The low sun shoots down dazzling crimson rays on the mere's dirty white face. The swans and Solan geese are exiled to a little corner, where the ice has been broken for them, and where they have to keep swimming round and round to prevent the invasion of their little territory by the grasping frost. Girls that cannot skate being pushed about in chairs; "Whirr! whirr!" they rush along the smooth surface at a headlong pace. Men, with their arms stretched out like the sails of a windmill, advancing cautiously--first one foot, then the other--just managing to keep on their feet, and thinking themselves extremely clever for so managing. Other men and women flying hand-in-hand, from one end of the pool to the other, in long, smooth slides--as safe and secure as if running upon their own feet on the grass. Others, cutting eights, and all manner of figures, whirling round upon one leg, and making themselves altogether remarkable. One poor gentleman with his skates in the air, and head starring the ice; brother men laughing and jeering; pretty girls pitying--light laughter mixed with their condolences also. Eight people dancing a quadrille, _chaîne des dames:_ in and out, in and out--right, left--go the moving figures, the cerise petticoats, the glancing feet. It is all so pretty and gay. When one has spent the best part of three months in weeping, when one has the quick blood of seventeen in one's veins, one longs to get up and run, and dance, and jump about too. "There's no wind to-day," says Linley, turning his face to the north-east, whence a bitter breath comes most faintly; "when there is, it is the best fun in the world to get a very light cane chair and a big umbrella--to sit on the one and hold the other up; you can have no conception of the terrific rate that one gets along at." "I should think it sometimes happened that the cane chair and the big umbrella went on by themselves and left you behind?" says Esther archly. "Frequently, but that makes it all the more exciting." "Does it?" "Keep hold of the chair, push it gently before you, and try to balance yourself as well as you can," continues he, giving grave instructions to his new pupil. "How _can_ one balance oneself on things no bigger than knife-blades?" she asks, grasping desperately the chair-back. "Rome was not built in a day," he answers, with a cheery laugh; "try!" She obeys, and moves forward two or three timid inches; then stops again. "I have that poor gentleman's fate before my mind's eye," she says, nervously. "I feel as if, by some natural attraction, one's feet must go up sky-wards, and one's head make acquaintance with the ice." "No necessity at all," replies the young man, encouragingly. "That fellow is a duffer at everything; he is the very worst rider I ever set eyes on--holds his whip like a fishing-rod." "Does he?"