After two days of rain the snow was all gone.  The ground was bleak and bare, but the six little Bunkers did not mind that, for they were eager for ice to freeze.

Then, one morning, Daddy Bunker called up the stairs: 

“Come on out, everybody!  The freeze has come!  The pond is frozen over, and we’re all going skating!”

“Hurray!” cried Russ.  “This will be more fun than snowshoes!”

Little did he guess what was going to happen.

CHAPTER XIX

THE ICE BOAT

“Now you must all eat good breakfasts,” said Grandma Ford, as the six little Bunkers came trooping downstairs in answer to their father’s call.  “Eat plenty of buckwheat cakes and maple syrup, so you will not be cold and hungry when you go out on the ice to skate.”

Russ, Laddie and the others needed no second invitation, and soon there was a rattle of knives, forks and spoons that told of hungry children eating heartily.

The house at Great Hedge was warm and cosy, and the smell of the bacon, the buckwheat cakes and the maple syrup would have made almost any one hungry.

“Are we all going out skating?” asked Rose, as she ate her last cake.

“Yes, I’ll take you all,” said Daddy Bunker.  “Dick went over to the pond, and he says the ice is fine.  It’s smooth and hard.”

“Is it strong enough to hold?” asked Mother Bunker.  “I don’t want any of my six little Bunkers falling through the ice.”

“Nor I,” added Daddy Bunker.  “We’ll take good care that they don’t.  Now wrap up well.  I have skates for all but Margy and Mun Bun.  I’m afraid they are a bit too small to try to skate yet, but we’ll take over sleds for them.”

“Russ and I are going to have a race!” boasted Laddie.  “And if I win, you’ve got to guess any riddle I ask you, Russ.”

“I will, if you don’t make it too hard,” said the older boy with a laugh.

As Daddy Bunker had said, there were skates for Russ, Rose, Laddie and Vi, these having been brought from home.  Russ and Rose had learned to skate the winter before, and Laddie had made one or two attempts at it.  He felt that he could do much better now.  Violet, not to be outdone by her twin, was to learn too.  Of course, the children could not skate very far, nor very fast, but they could have fun, and, after all, that is what skates are for, mostly.

“Could we take something to eat with us?  We may get hungry,” said Russ, as they were about to start.

“Bless your hearts!  Of course you may!” exclaimed Grandma Ford.

She put up two bags of cookies, and then Daddy Bunker, thrusting them into the big pockets of his overcoat, led the children out into the crisp December air.

It was cold, but the wind did not blow very hard, and the six little Bunkers were well wrapped up.  Over the frozen ground they went to the pond, which was back of Grandpa Ford’s barn.  It was a pond where, in the summer, ducks and geese swam, and where the cows went to drink.  But now it was covered with a sheet of what seemed to be glass.