The storm was followed by the thaw; a very thorough-going thaw, which gave Blue Bonnet her first experience of what country roads can be like under such conditions.

“We can’t skate, we can’t coast, we can’t ride, and the walking is—”

“That’s just what it is!” Boyd agreed.

“Then what can we do?” Blue Bonnet looked at Alec, as if expecting him to solve the difficulty.

“You might meditate and invite your soul,” he suggested.

It was a Saturday morning, and the three were sitting on the Clyde’s back porch in the sunshine. Blue Bonnet had explained that she could stay only “a moment”—that she was dusting; but Blue Bonnet’s minutes were apt to prove elastic.

“I don’t want to invite my soul!” she protested now. On the whole, the past fortnight had been very tiresome; what she wanted, more than anything at this moment, was to have some fun—fun spelled with a capital F.

Lying alone in the twilight that Saturday evening two weeks ago, she had made all manner of good resolutions, among which, being in early had289 taken prominent place. Then the thaw had come, and there had been no excuse for staying out.

Worst of all, the warm February wind, with its touch of Spring softness, blowing the last few days, would keep sending her thoughts back to the great open sweep of the prairie. Oh, for one long ride across it with Uncle Cliff! One glimpse of the old familiar ranch life! Of Uncle Joe and old Benita!

“Woodford is dull,” Boyd was saying,—“at least for us outsiders. There’s no use denying it.”

Blue Bonnet flicked her duster; that was what had brought her out to the porch in the first place, and whenever the thought that she ought to go in grew too insistent, she flicked it again.

“That makes ten times,” Alec laughed. “I’ve kept tally.”

“I suppose,” Blue Bonnet said, slowly, “that Aunt Lucinda would say, that neither was there any use in asserting it.”

“Without doubt,” Boyd agreed.

“Maybe it’s just me.” Blue Bonnet looked at Alec; and somehow, he couldn’t help feeling glad that she had not used Boyd’s “us.”

“I’m afraid not,” he answered, “though it’s very kind of you to be willing to shoulder all the responsibility. We might get up a crowd and go in town this afternoon.”

“Museum!” Boyd scoffed. “Botanical Gardens! Library! I don’t see myself.”

290 “It’s club day,” Blue Bonnet said.

“Chuck it!” Boyd advised.

And suddenly, Blue Bonnet felt a strange desire to follow his suggestion. It would be an indoor meeting; they would all bring their work. She could see the six bags ranged in a circle about the table, could see Sarah taking small, precise stitches in the apron she was making for the third youngest Blake, could hear Kitty teasing them all, and Ruth trying to keep peace.

While between now and club time lay dusting, and mending, and lessons to get.

She was tired of being “good” and “behaving properly”! She might as well have been born Sarah Blake and done with it.

“Isn’t there anything new to do?” She turned imploring eyes to Alec. “Something exciting and out of the everlasting old rut!”

“What’s the use of asking him?” Boyd said. “He’s already made two suggestions.”

For a moment, Alec said nothing; then he got up. “May I have ten minutes—to make quite sure it is feasible in?”

Blue Bonnet’s face brightened. “Will it happen in ten minutes?”

“Happen, if it happens at all, it won’t happen until this afternoon. Come along, Boyd—there’ll be work enough for two.”

Blue Bonnet slipped from the porch railing to her291 feet. “Did you bring that horrid word in on purpose? And, Alec, you know, I can’t really ‘chuck’ the club—wouldn’t Aunt Lucinda love that word! It wouldn’t do.”

“Who wants you to?”

“Will the club be in it?”

“If I have to use a club to get them there!”

Boyd whistled softly; collectively, he did not find the “We are Seven’s” so interesting.

Ten minutes later, Blue Bonnet, down on her knees giving the final finish to the spindle legs of the oldest mahogany card table, heard Alec calling to her from one of the side windows. “All serene,” he said. “Mind, you show up at three o’clock, promptly! Take the side door and make straight for the attic! By the way, there’ll be supper afterwards. Norah’s grumbling beautifully about it right now.”

“And the club?” Blue Bonnet asked, joyfully.

“Boyd and I’ll look out for them. So long!”

Blue Bonnet flew to tell Grandmother the good news, cheerfully ignoring the fact that she and her work-basket had been for some time overdue up there.

