“I don’t want to change my pantaloons and stockings,” said Oscar; “I ’ll take off my boots and dry myself—­that will do just as well.”

“No it won’t,” replied his mother; “you had better change your clothes, for you’ve got a real bad cold now, and I don’t want you to get any more.  Come, do you hear me?  Run up to your chamber and put on some dry clothes.”

Oscar paid no attention to the command, but after removing his wet boots, sat down before the range to dry his feet and legs.  Such instances of disobedience were too common in the family to attract any special notice, and Mrs. Preston said nothing more about the matter.

Oscar, that afternoon, had been down to the shores of Charles River, near Cambridge Bridge, with Alfred Walton and several other boys.  They had been amusing themselves upon the ice that had formed along the edge of the river, and which was now breaking up.  They loosened some of the large cakes, and set them floating off upon the current towards the ocean.  It was in this way that Oscar got his feet so wet.

The next afternoon, when school was dismissed, Oscar, forgetting his wet feet and his cold, went again to the same place, with several of his cronies.  Tiger also accompanied the party, for his master seldom went anywhere without him, except to school.  The boys amused themselves, as on the previous day, with shoving off large blocks of ice into the stream, and with running rapidly over floating pieces that were not large enough to bear them up.  Sometimes they narrowly escaped a ducking, so venturesome were they; and all of them got their feet pretty thoroughly soaked.

It happened, after awhile, that a cake of ice upon which the boys were all standing, got disengaged from the shore, unperceived by them, and commenced floating into the river.  They were all at work upon another ice-block, trying to push it off, and did not notice that they were going off themselves, until they were several feet from the shore.  The distance was too great to leap, and the water was so deep that none of them dared to jump off from their precarious footing.

“Well, this is a pretty joke,” said one of the boys, with some appearance of alarm.  “I should like to know how we are going to get out of this scrape?”

“Get out of it?—­who wants to get out of it?” replied Oscar.  “I don’t, for one—­we shall have a first-rate sail down into the harbor; shan’t we, Alf?”

“The tide will take us right under the bridge, and I ’m going to climb up one of the piers,” said Alfred, who appeared to be thinking more of a way of escape than of the pleasures of the trip.

“Pooh, I shan’t get off there,” said Oscar.  “I ’m in for a sail, and if the rest of you back out, I shan’t.  You ’ll go too, won’t you, Tom?”

Before Tom could answer, they all began to notice that their ice-cake gave signs that the burden upon it was greater than it could safely bear.  The swift current began to whirl it about in a rather uncomfortable manner, and it was gradually settling under water.  They all began to be very much alarmed—­all but Tiger, who did not quite comprehend the situation of affairs, and who looked up into the boys’ faces with an expression of curiosity, as though he wanted to say: