“I don’t know.  Who cares now?”

“I do.”

“I never saw such a boy.  You can’t ride and you can’t skate.  You are just good for nothing.  You’re just fit to be sold at a rummage-sale.”

He was less easily vexed than made curious.  “What’s a rummage-sale?”

“Oh! we had one two years ago.  Once in a while Aunt Ann says there must be one, so she gathers up all the trash and Uncle Jim’s old clothes (he hates that), and the village people they buy things.  And Mr. Rivers sells the things at auction, you know—­and oh, my! he was funny.”

“So they sell what no one wants.  Then why does any one buy?”

“I’m sure, I don’t know.”

“I wonder what I would fetch, Leila?”

“Not much,” she said.

“Maybe you’re right.”  He had one of the brief boy-moods of self-abasement.

Leila changed quickly.  “I’ll bid for you,” she said coyly.

He laughed and looked up, surprised at this earliest indication of the feminine.  “What would you give?” he asked.

“Well, about twenty-five cents.”

He laughed.  “I may improve, Leila, and the price go up.  Let us go and learn to skate—­you must teach me.”

“Of course,” said Leila, “but you will soon learn.  It’s hard at first.”

At lunch, on Christmas day, John had thanked his uncle for the skates in the formal way which Ann liked and James Penhallow did not.  He said, “I am very greatly obliged for the skates.  They appear to me excellent.”

“What a confoundedly civil young gentleman,” thought Penhallow.  “I have been thinking you must learn to skate.  The pond has been swept clear of snow.”

“Thank you,” returned the boy, with a grin which his uncle thought odd.

“Leila will teach you.”

John was silent, regarding his uncle with never dying interest, the soldier of Indian battles, the perfect rider and good shot, adored in the stables and loved, as John was learning, in all the country side.  John was in the grip of a boy’s admiration for a realized ideal—­the worship, by the timid, of courage.  Of the few things he did well, he thought little; and an invalid’s fears had discouraged rough games until he had become like a timorous girl.  He had much dread of horses, and was alarmingly sure that he would some day be made to ride.  Once in Paris he had tried, had had a harmless accident and, willingly yielding to his mother’s fears, had tried no more.

Late in the afternoon, Leila, with her long wake of flying hair, burst into the Squire’s den.  “What the deuce is the matter?” asked Penhallow.

“Oh!  Uncle Jim, he can skate like—­like a witch.  I couldn’t keep near him.  He skated an ‘L’ for my name.  Uncle Jim, he’s a fraud.”

Penhallow knew now why the boy had grinned at him.  “I think, Leila, he will do.  Where did he learn to skate?”

“At Vevey, he says, on the Lake.”

“Yes, of Geneva.”