"Don't drivel," said I. "She's not likely going into the Russian ballet. She's training her muscles, that's all."

But the mystery was solved the following morning when Charlie Sands called me up.

"I've got it, beloved aunt," he said.

"Got what?" said I.

"What the old lady is up to. She's a wonder, and no mistake. Only I think it was stingy of her not to let you and Aunt Aggie in."

He asked me to get Aggie and meet him at the office as soon as possible, but he refused to explain further. And he continued to refuse until we had arrived at our destination, a large brick building in the center of the city.

"Now," he said, "take a long breath and go in. And mind--no excitement."

We went in. There was a band playing and people circling at a mile a minute. In the center there was a cleared place, and Tish was there on ice skates. An instructor had her by the arm, and as we looked she waved him off, gave herself a shove forward with one foot, and then, with her arms waving, she made a double curve, first on one foot and then on the other.

"The outside edge, by George!" said Charlie Sands. "The old sport!"

Unluckily at that moment Tish saw us, and sat down violently on the ice. And a quite nice-looking young man fell over her and lay stunned for several seconds. We rushed round the arena, expecting to see them both carried out, but Tish was uninjured, and came skating toward us with her hands in her pockets. It was the young man who had to be assisted out.

"Well," she said, fetching up against the railing with a bang, "of course you had to come before I was ready for you! In a week I'll really be skating."

We said nothing, but looked at her, and I am afraid our glances showed disapproval, for she straightened her hat with a jerk.

"Well?" she said. "You're not tongue-tied all of a sudden, are you? Can't a woman take a little exercise without her family and friends coming snooping round and acting as if she'd broken the Ten Commandments?"

"Breaking the Ten Commandments!" I said witheringly. "Breaking a leg more likely. If you could have seen yourself, Tish Carberry, sprawled on that ice at your age, and both your arteries and your bones brittle, as the specialist told you,--and I heard him myself,--you'd take those things off your feet and go home and hide your head."

"I wish I had your breath, Lizzie," Tish said. "I'd be a submarine diver."




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