in the vulgar eye. Her
secret kept itself, as she was supposed in the college to be insensible
to the softer emotions. Love wrought no external change upon her. It
made her believe that she had left her girlhood behind her and was now
a woman with a newly-developed heart capacity at which she would
childishly have scoffed a little while before. She felt ashamed of the
bee on the window pane, although it somehow buzzed as frequently as
before in spite of her. Her calendar, formerly a monotonous cycle of
class times, meal times, play times, and bed time, was now irregularly
divided by walks past the chalet and accidental glimpses of its tenant.

Early in December came a black frost, and navigation on the canal
was suspended. Wickens's boy was sent to the college with news that
Wickens's pond would bear, and that the young ladies should be welcome
at any time. The pond was only four feet deep, and as Miss Wilson set
much store by the physical education of her pupils, leave was given for
skating. Agatha, who was expert on the ice, immediately proposed that a
select party should go out before breakfast next morning. Actions not in
themselves virtuous often appear so when performed at hours that compel
early rising, and some of the candidates for the Cambridge Local, who
would not have sacrificed the afternoon to amusement, at once fell in
with her suggestion. But for them it might never have been carried out;
for when they summoned Agatha, at half-past six next morning, to leave
her warm bed and brave the biting air, she would have refused without
hesitation had she not been shamed into compliance by these laborious
ones who stood by her bedside, blue-nosed and hungry, but ready for the
ice. When she had dressed herself with much shuddering and chattering,
they allayed their internal discomfort by a slender meal of biscuits,
got their skates, and went out across the rimy meadows, past patient
cows breathing clouds of steam, to Wickens's pond. Here, to their
surprise, was Smilash, on electro-plated acme skates, practicing
complicated figures with intense diligence. It soon appeared that his
skill came short of his ambition; for, after several narrow escapes and
some frantic staggering, his calves, elbows, and occiput smote the ice
almost simultaneously. On rising ruefully to a sitting posture he
became aware that eight young ladies were watching his proceedings with
interest.

"This comes of a common man putting himself abo