s. The sleigh arrived at the point first, but only
by a trifle. "Mind your toes," Denry muttered to himself, meaning an
injunction to the skis, whose toes were three feet long. The skis,
through the eddying snow, yelled frantically to the sleigh to give room.
The skis shot up into the road, and in swerving aside swerved into a
snow-laden hedge, and clean over it into the farmyard, where they stuck
themselves up in the air, as skis will when the person to whose feet
they are attached is lying prone. The door of the farm opened and a
woman appeared.

She saw the skis at her doorstep. She heard the sleigh-bells, but the
sleigh had already vanished into the dusk.

"Well, that was a bit of a lark, that was, Countess!" said Denry to
Nellie. "That will be something to talk about. We'd better drive home
through Corsier, and quick too! It'll be quite dark soon."

"Supposing he's dead!" Nellie breathed, aghast, reining in the horse.

"Not he!" said Denry. "I saw him beginning to sit up."

"But how will he get home?"

"It looks a very nice farmhouse," said Denry. "I should think he'd be
sorry to leave it."

VI

When Denry entered the dining-room of the Beau-Site, which had been
cleared for the ball, his costume drew attention not so much by its
splendour or ingenuity as by its peculiarity. He wore a short
Chinese-shaped jacket, which his wife had made out of blue linen, and a
flat Chinese hat to match, which they had constructed together on a
basis of cardboard. But his thighs were enclosed in a pair of absurdly
ample riding-breeches of an impressive check and cut to a comic
exaggeration of the English pattern. He had bought the cloth for these
at the tailor's in Montreux. Below them were very tight leggings, also
English. In reply to a question as to what or whom he supposed himself
to represent, he replied:

"A Captain of Chinese cavalry, of course."

And he put an eyeglass into his left eye and stared.

Now it had been understood that Nellie was to appear as Lady Jane Grey.
But she appeared as Little Red Riding-Hood, wearing over her frock the
forgotten cloak of the Countess Ruhl.

Instantly he saw her, Denry hurried towards her, with a movement of the
legs and a flourish of the eyeglass in his left hand which powerfully
suggested a figure familiar to every member of the company. There was
laughter. People saw that the idea was immensely funny and clever, and
the laughter ran about like fire. At the same time s