She went back down the slide. Her boots rang on the ice as though it were steel. Again and again she slid until there was a well-defined path upon the ice—a path at least ten yards long.
But the horizon grew rosy-red and the dropping moon paled into insignificance. This warned her that the breakfast call would soon sound and she left the ice reluctantly and ran back to the hall.
Before she reached the kitchens the sun popped up and she ran in the path made by its glowing rays across the frozen fields.
It was so cold that the early rising girls were hugging the radiators in the big hall when Nancy came in from the rear, all in a delightful glow. Some of them nodded to her. One girl even said:
“You’ve got pluck to go out for your constitutional a morning like this, Miss Nelson.”
But to Nancy’s ear it seemed as though the girl said it in a patronizing way. She was a junior. Nobody else spoke to the freshman. So Nancy had the secret of the frozen river to herself. She meant to go skating that day if she could.
Every morning the girls of Pinewood Hall took their places after breakfast—class by class—in the hall which balanced the dining room in the other wing of the big house. A brief service of a devotional character always began the real work of the day. Usually Madame Schakael presided at these exercises. And sometimes she had that to say before dismissing the girls that showed them that she had a keen oversight of the school’s manners and morals.
“I know,” she said, on this morning, standing upon the footstool which was always kept behind the desk-pulpit for her; “I know that many of you have been watching and waiting, with great eagerness, for the skating season to set in. Jack Frost, young ladies, seldom disappoints us here at Pinewood Hall. The river is frozen over.”
Here her remarks were punctuated by applause, and some suppressed “Oh, goodies!” The Madame smiled indulgently at this enthusiasm.
“Our rules regarding the sport are pretty well understood, I believe. No skating save during certain designated hours, and never unless Mr. Pease, or the under gardener, is at the boathouse. Bounds extend from the railroad bridge up the river toward town, to the Big Bend half a mile below our boathouse. The girl who skates out of bounds—they are plain enough—will not skate again for a month. Don’t forget that, girls.