“You may depend on me, sir.”
“Stand by to shut the door quickly after us,” added Tom as he grasped the handle, “else the wind will get in and blow the fire about.”
The brother and sister, being young and active, were pretty smart in making their exit, and David Butts, being used to doors, was not slow to shut his own, but they could not altogether baffle the colonel, for he was waiting outside. Indeed, he had been whistling with furious insolence through the keyhole all the time of the visit. Sliding in edgewise, at the moment of opening, he managed to scatter the ashes again, and whirl about some of the light articles before he was fairly expelled.
Thereafter, along with his father and brother, he went riotously after Tom and Matilda Westlake, sometimes shrieking over their heads; now and then dashing on in front, and, whirling round in an eddy, plunging straight back into their faces, but they could make nothing of it. The brother and sister merely laughed at them, and defied them to do their worst, even, in the joy of their hearts, going the length of saying to several utter but beaming strangers, that it was “splendid Christmas weather.” And so it was,—to the young and strong. Not so, alas! to the old and feeble.
It almost seemed as if Colonel Wind and Major Snow had taken offence at this last sally, for about that time of the day they forsook their father and left London—probably to visit the country. At all events, the clouds cleared away, the sky became blue, and the sun shone out gloriously—though without perceptibly diminishing the frost.
After spending another hour or two in paying visits, during which they passed abruptly, more than once from poverty-stricken scenes of moderate mirth to abodes of sickness and desolation, Tom and Matilda, by means of ’bus and cab, at last found themselves in the neighbourhood of the Serpentine.
“What say you to a turn on the ice, Matty?”
“Charming,” cried Matty.
Society on the Serpentine, when frozen over, is not very select, but the brother and sister were not particular on that point just then. They hired skates; they skimmed about over the well-swept surface; they tripped over innumerable bits of stick or stone or orange-peel; they ran into, or were run into by, various beings whose wrong-headedness induced a preference for skating backwards. In short, they conducted themselves as people usually do on skates, and returned home pretty well exhausted and blooming.
That evening, after a family dinner, at which a number of young cousins and other relatives were present, Tom and his sister left the festive circle round the fire, and retired to a glass conservatory opening out of the drawing-room. There was a sofa in it and there they found Ned Westlake extended at full length. He rose at once and made room for them.