"Then I"ll fall down!" exclaimed Jan.
And she did, almost as soon as she stood up on her skates. But Ted and Harry held her between them and before long she could strike out a little. Then she remembered some of the directions her father had given her when he taught her to skate the year before, and Jan was soon doing fairly well. Ted was a pretty good skater for a boy of his age.
"You"re doing fine, Curlytop!" called Harry Morris, one of the big boys who had pulled Ted and Jan up the hill on his sled the previous night.
He had come to see how thick the ice was. "You"re doing fine. But why don"t you hitch up your goat and make him pull you on the ice?"
"Oh, Ted, we could do that!" cried Janet, as the big boy pa.s.sed on.
"Do what?"
"Harness Nicknack to a sled and make him give us a ride. Maybe he could pull us over the snow as well as on the ice."
"We"ll try it!" cried Teddy.
He took off his skates and hurried home, telling Janet to wait for him at the pond, which was not far from the Martin house. In a little while Teddy came back driving Nicknack hitched to Ted"s sled. The goat pulled the little boy along over the snow much more easily than he had hauled the small wagon.
"This is great!" cried Ted. "I"m going to drive him on the ice now.
Giddap, Nicknack!"
Teddy guided the goat to the ice-covered pond. Nicknack took two or three steps on the slippery place and then he suddenly fell down, the sled, with Ted on it, gliding over his hind legs.
"Baa-a-a-a!" bleated Nicknack, as if he did not at all like this.
CHAPTER IV
THE SNOW HOUSE
"Oh, Teddy, you"ll hurt Nicknack!" cried Janet, when she saw what had happened.
"I didn"t mean to," Ted answered, jumping off the sled. "He slipped on the ice and I couldn"t stop the sled."
"Help him get up," went on Jan. "He can"t get up himself with that sled on his hind legs."
Teddy pulled back the sled, but still Nicknack did not get up.
"Maybe one of his legs is broken," suggested Tom Taylor, a boy who lived near the Martins.
"If it is he"ll have to run on three legs. Our dog did that once, when one of his legs had been run over," said Lola Taylor, Tom"s sister.
"Come on, Nicknack, get up!" cried Ted. "Stand up and give us a ride on the ice."
But the goat only went: "Baa-a-a-a!" again, and he seemed to shake his head as if to say that he could not get up.
"His legs are all right," Teddy said when he had looked at them as well as he could, and felt of the parts that stuck out from under Nicknack"s body. "Why doesn"t he stand up?"
"What"s the matter, Curlytop?" asked Harry Morris.
"My goat won"t stand up on the ice," Ted answered. "He fell down and his legs are all right, but he won"t stand up."
"Maybe it"s because he knows he can"t," said Harry. "Goats aren"t made to stand on slippery ice you know. Their hoofs are hard like a cow"s.
They are all right for walking on snow or on the ground, but they can"t get a good hold on the ice. I guess the reason Nicknack won"t stand up is because he knows he"d fall down again if he tried it. Here, I"ll help you get him over into the snow, and there you"ll see he"ll be all right."
With the help of Harry, the goat was half led and half carried off the pond to the snow-covered ground. There Nicknack could drag the sled easily, and he gave Ted and Jan a nice ride, also pulling Lola and Tom.
Ted offered the big boy a ride behind the goat, but Harry said:
"I"m much obliged to you, Curlytop, but I"m afraid your sled is too small for me. Your goat is strong enough to pull me, I guess, but I"d fall off the sled, I"m afraid."
"I wish I could make him pull me on the ice," said Teddy. "How could we make him stop slipping?" he asked the big boy.
"Well, you"d have to have sharp-pointed iron shoes put on his hoofs, the same as they shoe horses for the winter. Only I don"t know any blacksmith that could make shoes small enough for a goat. Maybe you could tie cloth on his hoofs, or old pieces of rubber, so he wouldn"t slip on the ice."
"That"s what we"ll do!" cried Teddy. "To-morrow we"ll make some rubbers for our goat, Jan."
"Do you think he"ll let us put "em on?" asked Jan.
"Oh, course he will. Nicknack is a good goat."
Ted and Jan drove him around some more in the snow, and this was not hard pulling for Nicknack, as the sled slipped along easily and he had no trouble in standing up on his sharp hoofs in the soft snow. But Ted did not again drive him on the ice that day.
"I know what we can do to have some fun," said Jan, as she and her brother started Nicknack toward home after having had some more rides themselves, and giving some to their little friends.
"What?" asked Ted. "Haven"t we had fun enough?"
"Yes, but we can have more," went on Jan. "And this fun is good to eat."
"If you mean stopping at a store and getting some lollypops--nopy!" and Ted shook his head quickly from side to side.
"I didn"t mean that," declared Jan.
"It"s good you didn"t," came from her brother, ""cause if you did we couldn"t."
"Why not?" Jan asked.
"I haven"t got a penny," returned Teddy. "I asked mother for some when I went home to get Nicknack, but she told me to wait a minute while she paid the milkman."
"Didn"t you wait?" asked Jan in some surprise. It seemed strange that Teddy would miss a chance like this, as Mrs. Martin did not give the Curlytops pennies every time they asked for them. She did not want them to get in the habit of spending money too freely, especially when it was given them, and they had done no little thing to earn it. Nor did she want them to buy candy when she did not know about it. So the giving of pennies was really an event in the lives of Ted and Jan, and the little girl wondered very much now, why it was her brother had not taken the money when his mother was willing to give it.
"Why didn"t you want to wait, Ted?" asked Jan.
"Oh, I wanted to all right," he answered; "but Nicknack didn"t want to.
I got him--Nora and me--all harnessed up, and I tied him out in front; then I went in to ask for the pennies--one for you and one for me."
"Oh, I wish you"d got "em," said Jan, rather sorrowfully.