Then, after a little, by some signal, the rink was declared closed. The skaters, at the sides of the rink, sat on little benches and took off their skates. The young man knelt beside Freda and loosened the straps, a pretty bit of gallantry in the moonlight.
He had her arm. They were going home, walking a little more close to each other than was necessary, looking up, bending down. Helen could almost feel what they were feeling, excitement, vigor, intimacy. A little shiver went over her as she pulled down the shade at last and looked around at the walls with their brown scrolls and mottoed injunction to
“Sleep sweetly in this quiet room,
Oh, thou, whoe’er thou art.”
CHAPTER IV
CITY MICE
I
THE dismay of the young Brownleys was as great as that of Freda. But their indomitable mothers won.
“But, mother,” cried Allison Brownley, “you don’t mean you’d ask that—that little Swede girl here to the house? For a month? Why, I should think you’d see how impossible that is. We can’t treat her as a servant, can we?”
“No,” said Mrs. Brownley, “you can’t—not at all. She’s a very clever girl—Normal School graduate.”
Allison sank on a divan, her short skirts shorter than ever in her abandonment, her face a picture of horrified dismay.