"Betsey!" said Judith reprovingly, "how you do run on. It is scarcely feminine."
Betsey looked not well pleased, and a retort was rising to her lips, when she caught sight of Selby watching her, and the twinkle of "impertinent" amusement, as she thought it, in his eye was too much. It scattered her forces and snapped the thread of her discourse.
"There is a tobogganing party to-night, Betsey" said Muriel, now that there came a lull; "that is, there is always one these moonlight nights; but we are going to-night. Would you care to come? Aunt Penelope will be so pleased if you and Betsey will dine with us, Mrs. Bunce, and she can go in our party. Aunt Matilda is going. You will meet all your St. Euphrase friends, Betsey. Mdlle. Rouget will be there, I understand."
"I scarcely know the girl, and she don't want to know me, so that is no inducement. However, we'll go, auntie? I think we had better go. It's home to St. Euphrase tomorrow, you know, with lots of time for sedateness and parish duties. Let's enjoy ourselves all we can while we're here."
And so it was agreed.
CHAPTER IX.
[TOBOGGANING].
The moon was at the full, and she hung, still tending upwards, high in the transparent vault where all the host of heaven were burning and blinking like tapers in a fitful wind, so brilliant was their scintillating lustre seen through that clear dry atmosphere where the moonlight shows the red and the green of brick wall and painted verandah, colours which are but modulated greys where insular moistness thickens and dims the air. It was bright as day over the snow-covered landscape, with even a trace of the yellowness of sunshine in the light, but with an uncertainty in distances, and a liquid idealizing of objects and their shadows, sublimating reality out of commonplace, and lifting it into the likeness of what is seen in dreams.
The thermometer stood at zero, but the air was still, for all the fantastic flicker of the stars overhead; and it was so dry with the frost, which had precipitated all moisture, that it did not feel cold on emerging from heated houses. It was bright and exhilarating to breathe--like something to drink--and sent the blood dancing more briskly than before down to the tips of the thickly-gloved fingers Sounds of laughter and frolic were about, every one who was young and strong was abroad in the intoxicating lustre, arrayed in blanket-coat and moccasins, with toque and sash of blue or scarlet.
It was a steep snow-covered bank in the suburbs, with a long meadow spreading out below. Steps and footpaths were worn up the face on either hand, and in the middle was the slide polished into glass, down which the toboggans, pushed past the brink of the descent, a girl or even two seated in front with a man behind to steer, shot with the celerity of an arrow from above, slackening in speed when the steepest of the declivity was past, and travelling far out across the level meadow on the spending impulse they had gathered on their way. With steering and good luck the crew reach a standstill as they started, the damsel gets up, the swain draws his vehicle by the cord, and both mount again to the summit, once more to precipitate themselves down the slope, and if there be no miscarriage, resulting in shipwreck, with toboggan overturned or broken, and crew shot out promiscuously with ugly cuts and bruises, to repeat the experience a score of times, till at length the weary limbs shall refuse to scale the slippery height again.