“Oh, I know the things you have said about me. Other girls too good to flirt,” bitterly, “weren’t too good to repeat them to me,” defiantly.
“Miss Van Lew, I beg your pardon. You see that was before I knew you,” he hastened to explain, abjectly.
“Oh, I forgive you. I don’t bear malice,” she returned, sunnily.
“Yet I heard that you had threatened to break my heart,” teasingly.
“Oh, I did not mean it. I wouldn’t if I could—not that I ever expect to have the chance,” she returned, somewhat incoherently, her cheeks flaming under his steady gaze.
“You are very kind,” he said, lightly; but the subject chafed him. He changed it by saying, “You promised to tell me why you ventured so imprudently far on the ice that day?”
“Oh, yes,” and she began to laugh. “It was this way: I saw Minnie Hyer’s partner skating out toward me. He was almost as clumsy as Minnie, and I said to myself: ‘I will not be bothered with that great gawk if I have to skate across the Potomac to escape him!’ So I went flying, and—suddenly I heard the ice cracking with my weight and realized my danger. I started to go back, but the thin ice broke, and—oh!” cried Viola, hiding her suddenly blanched face in her tiny white hands.
“Do not think of it any more,” he said, remembering her aunt’s caution.
“Oh, but I must!” she cried, impulsively. “And I haven’t told you yet how anxious I am to know the name of the hero who saved my life. I am so anxious to thank him and to have papa reward him handsomely—if he would accept it.”
“I should imagine he would be glad of a reward—or that he needed it. He was not particularly well dressed, though as handsome as a prince, and as brave as a hero,” Professor Desha replied.