In a few minutes Moses again touched the man’s elbow, “Say, Mister, I come to arsk yer parding fer larfin’ at yer, but, Glory be! I couldn’t help it. My curtings never rolled up on a funnier sight.”
Here his laughter became a series of concussions decidedly menacing to his well-being.
“I’ll lick you good and plenty,” answered the man, his face purple with indignation. Whereupon Moses, overcome utterly with mirth, lost his own balance and rubbed his freckled nose along a shining streak of slippery pavement.
Presently Clarence caught up to him and bore him down a side street lest further attempts at apology should cause him to again accost the irate stranger.
At the rink the enthusiastic country boy enjoyed the vast expanse of ice with no snags to interrupt his skating. A little girl wearing a bright red cap was enraptured to find her hand caught in Moses’ strong grasp and to feel herself, still a learner, whirled giddily over the ice feeling as safe as on a carpeted floor.
The band struck up and, intoxicated with the rhythm of the music, Moses skated as he had never done before. At first an object of amusement to the city boys he became the centre of an admiring throng. His spirals and figure eight’s were such as to call forth envious remarks. Even Clarence Egerton Crump thawed and admitted to several school mates that Moses Wopp was a pretty solid pal, only a bit gawky in his get-up.
Moses returned to the Crump home with a prodigious appetite.
“I c’d eat a rhindoceros,” he confided to Clarence.
“Well, Moses,” queried his genial host at the supper table, “did the skating go pretty good to-day?”
“It was shore a wonder, with the band playin’ an’ all. I never heard sich moosic, not sence the circus.”