Cecil had just thanked Colonel Ross for pushing her in a chair, and on his leaving her was deliberating whether to walk home with her dignity, or watch for some other cavalier, when the drag drew up on the road close by, and from it came Captain and Mrs. Duncombe, with two strangers, who were introduced to her as ’Mrs. Tallboys and the Professor, just fetched from the station.’

The former was exquisitely dressed in blue velvet and sealskin, and had the transparent complexion and delicate features of an American, with brilliant eyes, and a look of much cleverness; her husband, small, sallow, and dark, and apparently out of health.  “Are you leaving off skating, Cecil?” asked Mrs. Duncombe; “goodness me, I could go on into next year!  But if you are wasting your privileges, bestow them on Mrs. Tallboys, for pity’s sake.  We came in hopes some good creature had a spare pair of skates.  Gussie Moy offered, but hers were yards too long.”

“I hope mine are not too small,” said Cecil, not quite crediting that an American foot could be as small as that of a Charnock; but she found herself mistaken, they were a perfect fit; and as they were tried, there came a loud laugh, and she saw a tall girl standing by her, whom, in her round felt hat and thick rough coat with metal buttons, she had really taken for one of the Captain’s male friends.

“I wouldn’t have such small feet,” she said; “I shouldn’t feel secure of my understanding.”

“Mrs. Tallboys would not change with you, Gussie,” said Captain Duncombe.  “I’d back her any day—­”

“What odds will you take, Captain—­”

But Mrs. Duncombe broke in.  “Bless me, if there aren’t those little dogs of mine!  Lena Vivian does spoil them.  Send them home, for pity’s sake, Bob.”

“Poor little kids, they are doing no harm.”

“We shall have them tumbling in, and no end of a row!  I can’t stand a swarm of children after me, and they are making a perfect victim of Lena.  Send them home, Bob, or I shall have to do it.”

The Captain obeyed somewhat ruefully.  “Come, my lads, Bessie says you must go home, and leave Miss Vivian in peace.”

“O, Bob, please let us stay; Lena is taking care of us—­”

“Indeed I like nothing so well,” protested Lenore; but the Captain murmured something about higher powers, and cheerfully saying he would give the boys a run, took each by an unwilling hand, and raced them into a state of frightened jollity by a short cut, by which he was able to dispose of them in the drag.

The Professor, meanwhile, devoted himself to Mrs. Charnock Poynsett, took her chair for a whirl on the ice; described American sleighing parties; talked of his tour in Europe.  He was really a clever, observant man, and Cecil had not had any one to talk Italy to her for a long time past, and responded with all her full precision.  The Professor might speak a little through his nose, but she had seldom met any one more polite and accomplished.