Page:Across the Stream.djvu/99

Rh warm, so potent were the beams of this ineffable sun through the thin, dry air. Jeannie was learning to skate and progressed, in wobbling half-circles, and shrilly announced that this and no other was the outside edge. Or four of the experts in a railed-off and hallowed place at the end of the huge rink would put down an orange, and proceed to weave a mystic dance in obedience to the shouted orders of one of them. At one moment all four would be swiftly converging on a back-edge to their orange, and, just at the moment when a complicated collision seemed imminent, would somehow change their direction, and, lo, all four were sailing outwards and forwards again in big, sweeping curves. Then there were the hoarse, angry cries of the curlers to listen to, and the pleasant sight of the stone sliding swiftly down the ice and butting, with a hollow chunk, into any other that stood in its way. And then a slow sliding stone would come down, and people swept violently in front of it to encourage it not to lie down and die, which for the most part it did. But always too soon, his mother or Blessington would come to tell him that it was time to go home again and he would tie his toboggan to the back of the sleigh, and be pulled uphill to the house. That was a tiresome moment, and Archie found himself wondering, with a pang of jealousy, why, when so many were hale and hearty round him, it should be just he who was obliged to go and lie down on the roofed balcony, instead of skating or curling. But even when he had set-backs, and had to lie all day on the balcony, he never faltered in his belief that he was going to get well.

Here then, in brief, were the outward aspects of Archie's life at Grives, new and attractive and full of sun and dry, powdery snow. He took no active part in the activities, and was but an observer, but all the time there were inward aspects of his life,