ce--we want you to join!"

"What race?" asked Katrinka, laughing. "Don't all talk at once, please,
I can't understand."

Everyone panted and looked at Rychie Korbes, who was their acknowledged
spokeswoman.

"Why," said Rychie, "we are to have a grand skating match on the
twentieth, on Mevrouw van Gleck's birthday. It's all Hilda's work. They
are going to give a splendid prize to the best skater."

"Yes," chimed in half a dozen voices, "a beautiful pair of silver
skates--perfectly magnificent--with, oh! such straps and silver bells
and buckles!"

"WHO said they had bells?" put in a small voice of the boy with the big
name.

"I say so, Master Voost," replied Rychie.

"So they have"; "No, I'm sure they haven't"; "OH, how can you say
so?"; "It's an arrow"; "And Mynheer van Korbes told MY mother they
had bells"--came from the excited group, but Mynheer Voostenwalbert
Schimmelpenninck essayed to settle the matter with a decisive "Well, you
don't any of you know a single thing about it; they haven't a sign of a
bell on them, they--"

"Oh! oh!" and the chorus of conflicting opinions broke forth again.

"The girls' pair is to have bells," interposed Hilda quietly, "but
there is to be another pair for the boys with an arrow engraved upon the
sides."

"THERE! I told you so!" cried nearly all the youngsters in one breath.

Katrinka looked at them with bewildered eyes.

"Who is to try?" she asked.

"All of us," answered Rychie. "It will be such fun! And you must, too,
Katrinka. But it's schooltime now, we will talk it all over at noon. Oh!
you will join, of course."

Katrinka, without replying, made a graceful pirouette and laughing out a
coquettish, "Don't you hear the last bell? Catch me!" darted off toward
the schoolhouse standing half a mile away on the canal.

All started, pell-mell, at this challenge, but they tried in vain to
catch the bright-eyed, laughing creature who, with golden hair streaming
in the sunlight, cast back many a sparkling glance of triumph as she
floated onward.

Beautiful Katrinka! Flushed with youth and health, all life and mirth
and motion, what wonder thine image, ever floating in advance, sped
through one boy's dreams that night! What wonder that it seemed his
darkest hour when, years afterward, thy presence floated away from him
forever.

Hans and Gretel Find a Friend

At noon our young friends poured forth from the schoolhouse, intent upon
having an hour's practice