had often succeeded before, she affected not to notice it, and discoursed on indifferent subjects.
' Such a bore!' she said. ' The road down the valley is too soft for sleighing, and the rink is too sloppy for skating.'
Charlie brightened up a little; he seemed to have seen much less of her lately.
' So you're going to have an idle day,' he said. ' Sit and talk to me.'
' Well, we are going out almost immediately,' she said, ' just to go down the Schwester toboggan-run, which they say is still possible. I wish you could come, Charlie, but there's no way of getting up except walking.'
Charlie instantly froze into himself.
' I'm afraid that's quite impossible,' he said. ' You're going with Bilton, I suppose.'
' Yes; I rather think he's waiting for me.'
Charlie registered to himself the fact that she had not asked for the doctor's report of him, though Monday was his regular day for being overhauled.
' Never keep people waiting,' he said, and opened a book. Then his better disposition came to his aid.
' I hope it will be possible for you to get a good run,' he said cordially. ' It is horrid, this weather, is it not?'
' Horrid—quite horrid!' she said. ' Well, good-bye; your mother will be out directly.'
He sat there after she had left him, with book open, but not reading. A pale, watery sun, instead of the golden monarch enthroned in cloudless blue, peered like a white plate through the clouds blown up by the south wind, and, instead of a dry and vivifying air, the atmosphere was loaded with moisture, the eaves dripped with the melting snow, and every now and then, with a whisper and a thud, some sheet would detach itself form a house-roof and plunge into the roadway below. Instead of presenting an expanse
