on just as usual. About
dinner-time, a young man arrived from Chetbourne with a large parcel of
skates, and Aldred, who did not possess any of her own, was able to
expend some of her pocket-money on a neat little pair.

"You've made a lovely choice!" said Mabel. "Mine are an old pair of my
brother's that just fit me now; they're rather shabby, but they happen
to be particularly good steel, and always 'bite' very well. There's the
greatest difference in skates, in that respect."

"You'll have to help me," said Aldred, "for I've never even tried
before, and I'm sure I shall be extremely stupid and clumsy."

"It will be the lame supporting the halt, then," laughed Mabel, "for I'm
certainly not a crack skater myself."

By two o'clock the whole school was disporting itself on the ice. Some
girls (Ursula Bramley, in especial) seemed quite at home there, and cut
figures of eight with aggravating ease while their less fortunate
comrades strove to balance themselves with outstretched arms, or sat
down suddenly on the slippery surface.

"I'd no idea one could feel so absolutely weak in the knees!" declared
Aldred, subsiding on to the snowy bank after a first struggle round the
rink. "I'm like a baby learning to walk. I wonder if I shall ever manage
to strike out properly? Look at Ursula--she's doing the 'Dutch roll'.
I'm green with envy!"

"There's nothing like practice," said Mabel, getting up and making a
gallant effort to accomplish the "outside edge", but speedily coming to
grief over it. "Give me a winter in Norway, and I'd undertake to waltz
on the ice; but what can one expect on the first day?"

CHAPTER XI

Venus in the Snow

There was generally sound sense in Mabel's arguments, though Aldred's
impatience wanted at once to achieve great things. Skating, like
everything else, has no royal road, and neither of the girls advanced
much beyond the point of going alone. Aldred, rather to her chagrin,
found she certainly could not compete with Ursula, and an aspiring dream
of seeing herself queen of the rink vanished away. She was never without
resources, however and as she was determined always to keep to the fore,
she hit upon another means of making herself prominent. She remembered
hearing that in Brussels, when snow falls, the most eminent sculptors of
the city go to the Park and model snow statues, which are carefully
guarded afterwards by the park keepers, and shown to the streams of
visitors who flock