It was in January, cold, sparkling, crisp, the ice on the dam above the river’s mouth thick and smooth as glass. There had been some very severe weather which the girls had welcomed as making it possible to skate. Now the weather was not so cold, but no approach to melting or thawing temperature.

“We haven’t had much skating for a long time,” said Eloise, as she skated around in a circle, chatting to Hilary and Lilian. Betty and Cathalina skated up in time to hear the remark.

“It is glorious!” declared Betty, “and yet it doesn’t freeze our noses or our feet. I hope it will not change before the carnival.”

“O, it can’t! The carnival’s tomorrow, you know.”

“It can do most anything, but I don’t believe that it will,” said Hilary. “I looked in the paper in the library and it said no change in temperature.”

“Is there going to be any competition for fancy skating among the girls?” Eloise asked.

“No,” replied Hilary, “all of us just skate our best during the time set and the judges pick out the most graceful and best skater. There is a second prize, too. But the boys do fancy skating.”

“Do you know what I think?” said Eloise impressively. “I think that Betty can get the first prize if she tries to skate her best. Do it, Betty. You have had practice at your aunt’s up in Canada, and are a born skater, anyway!”

Betty looked pleased, but replied, “I don’t know about that, Eloise, there are some good skaters in this school. Do you girls want me to show off a few extra whirls? Cathalina and I have been trying a few ‘stunts’ together this afternoon.”

“Yes, yes, Betty, for the glory of the Psyche Club!”

“I’ll see what I can do, then, but it’s so much fun that I’m not going to think about competing or I might get scared, and I want to enjoy this carnival.”

“I imagine that Dorothy Appleton will stand well to the front among the best skaters,” said Eloise, “but she can’t do some of the things that you can, Betty.”

“Isn’t Dorothy a fine girl?” said Betty. “I like her better and better the more I see of her.”

“So do I,” declared Lilian, “well enough to ask her to join the Psyche Club some time.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Hilary, in surprise.

“If we asked her roommate, I believe Dorothy would be glad to join, in spite of what Myrtle and some of the others would say. I’m sure she likes us, but Dorothy is too dignified to let us know even if she would like to join us.”

“Wouldn’t that be funny, girls, apropos of our senior elections,” said Cathalina, “electing Dorothy, who was supposed to represent the other crowd, the best of it, and then taking her in with us!”

“Like old politicians again,” suggested Betty.

“But we aren’t,” said Hilary decisively, “and if we are good friends with Dorothy it is because we like her, not to pay off any old grudges!”

“Hear, hear!” cried Eloise. “How we do have to watch our motives, to keep them honorable!”

“I think that Jane Mills is splendid, too,” said Betty. “I don’t know how they managed to change roommates, so they could room together, but it happened.”

“Miss Randolph did it,” Cathalina informed them. “She saw how unhappy Dorothy was and fixed it all up some way not to hurt Madge. Now Dorothy and Jane are as happy as can be.”

“Come on, Cathalina,” said Betty, “I’ll beat you to that pine tree,” and the girls all skated off.

In a way they were practicing for tomorrow’s carnival, but for the past two weeks skating had been the popular pastime between afternoon classes and the six o’clock dinner. The river could be reached by a walk along the beach to its mouth, but the easiest way to the dam was by a gently descending walk from the grove down to the river’s bank at the dam. Nature had been much assisted in making this a pretty part of the grounds, but it was so far from the buildings that some one was always in charge when the girls skated in winter or rowed and paddled in summer.

The carnival was causing more or less excitement because of the fact that the boys from the military school were coming. It was to be on a school day, also, and class hours were to be shortened! How fine that is all school girls and boys know. The boys were to arrive at the Village of Greycliff by trolley and be brought to Greycliff Girls’ School by the school sleighs and sleds, with such additional conveyances from the village as were found necessary. The showing off performances with the trials for prizes, were to be in the afternoon, from three o’clock to five. The boys were, moreover, to be entertained at dinner, and in the evening there was to be a jolly skating party with big bonfires and lights of various sorts.

“How are they going to manage the dressing for dinner?” asked Cathalina of Betty.

“Miss West said that we girls could dress as usual, coming right back to the Hall after the afternoon affair. Of course, we’ll want to dress up a little more than usual. The boys are going to make headquarters in the big Gym, I believe. They will be wearing their uniforms, you know, and any special skating togs they can adjust in the Gym. They will come over to the parlors before dinner and take us in to dinner very formally, I hear!”

“Do you suppose that you will meet your knight of the mirror?”

“I might, but how would I know him?”

“Your little heart should tell you.”

“What I’m worried about is that he may know me, and it was so silly to be trying that old Hallow-e’en test!”

“I don’t believe that he could see you any better than you saw him. You said that the candle flickered in the wind.”

“Yes, but I was shielding it with my hand. Still, I was all dressed up different, with my hair dressed high, too. O, well, what’s the use to worry?”

“None at all. He must have been a gentleman; still, it wasn’t very nice of him to look over your shoulder.”

“O, I don’t know; who could resist the temptation that knew the old superstition?”

“Won’t it be a jolly party,—two ‘skates’ and a dinner! I suppose the officers and instructors will be along, don’t you?”

“Yes; they say that the dinner will be quite an occasion!”

“This is the first they have had for several years, Miss Patty says. Then we’ll have a lawn fete in the spring, or just before Commencement, and invite our ‘soldier boys’ then, too, and the people from the village, I think, because it’s a ‘benefit.’”

Party frocks were looked over that night and occasional stitches taken where necessary. It was very hard to study when there were so many delightful anticipations. “What do lessons compare,” said Juliet, with reckless disregard of tomorrow and the class room, “with being ready for an ice carnival at Greycliff? What shall we remember in coming years,” she added, mimicking Isabel’s style of mock oratory, “the formulas and theorems of our class rooms?—or the scenes of the Ice Carnival at Greycliff?”

