for you as we come back.' 'I'll go now! Let me out! I will go!'
are the last words of Miss Lizzy. Mem. Not to spoil that child--if
I can help it. But I do think her mother might have let the poor
little soul walk with us to-day. Nothing worse for children than
coddling. Nothing better for chilblains than exercise. Besides, I
don't believe she has any--and as to breaking her bones in sliding,
I don't suppose there's a slide on the common. These murmuring
cogitations have brought us up the hill, and half-way across the
light and airy common, with its bright expanse of snow and its
clusters of cottages, whose turf fires send such wreaths of smoke
sailing up the air, and diffuse such aromatic fragrance around. And
now comes the delightful sound of childish voices, ringing with glee
and merriment almost from beneath our feet. Ah, Lizzy, your mother
was right! They are shouting from that deep irregular pool, all
glass now, where, on two long, smooth, liny slides, half a dozen
ragged urchins are slipping along in tottering triumph. Half a
dozen steps bring us to the bank right above them. May can hardly
resist the temptation of joining her friends, for most of the
varlets are of her acquaintance, especially the rogue who leads the
slide,--he with the brimless hat, whose bronzed complexion and white
flaxen hair, reversing the usual lights and shadows of the human
countenance, give so strange and foreign a look to his flat and
comic features. This hobgoblin, Jack Rapley by name, is May's great
crony; and she stands on the brink of the steep, irregular descent,
her black eyes fixed full upon him, as if she intended him the
favour of jumping on his head. She does: she is down, and upon
him; but Jack Rapley is not easily to be knocked off his feet. He
saw her coming, and in the moment of her leap sprung dexterously off
the slide on the rough ice, steadying himself by the shoulder of the
next in the file, which unlucky follower, thus unexpectedly checked