“Miss Damer shall tell us,” Peter rejoined, repeating his wife’s look of merry significance.

She looked somewhat teased.  Wade could divine easily the meaning of this little mischievous talk.  His friend Churm had no doubt puffed him furiously.

“All this time,” said Miss Darner, evading a reply, “we are neglecting our skating privileges.”

“Peter and I have a few grains of humanity in our souls,” Fanny said.  “We should blush to sail away from Mr. Wade, while he carries the quarantine flag at his pale cheeks.”

“I am almost ruddy again,” says Wade.  “Your potion, Miss Damer, has completed the work of your surgery.  I can afford to dismiss my lamp-post.”

“Whereupon the post changes to a tee-totum,” Peter said, and spun off in an eccentric, ending in a tumble.

“I must have a share in your restoration, Mr. Wade,” Fanny claimed.  “I see you need a second dose of medicine.  Hand me the flask, Mary.  What shall I pour from this magic bottle? juice of Rhine, blood of Burgundy, fire of Spain, bubble of Rheims, beeswing of Oporto, honey of Cyprus, nectar, or whiskey?  Whiskey is vulgar, but the proper thing, on the whole, for these occasions.  I prescribe it.”  And she gave him another little draught to imbibe.

He took it kindly, for her sake,—­and not alone for that, but for its own respectable sake.  His recovery was complete.  His head, to be sure, sang a little still, and ached not a little.  Some fellows would have gone on the sick list with such a wound.  Perhaps he would, if he had had a trouble to dodge.  But here instead was a pleasure to follow.  So he began to move about slowly, watching the ladies.

Fanny was a novice in the Art, and this was her first day this winter.  She skated timidly, holding Peter very tightly.  She went into the dearest little panics for fear of tumbles, and uttered the most musical screams and laughs.  And if she succeeded in taking a few brave strokes and finished with a neat slide, she pleaded for a verdict of “Well done!” with such an appealing smile and such a fine show of dimples that every one was fascinated and applauded heartily.

Miss Damer skated as became her free and vigorous character.  She had passed her Little Go as a scholar, and was now steadily winning her way through the list of achievements, before given, toward the Great Go.  To-day she was at work at small circles backward.  Presently she wound off a series of perfectly neat ones, and, looking up, pleased with her prowess, caught Wade’s admiring eye.  At this she smiled and gave an arch little womanly nod of self-approval, which also demanded masculine sympathy before it was quite a perfect emotion.

With this charming gesture, the alert feather in her Amazonian hat nodded, too, as if it admired its lovely mistress.

Wade was thrilled.  “Brava!” he cried, in answer to the part of her look which asked sympathy; and then, in reply to the implied challenge, he forgot his hurt and his shock, and struck into the same figure.