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But at last, she heard Billy’s voice, “On your marks. Get set! Go!” The double-runner stirred. It moved slowly for a moment across the level top of the street. Then came the first slope of the hill—they plunged forward. She heard Rosie’s hysterical shriek, Dicky’s vociferous cheers and Billy’s blood-curdling yells, but she herself was as silent as a little image.
Off in one corner of the district instead of high tenement buildings there was something almost worse, rows of mean, little two-story brick cottages that ranged upwards along a gentle slope that I tried to fancy was Swan's Hill, a dangerous descent where my older brothers and I were once allowed to coast on our "double-runner."
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.
The skates were double-runner ones, for Sunny Boy did not yet know how to skate. "I'm going to learn this winter," he told Nelson. "Grandpa is going to take me to Wilkins Park this afternoon as soon as Daddy and Mother come home from taking a walk." "I can skate a little," said Nelson. "But my mother won't let me go to the Park alone. Lots of the boys go, but she never lets me.
“I never saw any kind of a one,” Maida confessed. “How did they make it so smooth?” “Pouring water on it.” “Have you never coasted before, Maida?” Billy asked. “Never.” “Well, here’s your chance then,” said a cheerful voice back of them. They all turned. There stood Arthur Duncan with what Maida soon learned was a “double-runner.” Billy examined it carefully. “Did you make it, Arthur?” “Yes.”
I remember well his breadth of back and depth of chest, and I think it quite true that he once lifted a barrel of flour in his teeth, but whether he got his start in physical strength steering that Ponkapoag-invented double-runner down the long hill, or whether he had to have the strength inborn in the first place to be able to do it, I cannot say. They have a wonderful curve over at St.
All this is fine to see, without doubt, and finer still to do, but do you know, if I could have my choice and could see but one, I would choose to see that leviathan double-runner of a half-century ago swinging the curve at Captain Bill Tucker's corner, followed by that big wood-sled with the half of Ponkapoag's population on it, and hear the joyous Yankee shouts as they resounded all the way from the crest of the hill to George B.'s blacksmith shop.
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.
Similar things were brought out all over New England, I fancy, on all big hills where Yankee boys coasted. One of these was the double-runner, or double-ripper as it was sometimes called, rather ominously. I meet double-runners on the hills sometimes now-a-days, but not the leviathans of old. The beginning of this community coaster is simple.
Aunt Squeaky tiptoed in with a pile of cute little hemstitched handkerchiefs; Mammy had a handful of gay ribbon bows and neckties; and Granny was hanging up ten pair of scarlet mittens. Uncle Squeaky brought in a red double-runner sled and pushed it under the tree! "I guess Santa is a joke," chuckled Buster sleepily. "Won't we have fun sliding on that double-runner Uncle has made!"
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