“Am I a fine fellow?”

“No,—­horrid!”

“The truth,—­or I let you tumble.”

“Well, upon compulsion, I admit that you are.”

“Then being a fine fellow does not diminish the said fellow’s chances of being blessed with a wife quite superfine.”

“If I thought you were personal, Peter, I should object to the mercantile adjective.  ‘Superfine,’ indeed!”

“I am personal.  I withdraw the obnoxious phrase, and substitute transcendent.  No, Fanny dear, I read Wade’s experience in my own.  I do not feel very much concerned about him.  He is big enough to take care of himself.  A man who is sincere, self-possessed, and steady does not get into miseries with beautiful Amazons like our friend.  He knows too much to try to make his love run up hill; but let it once get started, rough running gives it vim.  Wade will love like a deluge, when he sees that he may, and I’d advise obstacles to stand off.”

“It was pretty, Peter, to see cold Mary Damer so gentle and almost tender.”

“I always have loved to see the first beginnings of what looks like love, since 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.