The Winds of Chance Part 45

"I'm--too rattled, I suppose. I'm not accustomed to flying girls.

Never had them rain down on me out of the heavens."

The girl's face grew sober. "You're entirely to blame," she cried, angrily. "I was getting it beautifully until you showed up. You popped right out of the ground. What are you doing in the Queen's Park, anyhow? You've no business at the royal sports."

"I didn't mean to trespa.s.s."

"I think I'll call the guards."

"Call the court physician and make sure--"

"Pshaw! I'm not hurt." Ignoring his extended hand, she scrambled to her feet and brushed herself again. Evidently the queenly anger was short-lived, for she was beaming again, and in a tone that was boyishly intimate she explained:

"I'd made three dandy jumps and was going higher each time, but the sight of you upset me. Think of being upset by a perfectly strange man. Shows lack of social training, doesn't it? It's a wonder I didn't break a skee."

Pierce glanced apprehensively at the bluff overhead. "Hadn't we better move out of the way?" he inquired. "If the royal family comes dropping in, we'll be ironed out like a couple of handkerchiefs. I don't want to feel the divine right of the king, or his left, either."

"There isn't any king-nor any royal family. I'm just the Queen of Pretend."

"You're skee-jumping, alone? Is that what you mean?"

The girl nodded.

"Isn't that a dangerous way to amuse self? I thought skees were-- tricky."

"Have you ever ridden them?" the girl inquired, quickly.

"Never."

"You don't know what fun is. Here--" The speaker stooped and detached her feet from the straps. "Just have a go at it." Pierce protested, but she insisted in a business-like way. "They're long ones--too long for me. They'll just suit you."

"Really, I don't care to--"

"Oh yes, you do. You must."

"You'll be sorry," Pierce solemnly warned her. "When my feet glance off and leave me sticking up in the snow to starve, you'll- -Say! I can think of a lot of things I want to do, but I don't seem to find skee-jumping on the list."

"You needn't jump right away." Determination was in the girl's tone; there was a dancing light of malice in her eyes. "You can practise a bit. Remember, you laughed at me."

"Nothing of the sort. I was amazed, not amused. I thought I'd flushed a very magnificent pheasant with blue-and-white stripes, and I was afraid it was going to fly away before I got a good look at it. Now, then--"He slowly finished buckling the runners to his feet and looked up interrogatively. "What are your Majesty's orders?"

"Walk around. Slide down the hill."

"What on?"

The girl smothered a laugh and waved him away. She looked on while he set off with more or less caution. When he managed to maintain an upright position despite the antics of his skees her face expressed genuine disappointment.

"It's not so hard as I thought it would be," he soon announced, triumphantly. "A little awkward at first, but--" he cast an eye up at the bank. "You never know what you can do until you try."

"You've been skeeing before," she accused him, reproachfully.

"Never."

"Then you pick it up wonderfully. Try a jump."

Her mocking invitation spurred him to make the effort, so he removed the skees and waded a short distance up the hill. When he had secured his feet in position for a second time he called down:

"I'm going to let go and trust to Providence. Look out."

"The same to you," she cried. "You're wonderful, but--men can do anything, can't they?"

There was nothing graceful, nothing of the free abandon of the practised skee-runner in Pierce's att.i.tude; he crouched apelike, with his muscles set to maintain an equilibrium, and this much he succeeded in doing--until he reached the jumping, off place. At that point, however, gravity, which he had successfully defied, wreaked vengeance upon him; it suddenly reached forth and made him its vindictive toy. He pawed, he fought, he appeared to be climbing an invisible rope. With a mighty flop he landed flat upon his back, uttering a loud and dismayed grunt as his breath left him. When he had dug himself out he found that the girl, too, was breathless. She was rocking in silent ecstasy, she hugged herself gleefully, and there were tears in her eyes.

"I'm--so--sorry!" she exclaimed, in a thin, small voice. "Did you- -trip over something?"

The young man grinned. "Not at all. I was afraid of a sprained ankle, so I hit on my head. We meet on common ground, as it were."

Once again he climbed the grade, once again he skidded downward, once again he went sprawling. Nor were his subsequent attempts more successful. After a final ignominious failure he sat where he had fetched up and ruefully took stock of the damage he had done himself. Seriously he announced:

"I was mistaken. Women are ent.i.tled to vote--they're ent.i.tled to anything. I've learned something else, too--Mr. Newton's interesting little theory is all wrong; falling bodies travel sixteen miles, not sixteen feet, the first second."

The girl demanded her skees, and, without rising, Pierce surrendered them; then he looked on admiringly while she attached them to her feet and went zigzagging up the hill to a point much higher than the one from which he had dared to venture. She made a very pretty picture, he acknowledged, for she was vivid with youth and color. She was lithe and strong and confident, too; she was vibrant with the healthy vigor of the out-of-doors.

She descended with a terrific rush, and this time she took the air with grace and certainty. She cleared a very respectable distance and ricocheted safely down the landing-slope.

Pierce applauded her with enthusiasm. "Beautiful! My sincere congratulations, O Bounding Fawn!"

"That's the best I've done," she crowed. "You put me on my mettle.

Now you try it again."

Pierce did try again; he tried manfully, but with a humiliating lack of success. He was puffing and blowing, his face was wet with perspiration, he had lost all count of time, when his companion finally announced it was time for her to be going.

"You're not very fit, are you?" said she.

Pierce colored uncomfortably. "Not very," he confessed. He was relieved when she did not ask the reason for his lack of fitness.

Just why he experienced such relief he hardly knew, but suddenly he felt no great pride in himself nor in the life that had brought him to such a state of flabbiness. Nor did he care to have this girl know who or what he was. Plainly she was one of those "nice people" at whom Laure and the other denizens of the Rialto were wont to sneer with open contempt; probably that was why he had never chanced to meet her. He felt cheated because they had not met, for she was the sort of girl he had known at home, the sort who believed in things and in whom he believed. Despite all his recently acquired wisdom, in this short hour she had made him over into a boy again, and somehow or other the experience was agreeable. Never had he seen a girl so cool, so candid, so refres.h.i.+ngly unconscious and unaffected as this one. She was as limpid as a pool of glacier water; her placidity, he imagined, had never been stirred, and in that fact lay much of her fascination.

With her skees slung over her shoulder, the girl strode along beside Phillips, talking freely on various topics, but with no disposition to chatter. Her mind was alert, inquisitive, and yet she had that thoughtful gravity of youth, wisdom coming to life.

That Pierce had made a good impression upon her she implied at parting by voicing a sincere hope that they would meet again very soon.

"Perhaps I'll see you at the next dance," she suggested.

"Dance!" The word struck Pierce unpleasantly.

"Sat.u.r.day night, at the Barracks."

"I'd love to come," he declared.

"Do. They're loads of fun. All the nice people go."