"This is better," says Lady Handcock, sinking into the chair for which her faithful James had just done battle. Bebe and Thornton, hand in hand, skim past us. "Oh! I must, I _will_ learn," I cry, excitedly. "I never saw anything I liked so much. Sir Mark, _do_ get me a pair of skates and let me try. It _looks_ quite simple. Oh, if Billy were but here!" Sir Mark goes to obey my command, and I stand by Harriet's chair, too interested for conversation. How they fly along! the women with more grace in their movements, the men with more science. Here is the fatal corner turn; the numbers are increasing; whirr, crash, down they come, four together, causing an indescribable scene of confusion. Two from the outside circle rush in to succor their fallen darlings. It is a panic--a _melee_. Yet stay; after all it is nothing; they are up again, flushed but undaunted: it is all the fortune of war. _Vogue la galere_. A tall young man, blonde and slight, attracts my notice. Half an hour ago he struck me as being the gayest of the gay; now his expression, as he slowly wends his way through the skaters, is sad and careworn in the extreme; the terrors of the rink are oppressing him sore, anxiety is printed on his brow; he has but one thought from start to finish--how to reach uninjured the chair he has just left. He never takes but one turn at a time round the arena, and never gains his haven of safety without a long-drawn sigh of relief. The fear of ridicule lies heavy upon him. But what will you? Rinking is the fashion, and for what does a young man live if not to follow the _mode?_ I see, too, the elderly gentleman, who, with bent knees and compressed mouth, essays to rival his juniors. He _will_ be young, and he will skate, whether his doctor "will let him or no." _Vive la jeunesse!_ _La jeunesse_, in the form of a diminutive damsel, follows closely in his wake; she is of tiny build, and has her hand clasped by one of the tallest young men it has ever been my luck to behold. "I pity that young man," says Harriet. "Titania has secured him for her own." And indeed it seems like it. Where she may choose to lead him for the next hour there must he surely go. Were be dying to leave her, to join some other, "nearer and dearer," he will not be able to do so. Can he act the brute and ask her to sit down before she shows any inclination so to do? Can he feign fatigue when she betrays no symptoms of fagging, and regards him with a glance fresh at when they first started? He must only groan and suffer patiently, even though he knows the demon of jealousy is working mischief in the heart of his beloved as she sits silently watching him from a distant corner. "What wonderful vitality that small creature develops!" says Harriet. "Probably, at home, if asked to rise twice from the chair, she would declare herself fatigued and _ennuyee_ to the last degree; here she keeps in motion for an hour at a stretch, and is still smiling and radiant."