or your brother don"t go farther than we did then we win the race--a half of it to each of us," said Janet.
And that"s just what happened. Teddy"s sled went a little farther than did Wilson"s, but neither of the boys could come up to the girls, so Jan and Elsie won, and they were proud of it. Then they started another race.
They were having grand fun, shouting and laughing, when suddenly a strange dog, which none of the children remembered having seen before, ran along and began barking at Nicknack.
The goat, who was used to the gentle barking of Skyrocket, did not like this strange, savage dog, which seemed ready to bite him.
"Baa-a-a-a!" bleated the goat.
"Bow-w-w!" barked the dog, and he snapped at Nicknack"s legs.
This was more than the goat could stand. With another frightened leap he gave a jump that broke the strap by which he was tied to the tree. Then Nicknack jumped again, and this time, strangely enough, he landed right inside the sled which, a little while before, he had pulled along the snow to the hill.
Right into the sled leaped Nicknack, and then another funny thing happened.
The sled was on the edge of the hill, and when the goat jumped into it he gave it such a sudden push that it began sliding downhill. Right down the hill slid the sled and Nicknack was in it.
"Oh, your goat"s having a ride! Your goat"s having a ride!" cried the other children to the Curlytops.
CHAPTER XIV
SNOWED IN
Nicknack was indeed having a ride. Whether he knew it or not, or whether he wanted it or not, he was sliding downhill in the very sled in which he had pulled the Curlytops a little while before.
"Oh, look!" cried Janet.
"You"d better catch him "fore he gets hurt!" added Tom.
"I never knew a goat could ride downhill!" laughed Jack Turton, a funny, fat, little fellow.
"Did you teach him that trick, Curlytop?" asked Ford Henderson, the big boy who had carried Janet home the day she went through the ice.
"I guess he must have learned it himself," answered Ted.
"That bad dog made him do it," said Janet. "Go on away, you bad dog!"
she cried, stamping her foot.
Then Janet caught up some snow in her hand and threw it at the dog, which gave a surprised bark and ran away, with his tail between his legs, the way dogs do when they know they have done something wrong for which they deserve a whipping.
Perhaps, too, this dog was so surprised at seeing a goat ride downhill that he ran away on that account, and not because Janet threw a s...o...b..ll at him. For a goat riding down a snow hill in a sled is certainly a funny sight. I never saw one myself, though I have seen a goat in a circus ride down a wooden hill made of planks and this goat sat on a seat in a wagon that, afterward, he drew about the ring with a clown in it.
So, I suppose, if a goat can ride downhill in a wagon it is not much harder to do the same thing in a sled.
At any rate, Nicknack rode down the hill, and the big sled kept going faster and faster as it glided over the slippery snow.
"Get out, Nicknack! Get out!" cried Janet, as she saw what was happening to her pet. "You"ll be hurt! Jump out of the sled!"
Ted ran down the hill after the sliding sled, but as it was now going very fast, the little boy could not catch up to it.
"I guess your goat won"t be hurt," said Ford Henderson to Jan. "Goats can climb rocks and jump down off them, so I guess even if his sled upsets and spills him out Nicknack won"t get hurt."
"The snow is soft," said Lola.
"Look, he _is_ going to upset!" cried Ted, who had stopped running and, with the other children, was looking down the hill. Nicknack was half way to the bottom now.
Just as Ted spoke the sled gave a twist to one side and Nicknack cried: