Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/327

Charles Dickens] been a proficient in the art, but he was not in his youth now, and was so strapped, and busked, and laced into his various garments, outer and inner, that he feared if by mischance he fell it might either be impossible for him to get up at all, or something might give way and cause him to be raised in a limp and unpresentable condition. Mr. Biscoe had no such qualms, and was buckling on his skates with all his characteristic impetuosity—old-fashioned skates, cumbrous with woodwork, and with curly tops, very different from the light and elegant trifles in which handsome little Mr. Boyd was performing all sorts of figures before the countess and a group of ladies gathered together on the bank, and trying to look as if they were interested and amused.

"Charmin' scene!" said Lord Hetherington, surveying the lake in a birdlike fashion, with his head on one side—"charmin', quite! Whenever I see ice and that kind of thing, always reminds me of some humorous adventures I once read in a book, 'bout man on the ice, Pickwinkle, or some such name. 'Commonly humorous book, to be sure!" and his lordship laughed very heartily at his reminiscences.

"You mean Pickwick, my lord!" said the colonel. "Ah! I hope what happened to him won't happen to any of our party, specially our fair friends who are pirouetting away there so prettily. If you recollect the ice broke and Mr. Pickwick got a ducking. How's the ice, Boyd?" to the boy, who came spinning to the edge at the moment.

"First class, colonel, couldn't be in better form, it's as hard as nails and as slippery as—as old boots," said Mr. Boyd, after hesitating an instant for an appropriate simile.

"Ah! but just keep up at this end, will you?" said Mr. Biscoe, looking up, his lace purple with the exertion of pulling at a refractory strap. "I was past here yesterday morning and saw that at the other end the men had broken up the ice for the deer or the waterfowl, and consequently what's there is only last night's frost, binding together the floating bits of yesterday, and likely to be very rotten!"

"Better have a board with 'Dangerous' or somethin' of that sort written on it and stuck up, hadn't we?" suggested Lord Hetherington, with Serpentine reminiscences.

"Scarcely time to get one prepared, my lord!" replied Mr. Biscoe, with a slight smile. "Here, two of you men take a rope and lay it across the ice just below that alder tree. That'll warn 'em, and you, Boyd, tell 'em all to keep above that line. No good having any bother if one can prevent it." And Mr. Biscoe hobbled down the bank and shot away across the lake, returning in an instant, and showing that if his skates were old-fashioned, he could keep pace with any of the young ones notwithstanding.

"Nice exercise—very!" said the colonel, who was getting so cold that he was almost prepared to risk the chance of a tumble and "have a pair on." "I do like to see a woman skating; there's something in it that'sAh!" And the old colonel kissed the tips of his fingers, partly to warm them, partly to express his admiration. "Now, who is that in the brown velvet trimmed with fur? She seems to know all about it."

"That's my sister Caroline," said his lordship, looking through his double glass. "Yes, she skates capitally, don't she? Pretty dress, too; looks like those people in the pictures outside the polkas, don't it? Who'sOh, Mr. Joyce! How d'ye do, Mr. Joyce? My secretary; very decent young man that."

The colonel merely coughed behind his buckskin glove. He did not think much of secretaries, and shared Jack Cade's opinion in regard to the professors of the arts of reading and writing. Just then Lady Caroline approached the bank.

"Colonel, are you inclined to back the service in general, and your own regiment in particular? Mr. Patey and I are going to have a race. Of course he gives me a long start. Will you bet?"

"Too delighted to have the chance of losing," said the colonel, with old-fashioned gallantry. "And I'll give odds, too—a dozen pairs to half a dozen. Patey, sustain the credit of the corps in every particular."

"Depend on me, colonel," said Mr. Patey, a long-limbed lieutenant of untiring wind. "Mr. Boyd, take Lady Caroline to her place, and then start us."

Walter Joyce had heard none of this colloquy. He had joined Mr. Biscoe, with whom he had formed a great friendship, and was showing him how to shift from the outer edge of an "eight" and shoot off into a "spread eagle," an intricate movement requiring all your attention, when he heard a sharp crack, followed by a loud shout. Without a word they dashed off to the other end of the lake where the crowd was