"No," said the other. "I tumbled in trying to dodge this lady. The ice thought my face ought to be scratched, because I had been scratching its face without mercy. My wits were knocked out of me; but they are tired of secession, and pleading to be let in again." "Keep some of them out for our sake! We must have you at our commonplace level. Well, Miss Mary, I suppose this is the first time you have had the sensation of breaking a man's head. You generally hit lower." Peter tapped his heart. "I'm all right now, thanks to my surgeon," says Wade. "Give me a lift, Peter." He pulled up and clung to his friend. "You're the vine and I'm the lamppost," Skerrett said. "Mary, do you know what a pocket-pistol is?" "I have seen such weapons concealed about the persons of modern warriors." "There's one in my overcoat-pocket, with a cup at the butt and a cork at the muzzle. Skate off now, like an angel, and get it. Bring Fanny, too. She is restorative." "Are you alive enough to admire that, Dick?" he continued, as she skimmed away. "It would pat a soul under the ribs of Death." "I venerate that young woman," says Peter. "You see what a beauty she is, and just as unspoiled as this ice. Unspoiled beauties are rarer than rocs' eggs. "She has a singularly true face," Wade replied, "and that is the main thing,--the most excellent thing in man or woman." "Yes, truth makes that nuisance, beauty, tolerable." "You did not do me the honor to present me." "I saw you had gone a great way beyond that, my boy. Have you not her initials in cambric on your brow? Not M. T., which wouldn't apply; but M. D." "Mary----?" "Damer." "I like the name," says Wade, repeating it. "It sounds simple and thoroughbred." "Just what she is. One of the nine simple-hearted and thorough-bred girls on this continent." "Nine?" "Is that too many? Three, then. That's one in ten millions. The exact proportion of Poets, Painters, Oratory, Statesmen, and all other Great Artists. Well,--three or nine,--Mary Damer is one of them. She never saw fear or jealousy, or knowingly allowed an ignoble thought or an ungentle word or an ungraceful act in herself. Her atmosphere does not tolerate flirtation. You must find out for yourself how much genius she has and has not. But I will say this,--that I think of puns two a minute faster when I'm with her. Therefore she must be magnetic, and that is the first charm in a woman." Wade laughed. "You have not lost your powers of analysis, Peter. But talking of this heroine, you have not told me anything about yourself, except _apropos_ of punning." "Come up and dine, and we'll fire away personal histories, broadside for broadside! I've been looking in vain for a worthy hero to set _vis-à-vis_ to my fair kinswoman. But stop! perhaps you have a Christmas turkey at home, with a wife opposite, and a brace of boys waiting for drumsticks." "No,--my boys, like cherubs, await their own drumsticks. They're not born, and I'm not married."