In winter, skating matches come as thick as do football matches elsewhere. Parish is pitted against parish, fen against fen, islet contests with islet; even the frequenters of one tavern are matched against the frequenters of another.
During a hard frost, locomotion for once becomes easy and speedy in the Fens. Men and women skate to market, children to school, and smugglers run their goods from King's Lynn.
Zita had gone to the river side to see a sight that was novel to her. As she stood watching the skaters, Mark Runham came to the bank side, his cheeks glowing, his fair hair blowing about his ears, his eyes sparkling as though frost crystals were in them.
'I say, Cheap Jack, get on your patines and come.' Skates are termed patines in the Fens.
'If you mean skates, I have none. Besides, I do not know how to use them.'
'Not got patines? Not know how to use them? Then take a ride in my sleigh. I'll run you along. Stay here a few minutes till I have brought it.'
He was gone, flying down the river like a swallow, and in ten minutes he had returned, drawing after him a little sledge, and stayed his course on the frozen surface of the Lark before Zita.
'It's fine fun,' said he, with a voice cheery as his smile. 'I'll run you where you like to go; to Rossall Pits if you will—to Littleport—down to the sea—up to Cambridge—to the end of the world—anywhere you will.'
'Take me for a short distance only.'
'Then seat yourself in the sledge. We shall go as the wind.'