"Will you prove the truth of your protestations by never saying another word on the subject? The give-and-take principle has been carried out in our society as much as the most ardent democrat, say yourself, Mr. Joyce, could have desired. I am sure you are too good-natured to mourn over the hours torn from your great work and frittered away in frivolous conversation when you know that you have helped Lady Hetherington and myself to undergo an appalling amount of country people, and that while the dead Wests may grieve over the delay in the publication of their valour and virtue, the living Wests are grateful for assistance rendered them in their conflict with the bores. However, all that is nearly at an end. When the family is at Hetherington House, I have no doubt you will be enabled to enjoy the strictest seclusion. Meantime, there is only one festivity that I know of which is likely to cause us to ask you to tear yourself away from your chronicles." "And that is?" "A skating-party. Consequently dependent on the state of the weather. So that if you are still hermitically inclined, you had better pray for a thaw. If the frost holds like this, we are anticipating a very pleasant afternoon to-morrow: the people from the barracks and some others are coming over, the men report the ice in capital order, and there's to be luncheon and that kind of thing. But perhaps, after all, you don't skate, Mr. Joyce?" "Oh yes, indeed--and you?" "Nothing in the world I'm so fond of, or, if I may say so, that I do so well. We wintered one year in Vienna; there was a piece of water privately enclosed called the Schwann Spiegel, where the Emperor--never mind!"