glass. "Hand it here," answered one, who in the ice appeared very
pale, thin, and respectable. "I am a philosopher; I am not afraid of
the truth." He looked in, and lo, there was a stork, standing on one
leg, with his eyes half closed, and his head neatly tucked under his
wing. "What a caricature!" he exclaimed, giving the glass a toss. It
fell upon the ermine muff of a furbelowed old dowager, who was skating
bravely about, notwithstanding her seventy years. "I will see how I
look," she said, with a simpering smile; and behold, there was a puffy
white owl in the mirror. Down fell the glass, but Rosamond caught and
saved it.

"What a little unfledged thing you are, to be carrying that bit of
broken glass about with you!" called out the philosopher.

"Better be unfledged than a one-eyed stork," answered Rosamond, and
skated swiftly out of sight.

Now, the grandest skater of all was a griffin, who led all the others,
skating more skilfully than any of them, and flitting like mad across
the very thinnest places. It made one's head giddy to see him. His
swiftness and dexterity, and a knack he had of knocking the other
skaters into great black holes under the ice, whenever they crossed
his path, greatly imposed upon them, and they all took care to follow
straight behind, or to keep well out of his way. Now and then a bear
would growl as he glided by; but the next day, Rosamond would see that
bear hard at work building ice palaces, too busy to growl. One day,
skating off into a corner, she found the griffin sitting apart, behind
a great block of ice with his claws crossed, and looking very cold and
dreary, like a snow image. "Would you not like to take a peep into my
glass?" she said to him, quite amiably.