“Do you suppose it’s charades?” she asked.

“Shall we two have a tableau now?” Grandmother suggested. “‘The Mending-hour’?”

“We played charades at the Doyles’ one night,” Blue Bonnet went on, as she settled herself in the292 low sewing-chair beside her grandmother. “They were lots of fun! This isn’t.” Blue Bonnet dropped the darning egg into the toe of a stocking rather impatiently. “It would be a whole lot easier just to run a draw string ’round the holes and tie them up.”

“Until you came to walking on them,” Mrs. Clyde laughed. “Careful, dear—remember, ‘the more haste, the less speed.’”

“That’s one of the things I never can remember; and that reminds me—Grandmother, I’ve never answered Carita Judson’s Christmas-box letter.”

“Then isn’t it about time you did?”

“Uncle Joe—when he’s away from the ranch—just wires every little while,—he says it saves time and trouble.”

“I hardly think I should adopt that plan with Carita, dear.”

“No, but I’ll write to her to-morrow afternoon, after I’ve written Uncle Cliff.”

Promptly at quarter to three the other members of the club appeared in a body, and the seven went across to the Trent’s side door, where several pairs of rubbers showed that they were not the first arrivals.

Up the two flights of stairs to the attic they hurried. “What are they doing!” Kitty exclaimed. “It sounds like steam rollers!”

293 “Who says we can’t go skating?” Alec laughed, coming to meet them, as they reached the head of the second flight.

“Alec!” Blue Bonnet cried, joyfully. “Oh, you are the cleverest boy!”

“Roller skating!” Kitty clapped her hands, delightedly. “That will be fun! Alec, Blue Bonnet’s right!”

A wide space had been cleared from end to end of the big attic, and the stairway opening protected by a line of trunks; over other trunks bits of curtain stuff had been thrown for seats; before the windows, Alec had fastened heavy draperies, shutting out the daylight, while from the rafters hung lighted Chinese lanterns, left over from some garden party.

“Isn’t it pretty!” Susy cried—“We never dreamed of anything like this!”

“Ladies’ Day at the new Trent Rink!” Boyd said. “We have made rather a tidy job of it, haven’t we?—considering what short notice we had.”

“Step this way, ladies—for your skates!” Billy Slade cried, from the corner where the table stood piled with skates.

“We’re all here now—so the party can begin,” Alec agreed.

“Just we girls and a boy apiece,” Debby was counting heads.

294 “But,” Blue Bonnet questioned, as Alec fastened her skates for her, “whatever made you think of it?”

“It was pretty well up to me to think of something—mighty quick; and I had an inward conviction that what you wanted was something with more or less movement to it.”

“One thing,” Billy Slade announced, one eye on Kitty,—“if anybody should dare anybody to go to the end of the pond, they could get back all right before—”

“Billy’s thinking of his supper already!” Kitty cut in; at which Billy, who certainly had a weakness in that direction, colored hotly, and immediately after, by way of adding to his ease of mind, sat down with more abruptness than grace.

“You don’t mean to say that you’re too faint to stand!” Kitty held out a mocking hand.

But Billy was not the only one to sit down in like fashion, poor Sarah being especially active in that line. Indeed, Kitty declared it made her positively dizzy, trying to decide whether Sarah was going down, or getting up.

“I—I’ve never had on roller skates before,” Sarah explained rather breathlessly, and the look in her eyes seemed to imply that she hoped never to have them on again.
“‘LADIES’ DAY AT THE TRENT RINK’ PROVED A THOROUGH SUCCESS.”

“But it’s fun—isn’t it?” Blue Bonnet caught her enthusiastically about the waist. “To think295 that, if it hadn’t been for Alec, we girls would have been sitting poked up over our work!”

This time, Sarah’s look implied that in her opinion there were worse ways of passing an afternoon than sitting comfortably around a bright fire with one’s sewing.

“I—” she began, then went down, taking Blue Bonnet with her.

“That’s right!” Kitty called, “just sit down together and talk it over,” and promptly followed their example, thanks to a gentle shove from Billy Slade.

But if there were frequent tumbles, there were no serious ones; as Debby put it, they fell to rise again.

“We’ll start a roller-skating club, and call ourselves the ‘Phoenix Club,’” one of the boys declared.

