or had he dared to touch his lips to hers,
beneath the hooded shelter of the great buffalo robe which curled
protectingly around them. He would as soon have dared such familiarity
with the minister's maiden sister, aged forty-two and prim as a Bible
book-mark. Yet Jennie was just the sort of girl whom a cold-blooded
expert must have declared as really meriting a kiss, when prudent and
fairly practicable for the kisser and kissee, and as possessing just the
sort of waist to be fitted handsomely by a good, strong arm. Jack, full
of fun and ordinarily plucky enough--he had kissed other girls and had
licked Jim Bigelow for saying Jennie Orton put on town airs--was simply
in a funk. He could not bring himself to a manly wooing point. He was
not without a resolve in the matter, for he was a determined youth, but
in this callow strait of his, he was weakling enough to resort to
devious methods. He wore no willow; he lost no weight. But the spell of
love which warps us was upon him, and he swerved from the straight line,
though bent upon his conquest. He was resolved to have that arm of his
about sweet Jennie's waist somehow, if he died for it, but with
discretion. He would not offend her for the world. So he fell to
plotting.

There had come a deep snow, and then the heavens had opened and there
had followed a great rain. The schoolhouse stood on the crest of a hill
and by it the highway ran down a steep slope and right across the flats,
and the road, raised three feet higher than the low lands which it
crossed, showed darkly just above the water. Then came snow again, and
the road showed next a straight white band across the water. And now had
come some colder weather, and ice had formed above the waiting waters
which spread out so in all directions. What skating there would be! The
boys had tried the ice, but it was coy and threatening, not yet quite
safe to venture forth upon. It was what the boys called "India-rubber
ice"; ice which would bend beneath their tread, but would not quite
support them when they stopped. It would be all right, they said, in
just a day or two. To venture recklessly upon its surface now was but to
drop through two feet deep of water. And water beneath the ice in early
March is cold upon the flats. In the interval there would be, at recess
and at noontime, great sport in sliding down the hill.

The jumper, which, as already said, was a marvel of stoutness and
dimensions, was the work chiefly of Ja