promised a perfect day.

Young Mallett supposed that he was afoot and afield before anybody else
in house could be stirring, but as he pitched his sketching easel on the
edges of the frozen pasture brook, and opened his field-box, a far hail
from the white hill-top arrested him.

High poised on the snowy crest above him, clothed in white wool from
collar to knee-kilts, and her thick clustering hair flying, she came
flashing down the hill on her skis, soared high into the sunlight,
landed, and shot downward, pole balanced.

Like a silvery meteor she came flashing toward him, then her
hair-raising speed slackened, and swinging in a widely gracious curve
she came gliding across the glittering field of snow and quietly stopped
in front of him.

"Since when, angel, have you acquired this miraculous accomplishment?"
he demanded.

"Do I do it well, Duane?"

"A swallow from paradise isn't in your class, dear," he admitted,
fascinated. "Is it easy--this new stunt of yours?"

"Try it," she said so sweetly that he missed the wickedness in her
smile.

So, balancing, one hand on his shoulder, she disengaged her moccasins
from the toe-clips, and he shoved his felt timber-jack boots into the
leather loops, and leaning on the pointed pole which she handed him,
gazed with sudden misgiving down the gentle acclivity below. She
encouraged him; he listened, nodding his comprehension of her
instructions, but still gazing down the hill, a trifle ill at ease.

However, as skates and snow-shoes were no mystery to him, he glanced at
the long, narrow runners curved upward at the extremities, with more
assurance, and his masculine confidence in all things masculine
returned. Then he started, waved his hand, smiling his condescension;
then he realised that he was going faster than he desired to; then his
legs began to do disrespectful things to him. The treachery of his own
private legs was most disheartening, for they wavered and wobbled
deplorably, now threatening to cross each other, now veering alarmingly
wide of his body. He made a feebly desperate attempt to use his
trail-pole; and the next second all that Geraldine could see of the
episode was mercifully enveloped in a spouting pinwheel of snow.

Like all masculine neophytes, he picked himself up and came back,
savagely confident in his humiliation. She tried to guide his first
toddling ski-steps, but he was mad all through and would have his own
way. With a set and mirthless