"There they go!" cried Bert, from his perch on the deep window-seat overlooking the frozen Straits and the village below. "Mamma, you must let me take you down now; you are not so big as Miss Douglas."
Mrs. Bryden, a slender little woman, laughed. "Fancy the colonel's horror," she said, "if he should see me sliding down that hill! And yet it looks as if it might be rather stirring," she added, watching the flying sled and its load. The sled, of island manufacture, was large and sledge-like; it carried two comfortably. Anne held on by Rast's shoulders, sitting behind him, while he guided the flying craft. Down they glided, darted, faster and faster, losing all sense of everything after a while save speed. Reaching the village street at last, they flew across it, and out on the icy pier beyond, where Rast by a skillful manœuvre stopped the sled on the very verge. The fort ladies were all at the windows now, watching.
"How dangerous!" said Mrs. Bryden, forgetting her admiration of a moment before with a mother's irrelevant rapidity. "Albert, let me never see or hear of your sliding on that pier; another inch, and they would have gone over, down on the broken ice below!"
"I couldn't do it, mamma, even if I tried," replied Master Albert, regretfully; "I always tumble off the sled at the street, or else run into one of the warehouses. Only Rast Pronando can steer across slanting, and out on that pier."
"I am very glad to hear it," replied Mrs. Bryden; "but your father must also give you his positive commands on the subject. I had no idea that the pier was ever attempted."
"And it is not, mamma, except by Rast," said the boy. "Can't I try it when I am as old as he is?"
"Hear the child!" said Mrs. Cromer, going back to her seat by the fire; "one would suppose he expected to stay here all his life. Do you not know, Bert, that we are only here for a little while--a year or two? Before you are eighteen months older very likely you will find yourself out on the plains. What a life it is!"
The fort ladies all sighed. It was a habit they had. They drew the dreariest pictures of their surroundings and privations in their letters homeward, and really believed them, theoretically. In truth, there were some privations; but would any one of them have exchanged army life for civilian? To the last, thorough army ladies retain their ways; you recognize them even when retired to private and perhaps more prosperous life. Cosmopolitans, they do not sink into the ruts of small-town life; they are never provincial. They take the world easily, having a pleasant, generous taste for its pleasures, and making light of the burdens that fall to their share. All little local rules and ways are nothing to them: neither here nor anywhere are they to remain long. With this habit and manner they keep up a vast amount of general cheeriness--vast indeed, when one considers how small the incomes sometimes are. But if small, they are also sure.