ce I saw ours."

"Ours," she said,--"it seems like yesterday."

And then together they recalled that fair picture against its dark
ground of sorrow, and so went on refreshing the emotions of that time
until Fanny smiling said,--

"There must be something magical in skates, for here we are talking
sentimentally like a pair of young lovers."

"Health and love are cause and effect," says Peter, sententiously.

Meanwhile Wade had been fast skating into the good graces of his
companion. Perhaps the rap on his head had deranged him. He certainly
tossed himself about in a reckless and insane way. Still he justified
his conduct by never tumbling again, and by inventing new devices with
bewildering rapidity.

This pair were not at all sentimental. Indeed, their talk was quite
technical: all about rings and edges, and heel and toe,--what skates are
best, and who best use them. There is an immense amount of sympathy to
be exchanged on such topics, and it was somewhat significant that they
avoided other themes where they might not sympathize so thoroughly. The
negative part of a conversation is often as important as its positive.

So the four entertained themselves finely, sometimes as a quartette,
sometimes as two duos with proper changes of partners, until the clear
west began to grow golden and the clear east pink with sunset.

"It is a pity to go," said Peter Skerrett. "Everything here is
perfection and Fine Art; but we must not be unfaithful to dinner. Dinner
would have a right to punish us, if we did not encourage its efforts to
be Fine Art also."

"Now, Mr. Wade," Fanny commanded, "your most heroic series of exploits,
to close this heroic day."

He nimbly dashed through his list. The ice was traced with a labyrinth
of involuted convolutions.

Wade's last turn brought him to the very spot of his tumble.

"Ah!" said he. "Here is the oar that tripped me, with 'Wade, his
mark,' gashed into it. If I had not this"--he touched Miss Damer's
handkerchief--"for a souvenir, I think I would dig up the oar and carry
it home."

"Let it melt out and float away in the spring," Mary said. "It may be a
perch for a sea-gull or a buoy for a drowning man."

Here, if this were a long story instead of a short one, might be given a
description of Peter Skerrett's house and the _menu_ of Mrs. Skerrett's
dinner. Peter and his wife had both been to great pillory dinners, _ad
nauseam_, and learnt what to avoid. How not to be bored is t