“Say, sniff.  Can you detect the low, plaintive cry of an arnica bottle?  I am learning how to skate.  Yes, I fell for it.  Fell for it is good.  ’Course I did.  All over the ice.  You see it was this way.  I was up to a tea one of the girls gave in honor of the judge getting a divorce from his wife—­we call it a tea because there wasn’t any there.  We were all sitting around panning those who were not among those present, until at last one of the girls who didn’t dare leave till the party broke up suggested that we go down to the park and take a skate.  The hostess was real nice.  She suggested that it wasn’t necessary to beat it clear down there to get a skate, as she had some in the house, and if we drank that up the Dutchman on the corner knew she was good for any amount within reason.  But we didn’t mean what she meant, so we departed.  Going down I became perhaps a little too excited over the coming event and went to some length to inform the assembled skirts that when it came to cutting ice I, not seeking to boast, but I was there, forte, and such pastimes as writing names or doing Dutch rolls I considered rudimentary in the skating number and only performed by the immature.

“I may have overestimated my ability some, for I had never been on skates before in my life, but I’m no piker and I follow that old principle of willing to try anything once, so when it came time I let the boy put the skates on without a murmur, and was assisted to the ice by about six or eight eager hands.  Say, I looked out at the gang gliding about, gave the signal to let go the ropes and took the fatal step.  Curtain.  Say, I went round so fast both skates clinched in my marcel wave.  Would you believe it, there wasn’t hardly any one in sight when I started falling, but before I got through the police had to move the crowd on.  The only thing I could do gracefully was to throw a faint.  I turned one loose until somebody tried to force a glass between my teeth and then I came to, but it was only water, so I had a relapse.  Then a nice gent kicked in with a flask and I came to.  Maybe you think those artful kidders didn’t hand it to me.  Anybody but a lady would have lost her temper and cursed them.  But I told them where to get off, and don’t you forget it, but I used no language that would have led people to think I was anything but what I should be.  After that I managed to skate around a little, but let me tell you, that night I got down on the floor to take my shoes off all right, but it took Estelle—­that’s my maid—­and a derrick to get me up again.  Say, it’s getting late and I must be going.  You know Mabel is now a bride again, and her little husband has been staying down at the club instead of loitering about the flat, so the other night when he knocked on the door to get in, Mabel said, ’Is that you, Charles?’ And now she can’t get him out of the house nights.  You see, her husband’s name is Arthur.  So long.”

Sabrina now falls in love with a press agent with the hectic chatter.  He proposes and is accepted, and Sabrina shows her love and devotion by going his bail when he is arrested for permitting his jealousy to get the better of him in a restaurant.

CHAPTER EIGHT