The hardihood of the vast majority of the girls, the imperturbable good nature with which they picked themselves up from their recumbent position and hobbled up the banks on the edge of their skates, spoke volumes for the success of the system on which they were educated. They returned to the house glowing and panting, and surged up the staircase-- a stream of buoyant young life which seemed to warm the draughty corridors and bring sunshine into the colourless rooms. The piles of "bread and scrape" which disappeared at tea after such an afternoon as this would have amazed the parents of the daughters whose appetites at home had been so captious as to excite anxiety in the maternal heart! "Of course," as the croakers had it, as soon as a week's consecutive skating had made everyone proficient enough to enjoy the pastime, the snow descended, and fell in a persistent shower which made the ice impossibly rough. The girls looked out from their windows on a wonderful white world, whose beauty was for the time hidden from them by disappointment, but, in the end, even snow seemed to bring with it its own peculiar excitements. Relief gangs of pupils were organised to sweep the principal paths in the grounds, while those not so employed set to work to manufacture "snow men." Not the ordinary common, or garden snow man, be it understood--that disreputable, shapeless individual with his pipe in his mouth, and his hat perched on the back of his head, with whom we are all familiar--the Hurst Manor girls would have none of him; but, superintended by the "Modelling Mistress," set to work with no smaller ambition than to erect a gallery of classic figures. Some wise virgins chose to manufacture recumbent figures, which, if a somewhat back-breaking process, was at least free from the perils which attended the labours of their companions. What could be more annoying than to have two outstretched arms drop suddenly, at the very moment when the bystanders were exclaiming with admiration, and to be obliged to convert a flying god into a Venus de Milo as the only escape from the difficulty? Or, again, how was it possible to achieve a classic outline when a nose absolutely refused to adhere to a face for more than two minutes together? The recumbent figures lay meekly on their beds and allowed themselves to be rolled, and patted, and pinched into shape, until at a distance, they presented quite a life, or rather deathlike, effect. The girls declared that the sight gave them the "creeps," whatever that mysterious malady might be, and snowballed the effigies vigorously before returning to the house, so that no straggler through the grounds might be scared by their appearance.