He nimbly dashed through his list. The ice was traced with a labyrinth of involuted convolutions.
Wade’s last turn brought him to the very spot of his tumble.
“Ah!” said he. “Here is the oar that tripped me, with ‘Wade, his mark,’ gashed into it. If I had not this” — he touched Miss Damer’s handkerchief — “for a souvenir, I think I would dig up the oar and carry it home.”
“Let it melt out and float away in the spring,” Mary said. “It may be a perch for a sea-gull or a buoy for a drowning man.”
Here, if this were a long story instead of a short one, might be given a description of Peter Skerrett’s house and the menu of Mrs. Skerrett’s dinner. Peter and his wife had both been to great pillory dinners, ad nauseam, and learnt what to avoid. How not to be bored is the object of all civilization, and the Skerretts had discovered the methods.
I must dismiss the dinner and the evening, stamped with the general epithet, Perfection.
“You will join us again to-morrow on the river,” said Mrs. Skerrett, as Wade rose to go.
“To-morrow I go to town to report to my Directors.”
“Then next day.”
“Next day, with pleasure.”
Wade departed and marked this halcyon day with white chalk, as the whitest, brightest, sweetest of his life.
