“Oh, Edith, how splendid,” she cried, “and you are just in time to see us all ploughed. Get her a chair, Hugh, on the edge of the rink. Oh, here’s Daisy. Daisy, you little fiend, if you pass and I don’t, I shall stop your allowance for a month.”
An agitating half-hour followed. Daisy, to do her justice, was, if possible, more anxious that her mother should pass than was Peggy herself, and, having acquitted herself triumphantly before the judges, and sailed through her test, endured agonies of anxiety as Peggy wobbled when she should have been firm. But the grim determination of her face never varied, and she still looked skyward. But eventually the effort of weeks, and a perseverance which Robert Bruce’s spider might have envied, was crowned, and she and Hugh emerged victorious.
Ah, but how good it was, Edith felt, to see the others really taking this wild interest in little things again; how good also to take it herself. Vitally and eagerly constituted as they all were, it was like them, the moment that good news came about that which was nearest their hearts they should all behave in this perfectly childish manner, and treat this skating episode (which for this very reason has been given at length) as if Eternal Salvation was on tap at the English rink, to which, through much tribulation, Peggy and Hugh had been admitted. There was no make-believe about it to-day, and if before both Peggy and Hugh while they rested some aching limb found no rest for the ache of their hearts, to-day there was ache neither in heart nor limb; all was forgotten in the sun of Edith’s improvement. “Immense, incredible improvement!” Hugh whispered it to her over and over again as they waited for their lunch to arrive from the house. And in the same breath, as was natural to his youth, he told her about the deep machinations of Dick, the assumption of Ambrose, and then and there founded an Ambrose club. Far away, too, at the corner of the public, common, lower rink, the Canon’s manly form could be discerned diligently circling, till Hugh could bear it no longer and left Edith, ostensibly to ask him to join them at lunch, in reality to patronise him. Ambrose was looking at his father in the deepest admiration, and the latter, just as Hugh came up, having made a sudden involuntary change of edge (a thing he had been trying to do voluntarily for days), exclaimed—
“Ah, that’s it, Ambrose. That’s what you were asking me to show you. Why, here’s Hugh! Well, Hugh, joining us again down here? Not quite fit for the Olympian yet?”
Hugh could not resist a little swagger. He was exalted.
“Oh, we got through quite, quite easily,” he said; “all of us in fact. Peggy, Daisy, and I. I expect Ambrose will get through next.”
This was deep: it was almost fiendish. Hugh knew his brother-in-law was practising till sleep forsook him at night. Dick thought that he was equally aware that Hugh could have no notion of it, since Ambrose (so properly) had mentioned to him the conversation about expense which that child had already held with Hugh.
Canon Alington showed an eager interest in this.
“Ambrose tells me you have been good enough to promise to pay his subscription if he passes,” he said. “Come, Ambrose, show Hugh what you can do.”
Ambrose could not do anything at all, and his father knew it. So Dick, with an eye on Hugh, showed him what had to be done. He displayed a completely accurate knowledge of what the test was, which was strange, since he did not contemplate going in for it. But his practical idea, how to skate it, in fact, was rather sketchy. Hugh hugged himself in silence. So often had Dick told him exactly how all sorts of complicated manœuvres had to be done; so often had he wished that the frost might hold in order that he could have a day’s skating with Hugh, and just put him in the way of it! But Hugh liked his brother-in-law the better for it. He had “humbugged” (a beautiful word) about his skating. That was human. Ambrose had humbugged too about the originality of his idea that the question of expense only stood between Dick and the higher rink. Hugh did not feel any marked sympathy with humbug, but he was much in sympathy with anything that proved that Ambrose was human too.