“The Ice Carnival!” promptly answered Pauline, while the other girls laughed.

The day arrived. Classes did not go any too well. Teachers felt hurried and pupils distraught, thinking of many more absorbing things.

“I believe I’d almost rather have the girls miss the classes altogether than to have these short periods. We did accomplish a little, however.” So Patricia West concluded.

“They couldn’t do a thing in chemistry,” replied Dr. Norris. “I gave up trying to have experiments and lectured to make them take notes. They could at least do that.”

With a literal blowing of trumpets, the boys arrived, having brought their band. Neither girls nor boys wasted time in getting to the river. It made a pretty scene, the bright costumes of the girls, the white snow, the dark trees, the smooth ice and graceful skaters. Contests among the boys came off first; then followed the skating among the girls. There was only one real contest among the latter, a race in which Betty and Dorothy divided the honors, gliding to the goal together. Cathalina in getting Betty to do a few interesting turns with her, asked her how to do some figures, and Betty showed her, not suspecting Cathalina’s guile till applause from a group of boys near brought her the realization that she had been “showing off.” Great was her surprise and pleasure when the judges announced her as winning the first prize.

“Do you know any of those boys, Pauline?” asked Betty, casting a side glance at the group of boys which had applauded her, and particularly at one young gentleman who had seemed to be especially interested,—standing aside from the rest and watching her with great attention.

“Yes; that one is Donald Hilton. Didn’t you notice him when he received the first prize?”

“O,” said Betty. “No, I wasn’t very near then.”

“He is a fine fellow and a cousin of Dorothy’s. That is John Appleton nearest him; doesn’t he look like Dorothy? Harry Mills goes with those boys a good deal. There, Donald and Harry are skating off together now.”

Cathalina, who had been standing near (if it could be called standing, the uneasy moving of one skate before another, and the turns and whirls, upon occasion, in which the girls indulged), bent toward Betty and said in a low voice, “Look, girls, isn’t that Louise Holley’s brother?”

“It certainly is,” replied Betty, remembering with a creepy feeling her last encounters with the young gentleman, and the girls skated off without further comment. “O, I hope, Cathalina, that it wasn’t that Holley man that looked over my shoulders!”

“So do I!”

“They are starting back to the Hall now. I could skate on all night from now on,” declared Betty.

“You think so now,” said Cathalina, “but you would be one tired little girl without that good dinner that we’re going to have. Who, do you suppose, will take us in to dinner?”

“I hope we’ll have extra nice boys, but we’ll be good to whomever we have,—unless I have that Holley man, and I don’t believe I could stand it if I did.”

“O, he seems to be one of the instructors; one of the older girls will have him. I wonder why they have him at the school. Do you suppose they know where he came from, or that he goes snooping around the way he does?”

“They must know who he is, but he is a mysterious person!”

“What are you going to wear to dinner, Betty?”

“The very prettiest frock I have.”

“The soft light blue silk, then, with the lace, and your white pearls.”

“Yes. How elegant that sounds, my ‘pearls,’ as if they were real.”

“Let me carry your skates for you, Miss Barnes,” said a pleasant voice just behind the girls, who had started from the dam toward the hall.

Betty glancing to the side was rendered almost speechless to behold Rudolph Holley, the instructor, resplendent in the school uniform, reaching out his hand for her skates.

“Our meeting was rather informal, I know,” continued the young man, “but I have always wanted to thank you for the courtesy you gave my sister and me. I had motored over with some of the boys and was in a hurry. I seemed to have missed my sister.”

“Yes,” thought Betty, “because of her trick on me!” But she was too courteous to want to show offense, besides being a little afraid of this man of night and motors and caves.

“You were very welcome for anything I may have done for you and your sister,” was Betty’s reply. “Miss Van Buskirk, this is Captain Holley,” for she noticed the captain’s epaulets on his shoulders. “He must have gotten my name from Louise, and probably knows all about her miserable little performance and is proud of it!” So Betty’s thoughts ran on. “I don’t like him one bit. But how good-looking he is.” There was something not unpleasant in having this courteous young instructor in attendance upon them, while the other girls and boys were going by. Few introductions had taken place as yet, though there were a few old acquaintances among the older members of each school, besides the brothers and sisters in the schools. All were a little hurried, especially the girls, for warm rooms, bright lights, a good dinner and companionship were waiting them.

Captain Holley meanwhile was thinking—though not in English—something like this: “She knows who I am, the little piece, and that was what I wanted to know.” He kept up the conversation with comments on the occasion, compliments to Betty and to Cathalina for their skating, and pleasant anticipations of the rest of the entertainment.

“Have you been an instructor at the school long, Captain Holley?” Cathalina inquired.

“No, not long,” replied the captain. “You know our sad history, I suppose. American is our country now. We came here,—I was a student in one of the schools and could not be recalled for military service because of a slight physical defect, a matter of eye sight, which was fortunate for me. I was very sorry that it was not deemed best to keep my sister here, but Louise is not adaptable like myself. Professor Schafer, whom I met when I was a lad in Germany and he was studying there, has been very kind and I come over occasionally to call on him.”

Captain Holley accompanied the girls to the door of Greycliff Hall, where he handed the skates to the girls, and with a courteous bow departed, following the boys to the gymnasium.

“Did you ever?” asked Betty, as rather silently they mounted the stairs.

“I never did,” replied Cathalina, and then they dismissed the matter, hurried into their pretty frocks, and hurried down into the parlors with the rest of the girls.