The skating rink, a square of land, flooded with water and frozen, lay below. As she went to pull down the shade in her bed-room window--she had escaped from Mrs. Watson as promptly as possible--Helen’s eyes fell on the skaters, skimming swiftly about under arc lights which, flickering bright and then dim, made the scene beautiful. And then she saw Freda. She was wearing the red tam-o’-shanter which Mrs. Flandon had already seen and a short red mackinaw and as she flashed past under the light, it was unmistakably she--not alone. There was a young man with her. Helen watched her come and go, hands crossed with her partner, watched the swing of her graceful body as it swayed so easily towards the man’s and was in perfect tune with it. “That’s one way you get the alive and beautiful, is it?” thought Helen. Then, after a little, by some signal, the rink was declared closed. The skaters, at the sides of the rink, sat on little benches and took off their skates. The young man knelt beside Freda and loosened the straps, a pretty bit of gallantry in the moonlight. He had her arm. They were going home, walking a little more close to each other than was necessary, looking up, bending down. Helen could almost feel what they were feeling, excitement, vigor, intimacy. A little shiver went over her as she pulled down the shade at last and looked around at the walls with their brown scrolls and mottoed injunction to “Sleep sweetly in this quiet room, Oh, thou, whoe’er thou art.” CHAPTER IV CITY MICE I The dismay of the young Brownleys was as great as that of Freda. But their indomitable mothers won. “But, mother,” cried Allison Brownley, “you don’t mean you’d ask that--that little Swede girl here to the house? For a month? Why, I should think you’d see how impossible that is. We can’t treat her as a servant, can we?” “No,” said Mrs. Brownley, “you can’t--not at all. She’s a very clever girl--Normal School graduate.” Allison sank on a divan, her short skirts shorter than ever in her abandonment, her face a picture of horrified dismay. “Normal School--you know what they are! Pimples and plaid skirts two inches from the ground,--China silk white waists. Oh, mother dear, it’s very sweet of you to think of her, but it couldn’t be done. What would we do with her? Why, the days are just full! All kinds of things planned now that Easter’s over. We couldn’t take her about, and we couldn’t leave her at home. The Brownley girls and their little Swede friend! Mother, I _do_ think you ought to keep politics out of the home.” Barbara joined in now. That was always her policy. To let Allie state the case and get excited over it and then to go after her mother reasonably if her mother didn’t give in. She was a more languorous type than Allie. “Bed-room eyes” one of the boys had said, at the height of his puppy wit.