"Miss Capel! Bless the child, he will go and say all sorts of things to Mr. Grey. Oh, dear me! Miss Margaret--"
"Well, Land, what is the matter? You look in such a bustle. You don't mean to say the ice is giving way?"
"Mr. Casement is coming across the field, that's all, Miss Capel."
"Oh! I don't care for him--horrid old man! Just look how nicely I can turn this corner."
Mr. Casement passed through the field on his way to the house, and Margaret continued her skating with great eagerness.
Presently a footman was seen running towards the pond followed by the gardener's boy at a little distance; then appeared the fat coachman, and, in the farthest distance, Mr. Grey himself.
The footman, quite out of breath, brought his master's compliments, and he begged Miss Capel to come off the ice: then up came the boy, grinning, but saying nothing, then the coachman toiled up, and said that master was in a mortal fright lest the young lady had come to any harm; and informed Mr. Land, aside, "as how that cankered old toad, Casement, had been telling master a pack of lies about a thaw;" and by the time Margaret had disengaged the straps of her skates from her little feet, Mr. Grey had reached her all in a tremble, and taking her in his arms had begun a gentle remonstrance on her imprudence in venturing upon thin ice. Land came forward, and vowed that the ice was as firm as the rock of Gibraltar, and recommended, in proof thereof, that the fat coachman and the gardener's boy should cross the pond arm-in-arm. But Mr. Grey's fears once excited, could not so easily be set at rest; if the ice was not thin, it would probably be slippery--not an uncommon attribute--people had broken their limbs before now by a fall on the ice; indeed, he was not sure that there was not a case of the kind at present in the village, which he hoped would be a warning to Margaret never to skate again. And seeing that she was half crying as she resigned her skates to Land, he promised her a plum-cake for tea as the only means that came into his head of softening the bitterness of her disappointment.
The red rose medled with the white yfere, In either cheek depeinten lively chear; Her modest eye, Her majesty, Where have you seen the like but there?