"Susie!" exclaimed aunt Judith, "wait for somebody to go with ye: you might tumble down."
"Start, now, Susie," said her uncle. "Off with you!"
She was really a very graceful skater; and her aunts looked on with admiration, as well as a vast deal of astonishment, while she made a few whirls near by, to make sure her skates were on rightly. Then away she glided over the ice; and the first thing Vosh Stebbins knew of it was when the form of a young lady fluttered swiftly past him, between him and the glare of the great central bonfire. Her face was turned the other way, and his first exclamation was,—
"What a splendid skater! Who can she be?"
"I know," said Port Hudson, close at hand, and waiting for his share of the joke. "She's a girl from the city, and she's spending the winter with some relatives of mine. Come on: I'm going after her. Think you can keep up? Come on, Vosh."
Away went Porter, just as his friend felt a great hot flush come into his face, and dashed after them, exclaiming,—
"If I ain't stupid! Why, it's Susie Hudson herself!"
He felt as if his honor were at stake, and he had never skated so in all his life before. The fires on the bank seemed to flit by him as he followed that solitary girl-skater around the glittering icy reaches of the mill-pond. It looked so like a race, that almost everybody else paused to watch, and some even cheered. Deacon Farnham himself shouted,—
"Hurrah for Susie!" and Pen danced up and down.
"It's jest wonderful," said aunt Judith, "to see her go off that way the very first time."