All in all, “Ladies’ Day at the Trent Rink” proved a thorough success. It proved, too, an excellent outlet for the superfluous energies of at least one member there.

“I don’t know when I’ve had such a good time, or been so tired!” Blue Bonnet confided to Amanda, as they sat resting on a low steamer trunk.

For the afternoon had been by no means confined to skating—in the exact sense of the word; everything which could be done on roller skates, and some—which, as it proved, could not,—had296 been tried. Tag, blind-man’s buff, hide and seek; and as the grand finale, the Virginia Reel, to the tune of Alec’s whistling.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Norah paused more than once in her work to wonder if the old house was coming down about her ears.

“Let’s do it every week!” Kitty urged, as they dropped down, breathless and happy, to take off their skates—while from below came the appetizing odor of hot chocolate.

“I’ve never seen you so beautifully untidy before in all my life, Sarah Blake,” Debby assured Sarah, as the girls went down to the best room to freshen up for supper.

“I am afraid we have been very boisterous,” Sarah said, soberly, “and yet—it has been rather enjoyable.”

“It’s a good thing the General wasn’t home,” Susy laughed; “though I suppose if he had been Alec wouldn’t have planned such a lively party.”

They had a picnic supper, instead of the regulation sit-down-to-the-table affair; fresh graham bread sandwiches, apple-pie and cheese, doughnuts, and the hot chocolate with whipped cream.

And the appetites!

“Sure ’tis a comfort to know none of you do be pinin’ like,” Norah laughed, as she refilled the sandwich plate for the third time.

297 “You shouldn’t make them so good,” one of the boys told her.

“And you should have seen how hard we worked,” Ruth added.

“I’m not sayin’ I’ve not been hearin’ you!” Norah retorted. She smiled to herself as she glanced at Alec’s face—the boy was a boy for sure nowadays,—thanks mainly to “that there” Blue Bonnet.

After supper, they told stories—not being inclined to anything more active in the way of amusement; and when presently the General appeared, he found his dining-room given up to a very contented set of young people.

“We’re having a beautiful time!” Blue Bonnet went to meet him. “Don’t you want to come tell stories, too? But it hasn’t been all story-telling.”

“And what has it all been?” General Trent asked, as Alec helped him off with his overcoat, and drew forward a chair.

“The Great and Only Trent Roller-Skating Rink opened its doors to the public this afternoon, sir,” Boyd explained.

“Isn’t that something new?” his grandfather asked.

“It had to be something new, sir; our neighbor,” Boyd glanced towards Blue Bonnet, “insisted upon that. I think we more than fulfilled expectations.298 But it was certainly impromptu. Wasn’t it, old chap?” he smiled good-naturedly at Alec.

“Rather,” Alec answered, dryly.

“Well! Well!” the General said. And Blue Bonnet felt that he was giving credit for the idea, where credit was not due; and that Boyd had meant him to.

“One would think——” she began.

Alec looked up quickly. “Have you any strength left for thinking?”

“Attention!” Boyd commanded. “General Trent has the floor. He is going to tell us a story.”

The General looked gratified, though he protested that his stories were all old. He liked to tell of those early days of his at West Point; but he had got out of the habit of speaking of them to Alec; he didn’t want the boy to feel how disappointed he was that he was not to be a West Pointer, too. Lately, however, since Boyd’s coming, he had been led more than once to draw upon his memories of cadet life. Boyd had suddenly decided that he should like to take his chance at being “General Trent” some day. “Someone ought to keep the old name up in the old line,” he explained to Alec, “and since it doesn’t appear to be your line, I may as well make it mine.”

And he listened, really interested now, to the stories his grandfather told, taking care not to hide299 his interest; conscious, as the General was, that Alec had drawn a little back from the circle of light thrown by the fire.

Blue Bonnet noticed it too, and forgot to listen with this new feeling of indignant sympathy crowding out all other ideas except the fear that Alec had overtired himself on her account. He had managed not to take too active a share in the afternoon’s merrymaking; all the same, she was afraid that it had proved rather too vigorous an affair for him.

“I don’t believe we will do it every week,” she said as they crossed the lawn together; “it might not be such fun again—second times are a bit risky—and I don’t want to spoil the thought of this.”

“Then the Trent Rink is to be a short-lived affair?”

“As far as I have any say about it.”

“It was opened in your honor, and it shall be clo............