“Now,” he said, “take a long breath and go in.  And mind—­no excitement.”

We went in.  There was a band playing and people circling at a mile a minute.  In the center there was a cleared place, and Tish was there on ice skates.  An instructor had her by the arm, and as we looked she waved him off, gave herself a shove forward with one foot, and then, with her arms waving, she made a double curve, first on one foot and then on the other.

“The outside edge, by George!” said Charlie Sands.  “The old sport!”

Unluckily at that moment Tish saw us, and sat down violently on the ice.  And a quite nice-looking young man fell over her and lay stunned for several seconds.  We rushed round the arena, expecting to see them both carried out, but Tish was uninjured, and came skating toward us with her hands in her pockets.  It was the young man who had to be assisted out.

“Well,” she said, fetching up against the railing with a bang, “of course you had to come before I was ready for you!  In a week I’ll really be skating.”

We said nothing, but looked at her, and I am afraid our glances showed disapproval, for she straightened her hat with a jerk.

“Well?” she said.  “You’re not tongue-tied all of a sudden, are you?  Can’t a woman take a little exercise without her family and friends coming snooping round and acting as if she’d broken the Ten Commandments?”

“Breaking the Ten Commandments!” I said witheringly.  “Breaking a leg more likely.  If you could have seen yourself, Tish Carberry, sprawled on that ice at your age, and both your arteries and your bones brittle, as the specialist told you,—­and I heard him myself,—­you’d take those things off your feet and go home and hide your head.”

“I wish I had your breath, Lizzie,” Tish said.  “I’d be a submarine diver.”

Saying which she skated off, and did not come near us again.  A young gentleman went up to her and asked her to skate, though I doubt if she had ever seen him before.  And as we left the building in disapproval they were doing fancy turns in the middle of the place, and a crowd was gathering round them.

Owing to considerable feeling being roused by the foregoing incident, we did not see much of Tish for a week.  If a middle-aged woman wants to make a spectacle of herself, both Aggie and I felt that she needed to be taught a lesson.  Besides, we knew Tish.  With her, to conquer a thing is to lose interest.

On the anniversary of the day Aggie became engaged to Mr. Wiggins, Tish asked us both to dinner, and we buried the hatchet, or rather the skates.  It was when dessert came that we realized how everything that had occurred had been preparation for the summer, and that we were not going to Asbury Park, after all.

“It’s like this,” said Tish.  “Hannah, go out and close the door, and don’t stand listening.  I have figured it all out,” she said, when Hannah had slammed out.  “The muscles used in skating are the ones used in mountain-climbing.  Besides, there may be times when a pair of skates would be handy going over the glaciers.  It’s not called Glacier Park for nothing, I dare say.  When we went into the Maine woods we went unprepared.  This time I intend to be ready for any emergency.”