The three had just joined hands and skated away from Murray, Ross, and Rufus, who had promptly started in pursuit. All three wore skirts of ankle length, short jackets and close little caps, and none had considered furs a necessary article of apparel for lively exercise. A blue silk scarf about Jane’s throat and a scarlet one floating to the breeze from Shirley’s furnished notes of colour to the agile, dark-clad figures, and three health-tinted, winsome faces looked up at the two on the bank with a gay greeting as the trio swung lightly by. "I certainly should," agreed Peter. "I don’t think Jane will ever grow old. Nan is an infant, and will be for ten years yet, as far as settling down to consider herself too old for pranks like that, and I ’m glad of it. As for your sister Shirley----" "Tell me what you think of Shirley. The child is a continual puzzle to me; I can’t make her out. This idea of working steadily at earning a salary in the office seems to be a fixed one, though I had supposed it only a freak. Does she look as contented as this all the time, or is it just the relaxation of the holiday?" "I should say it was a permanent condition of mind. She ’s more interested to-day in her work than when she began, and is growing surprisingly expert. Murray told me yesterday she wants to tackle the special foreign correspondence--French, you know. That means a lot of extra labour." Peter spoke as if he felt a personal pride in Shirley’s achievements, an attitude which Shirley’s sister was quick to note. "I felt out of patience with you when she began, for I thought her zeal for making a working-girl of herself might be of your inspiring," said Olive, with a quick look at him. "Not a bit of it. I never heard of it till she had been a week at her first studies. How should I have dared suggest such a course?" "You and she seem to be great friends." "Do we? It is an honour I appreciate very much," answered Peter, with a little touch of courtliness in his manner such as had often surprised her in the early days of their acquaintance, and which struck her now as decidedly interesting in a young man who spent his days in a factory, even if he was many degrees higher in position in that factory than when she had first known him. What his position was at present she did not guess, nor did she know that Murray had begun to look at him as a man to be desired in his own business, a man whose brain was undoubtedly to make him an important factor wherever he might be. What she did recognise was that she had met few men anywhere who had the power to command her interest as Peter had always done, and seemed now more capable of doing than ever before. As for his looks--she owned to herself that she had never before realised quite how fine and resolute and altogether manly was his whole personality.