“Well, Ned, how have you enjoyed yourself to-day?” asked Tom.
“Oh, splendidly! There was such a jolly party in Wharton’s grounds—most of them able to skate splendidly. The pond is so sheltered that the wind scarcely affected us, and a staff of sweepers cleared away the snow as fast as it fell. Afterwards, when it cleared up and the sun shone through the trees, it was absolutely magnificent. It’s the jolliest day I’ve had on the ice for years, though I’m almost knocked up by it. Jovially fatigued, in fact. But where have you been?”
“We also have been skating,” said Matilda.
“Indeed! I thought you had intended to spend the day somewhere in the east-end attending some of those free breakfasts, and visiting the poor, or something of that sort—as if there were not enough of city missionaries, and sisters of mercy, or charity, or whatever you call them, to look after such things.”
“You are right, Ned,” said Tom, “such was our intention, and we carried it out too. It was only at the end of the day that we took to skating on the Serpentine, and, considering the number of people we have run into, or overturned, or tumbled over, we found a couple of hours of it quite sufficient.”
From this point Tom Westlake “harked back” and related his experiences of the day. He possessed considerable power of graphic delineation, and gradually aroused the interest of his gay and volatile but kindly-disposed brother.
“Ned,” said he, at last, “do you really believe in the truth of these words, ‘Blessed are they that consider the poor?’”
“Yes, Tom, I do,” replied Ned, becoming suddenly serious.
What Tom said to his brother after that we will not relate, but the result was that, before that Christmas evening closed, he succeeded in convincing Ned that a day of “jolly good fun” may be rendered inexpressibly more “jolly,” by being commenced with an effort to cheer and lighten the lot of those into whose sad lives there enter but a small amount of jollity and far too little fun.