At the top they were besieged with entreaties to go on the double-runner and, as there was room enough for one more, they took a little boy or girl with them each time.  Rosie lent her sled to those who had none.  At first there were plenty of these, standing at the top of the coast, wistfully watching the fun of more fortunate children.  But after a while it was discovered that the ice was so smooth that almost anything could be used for coasting.  The sledless ones rushed home and reappeared with all kinds of things.  One little lad went down on a shovel and his intrepid little sister followed on a broom.  Boxes and shingles and even dish-pans began to appear.  Most reckless of all, one big fellow slid down on his two feet, landing in a heap in the snow.

Maida enjoyed every moment of it—­even the long walks back up the hill.  Once the double-runner struck into a riderless sled that had drifted on to the course, and was overturned immediately.  Nobody was hurt.  Rosie, Dicky and Arthur were cast safely to one side in the soft snow.  But Maida and Billy were thrown, whirling, on to the ice.  Billy kept his grip on Maida and they shot down the hill, turning round and round and round.  At first Maida was a little frightened.  But when she saw that they were perfectly safe, that Billy was making her spin about in that ridiculous fashion, she laughed so hard that she was weak when they reached the bottom.

“Oh, do let’s do that again!” she said when she caught her breath.

Never was such a week as followed.  The cold weather kept up.  Continued storms added to the snow.  For the first time in years came four one-session days in a single week.  It seemed as if Jack Frost were on the side of the children.  He would send violent flurries of snow just before the one-session bell rang but as soon as the children were safely on the street, the sun would come out bright as summer.

Every morning when Maida woke up, she would say to herself, “I wonder how Mr. Chumpleigh is to-day.”  Then she would run over to the window to see.

Mr. Chumpleigh had become a great favorite in the neighborhood.  He was so tall that his round, happy face with its eternal orange-peel grin could look straight over the fence to the street.  The passers-by used to stop, paralyzed by the vision.  But after studying the phenomenon, they would go laughing on their way.  Occasionally a bad boy would shy a snow-ball at the smiling countenance but Mr. Chumpleigh was so hard-headed that nothing seemed to hurt him.  In the course of time, the “stove-pipe” became very battered and, as the result of continued storms, one eye sank down to the middle of his cheek.  But in spite of these injuries, he continued to maintain his genial grin.

“Let’s go out and fix Mr. Chumpleigh,” Rosie would say every day.  The two little girls would brush the snow off his hat and coat, adjust his nose and teeth, would straighten him up generally.