"Perhaps I may, when the thing is well started, but for the present I would rather stand and watch. It certainly looks very tempting, and worth an effort. Mademoiselle, shall you venture?"
"Nevaire!" shuddered poor Mademoiselle, who considered a walk in the snow quite a sufficient adventure. "I should have fear to place myself on a thing so insecure, and to let myself glide thus! Oh, no, it would be an act of folly! We have no snows in Provence, and I have been brought up to love other pleasures."
"You shall have the next turn if you like, Mademoiselle," said Esther Vaudrey, one of the pioneers. "It's really not difficult at all, if you know how to tuck up your feet."
"It makes one warm, at any rate," said Freda. "Who's going next? We'd better take it in Forms."
The sport proved extremely popular, and for the next hour relays of girls were constantly going down the slope; the track was soon as smooth as a slide, and really made a very good course, quite enough to satisfy everyone except Ursula.
"It's nothing to Les Avants! You should have seen that!" she kept assuring the others.
"Then I wish you would go back to Les Avants!" exclaimed Phœbe. "What's the good of belittling this all the time, and trying to make out it's so tame? I call it bad taste! If you can't enjoy it, we can, at any rate."
"I'd enjoy it if I had my own little sled, instead of a tea-tray."
"Nobody wants you to go on a tea-tray," said Agnes. "You can miss your turn if you like—I'll take it instead."
That, however, Ursula was not ready to allow. She appreciated the tobogganing as much as anyone, though she liked the triumph of referring to her Swiss achievements.