"Isn't this nice?" shouted Jessie, as she slid over the glass-like surface.
"It's perfectly beautiful," replied Carrie, gliding along in an opposite direction.
Walter made a slide for himself, just in front of the girls, and being all brim-full of good-nature, they enjoyed themselves finely. But there were two shadows that flashed on Jessie's joy now and then. The first was the image of the quilt she had left on the parlor-floor; the second was her regret that her cousins were so ugly. When the former image flitted before her, a little voice in her breast whispered,
"In the chains of the little wizard again, eh?"
[Illustration: Jessie and Carrie Enjoying a Slide. Page 105.]
Then Jessie would sigh, look very sober, and pause, saying to herself, "I really must go home and sew."
Before her purpose was fairly formed, however, Walter or Carrie would cry out, "What, getting tired already! You are not half a slider."
"Just once more, and then I'll go," Jessie would say to herself. But before that one more slide was through, she would purpose to add yet another. Thus time fled until the morning was almost gone, and the quilt, the little wizard, Uncle Morris, and even the ugly cousins, were nearly forgotten, in the excitement of this pleasant sport.
This delight was, however, brought to an end by a loud scream, followed by a shrill voice crying, "Charlie! _Charlie!_ Charlie! You'll be drowned! Oh dear! Oh dear!"
This was followed by another scream. Walter guessed what was the matter at once. He knew that near where the cousins were sliding, the trunk of a tree formed a sort of bridge over the brook, and enabled the cow-boys to pass dry-shod in summer. When the brook was low, it was a safe enough bridge, but when it was full as it was then, it was what the boys called "a pokerish place to cross." He surmised at once, that Charlie was frightening his sister, by attempting to walk across the brook on this rough and narrow bridge. So he told the girls, and then they all ran towards the spot from whence the cry came.
A few minutes' run brought them in sight of Master Charlie standing erect on the tree, right over the middle of the brook. Emily was standing at the water's edge, screaming, and begging him to come back.