In a slow mournful voice that gave his excellent French a melancholy music he asked her if she had already tested the run and became when he had heard the short tale of her adventure impatiently active. Her toboggan, he said, and raised its fore-part and bent scanning, was too large, too heavy and with runners not quite true. It would be better for the moment to exchange. Try, Try, he chanted with the true Russian nonchalance and, abandoning his own went off down the gentle slope on the discredited mount that she might now blame for her mysterious swerve at the bend. After the gentle drop, carrying him over the first small rise as if it were not there, he flew ahead gathering swiftness with each drop, away and away until at last he appeared a small upright figure far away on the waste of snow. The run compared with what she had already attempted seemed nothing at all. The drops so slight that once or twice she was stranded on a ridge and obliged to push off afresh. And the light little toboggan, responding to the slightest heel-tap upon the hard pressed snow, taught her at once the secret of steering. And when at last full of the joy of fresh conquest she was pulled up by the loose snow at the end of the run, she was eager only to tramp back and begin again. But tramping at her side he tore her triumph to shreds. Silently she tried to imagine the toboggan having its own way uncontrolled for the whole of that sweeping trek, for the two quite steep drops towards the end. The second time he started her in advance and remained behind shouting, his voice rising to a crescendo at the first steepness: “_Il n’y a pas de danger!_” With an immense effort she restrained her feet and entered paradise. “_Ça ira, ça ira_,” he admitted smiling when once more they were side by side. They tramped back in silence, under the eyes as they approached the ridge of a group newly appeared upon its crest and from which when they drew near a voice came down in greeting. She looked up to see the Croydon family, all very trim in sporting garb and carrying skates, gathered in a bunch, at once collectively domestic and singly restive. They smiled eagerly down at her and she read in the father’s twinkling gaze that she was providing material for Croydon humour, so distinctly and approvingly, was it saying in the Croydon way: “You’ve not lost much time,” and so swiftly, having told her in response to her own greeting that the rink was within five minutes easy walking, did he turn and disappear with his family in tow down the far side of the ridge.