At last Cecil got tired of Cos's drawling platitudes, and walked up to one of the windows. "How is the ice, will anybody tell me? I am wild to try it, ain't you, Blanche? If we are kept waiting much longer, we will have the carpets up and skate on the oak floors."
I told her I thought they might try it safely. "Then let us go after luncheon, shall we?" said Cecil. "It is quite sunny now. You skate, of course, Sir Horace?"
"Oh! to be sure—certainly," murmured Cos. "We'd a quadrille on the Serpentine last February, Talbot, and I, and some other men—lots of people said they never saw it better done. But it's rather cold—don't you think so?"
"Do you expect to find ice in warm weather?" said Vivian, curtly, from the fire, where he was standing watching the commencement of the note-case.
"No. But I hate cold," said Horace, looking at his snowy fingers. "One looks such a figure—blue, and wet, and shivering; the house is much the best place in a frost."
"Poor fellow!" said Vivian, with a contemptuous twist of his mustaches. "I fear, however fêté you may be in every other quarter, the seasons won't change to accommodate you."
"Oh! you are a dreadful man," drawled Cos. "You don't a bit mind tanning yourself, nor getting drenched through, nor soiling your hands——"
"Thank Heaven, no!" responded Syd. "I'm neither a school-girl, nor—a fop."
"Would you believe it, Miss St. Aubyn?" said the baronet, appealingly. "That man'll get up before daylight and let himself be drenched to the skin for the chance of playing a pike; and will turn out of a comfortable arm-chair on a winter's night just to go after poachers and knock a couple of men over, and think it the primest fun in life. I don't understand it myself, do you?"
"Yes," said Cecil, fervently. "I delight in a man's love for sport, for I idolise horses, and there is nothing that can beat a canter on a fine fresh morning over a grass country; and I believe that a man who has the strength, and nerve, and energy to go thoroughly into fishing, or shooting, or whatever it be, will carry the same will and warmth into the rest of his life; and the hand that is strong in the field and firm in righteous wrath, will be the truer in friendship and the gentler in pity."