glimpses of many people looking strangely unfamiliar on skates.
Miriam passed, gliding gracefully over the ice with a troop of sophomores
at her heels. There were many High School boys "cracking the whip" in long
rows of eight or more, while there were some older people comfortably
seated in sleigh chairs which were pushed from behind, generally by some
poor boys in Oakdale, who stood on the bank waiting to be hired.

"Now, we'll have a lesson," exclaimed David when they had reached the
starting point again, while the others lost themselves in the crowd. Anne
was a good pupil, but she was soon tired and sat down on a bench near the
bank.

"Do go and have a good skate yourself, David," she insisted. "I'll rest
for awhile and look on."

But it was far too cold to sit still.

"I'll give myself a lesson," she said. "This is a quiet spot. All the
others seem to have skated up to the other end."

As she was carefully taking the strokes David had taught her, with an
occasional struggle to keep her balance, she heard a great shouting behind
her. The next instant, some one had seized her by the hand.

"Keep your feet together!" was shouted in her ear, and she found herself
going like the wind at the end of a long line of girls. They were juniors,
she saw at once, and it was Julia Crosby at the whip end who had seized
her by the hand.

Anne closed her eyes. They were going at a tremendous rate of speed, it
seemed to her, like a comet shooting through the air. Then, suddenly, the
head of the comet stood still and the tail swung around it, and Anne, who
represented the very tip of the tail and who hardly reached to Julia
Crosby's shoulder, felt herself carried along with such velocity that the
breath left her body, her knees gave way and she fell down in a limp
little bundle. Julia Crosby instantly let go her hand and the impetus of
the rush shot her like a catapult far over the ice into the midst of a
crowd of skaters.

But the juniors never stopped to see what damage had been done. They
quickly joined hands again, and were off on another expedition almost
before Anne had been picked up by David and Hippy.

"It's that Julia Crosby again," cried David. "I wish she would move to
Europe. I'd gladly buy her a ticket. The town of Oakdale isn't big enough
to hold her and other people. She's always trying to knock somebody off
the side of the earth."

Anne went home, tired and bruised. She had had enough of skating for one
mo