Ambrose put his head a little sideways, as he did when he was saying his catechism, or when thoughts of exceptional nobility occurred to him.
“Well, I have thought about it,” he said; “but, you see, I am sure it has been a great expense to papa to bring me out here, and he never would have come out himself if I hadn’t been ill, and I should have to pay a subscription, shouldn’t I, if I passed? Papa isn’t going in for it either, and, of course, he could pass as easy as anything if he tried, couldn’t he?”
“Oh! that’s all right, then,” said Hugh, neglecting this last topic. “I’ll pay your subscription for you, if you get through.”
Ambrose clapped his hands together—he had caught it from Mrs. Owen—and forgetting that he was on skates tried to jump in the air to show his joy. He fell down instead, but even at the moment of contact continued to talk in his penetrating treble.
“Oh, thank you, Uncle Hugh!” he cried. “How kind everybody is to me! I shall go and practise at once. Oh, my spectacles have fallen off! Would you please give them me, as I promised papa never to look at anything out-of-doors without them, so I must shut my eyes till I have them on again.”
Canon Alington and Ambrose had been here a fortnight, for the Canon had long wanted to spend a winter in Switzerland, and the fact that Ambrose, who had been a good deal pulled down by an attack of scarlatina, was advised to go to some bracing place, made a duty of what he had only thought of as a pleasure. He himself, too, so Agnes assured him, had been much tried by incessant work and a very rainy autumn in England, and reminding him how his fortnight’s yachting in the summer had set him up, she urged him to go and be set up again. In fact, the idea of its being a pleasure at all had long faded from his memory. Agnes recommended it for him, just as the doctor recommended it for Ambrose. It was a necessary expense, heavy, no doubt, but unavoidable. But they had come out second-class and lived on the fifth floor. Also—it really seemed providential—the resident chaplain at Davos had been taken ill a fortnight ago, and Canon Alington, saying that he had gone back to his own curate-days, had taken his place at the current stipend. He had preached last Sunday, taking for his text “Oh, ye ice and snow, bless ye the Lord!” Hugh, to his own malicious satisfaction, had guessed what the text would be, and, indeed, betted on the subject with Peggy (she had bet on “Oh, ye mountains and hills”) before it was given out. He won five francs, and put them in the offertory.
So Ambrose retired into a corner to practise for his test, and soon Peggy returned on her majestic outside-back. She, too, saw the difference in Hugh this morning, and his almost solemn joy over Ambrose’s conversation rang true.
“For the cream of it is,” said Hugh, “that for years and years the admirable Dick has swaggered to me about his skating, because, you see, there have been no frosts in England. Oh! perhaps that is unfair, because the first day he came out here he paraded the rink doing what I think he called Dutch roll. Anyhow, both feet were on the ice simultaneously. But nobody was very much struck; here they prefer skating on one foot at a time, you see. So foolish!”
Peggy gave a long sigh.
“Oh, Ice and Snow!” she exclaimed. “I beg your pardon. Go on.”