Frost, hard, sharp, crisp, and unmistakable; do you like it? It is very
unpleasant when you get up of a morning; the water is so cold. And then
going to school shivering, and being put on to construe when you have
the hot ache in your fingers, is trying to the patience, especially if
one is inclined to self-indulgence, and is aided and abetted when at
home by one's mother.

But everything has its compensations. Without work play would become a
bore; if there were no hunger and thirst there would be no pleasure in
eating and drinking; even illness is followed by convalescence, with
story-books to read instead of lessons, and licence to lie in bed as
long as you like, and so there is the delight, in very cold weather, of
getting warm again; and there is also skating. Whether we like it or
not we have to put up with it when it comes, and it came that year at an
unusual time, before the end of November. We often indeed have just a
touch at that period, three days about, and then sleet and rain; but
this was a regular good one, thermometer at nineteen Fahrenheit, no
wind, no snow, and the gravel-pits bearing. The gravel-pits were so
called because there was no gravel there. There had been, but it was
dug out, and carted away before the memory of the oldest inhabitant, and
the cavities were filled with water. There were quite three acres of
available surface altogether, and not farther than a mile from Weston;
but "_Ars longa, vita brevis est_;" the art of cutting figures is long,
and the period of practice short indeed. Considering the price spent on
skates in England, and the few opportunities of putting them on, it
seems barbarous of masters not to give whole holidays when the ice
_does_ bear. But then what would parents and guardians say? A boy
cannot skate himself into the smallest public appointment, and the rule
of three is of much more importance to his future prospects than the
cutting of that figure. The Westonians made the most they could of
their opportunity, however, and whenever they had an hour to spare the
gravel-pits swarmed with them. Their natural tendency was to rapid
running, racing, and hockey; but Leblanc, who was born in Canada, where
his father held an appointment, and who had worn skates almost as soon
as he had shoes, did such wonderful things as set a large number of them
practising figure skating. Buller was bitten by the mania; he had never
tried anything before but simple straigh