Clara just then came up.

’Ah, you are going out!  Do come with us into the park, will you?  You haven’t to go anywhere.  My husband has taken a half-holiday on purpose to skate.  Reckless man!  He says you don’t get skating weather like this every day.  Can you skate?’

Thyrza shook her head, smiling.

’No more can I. Harold wants to teach me, but it seems absurd to bruise oneself all over, and make oneself ridiculous too, to learn an amusement you can’t practise once in five years.  But do come with us.  It really is nice to watch them skating.’

‘Yes, I will come, gladly,’ Thyrza said.

And so they went to the ice in Regent’s Park, and Mr. Emerson put on his skates, and was speedily exhibiting his skill amid the gliding crowd.  Clara and her companion walked along the edge.  Thyrza, regarding this assembly of people who had come forth to enjoy themselves, marvelled inwardly.  It was so hard to understand how any one could enter with such seriousness into mere amusement.  How many happy people the world contained!  Of all this black-coated swarm, not one with a trouble that could not be flung away at the summons of a hard frost!  They sped about as if on wings, they shouted to friends, they had catastrophes and laughed aloud over them.  And, as she looked on, the scene grew so unreal that it frightened her.  These did not seem to be human beings.  How came it that they were exempt from the sorrow that goes about the world, blighting lives and breaking hearts?  Or was it she that lived in a dream, while these were really awake?  She was not sorrowful now, but light-hearted pastime such as this was unintelligible to her.

Clara chatted and ran, and thoroughly enjoyed herself.  At one spot she came at length to a pause, having lost sight of her husband, fretting that she could not find him.  Her eye discovered him at length, however, and just as she spoke her satisfaction she was surprised by a laugh from Thyrza—­a real laugh, sweet and clear as it used to be.

‘What is it?’ she asked in wonder.

‘Oh, look!  Do look!’

Just before them, on the ice, a little troop of ducks was going by, fowl dispossessed of their wonted swimming-ground by the all-hardening frost.  Of every two steps the waddlers took, one was a hopeless slip, and the spectacle presented by the unhappy birds in their effort to get along at a good round pace was ludicrous beyond resistance.  They sprawled and fell, they staggered up again with indignant wagging of head and tail, they rushed forward only to slip more desperately; now one leg failed them, now the other, now both at once.  And all the time they kept up a cackle of annoyance; they looked about them with foolish eyes of amazement and indignation; they wondered, doubtless, what the world was coming to, when an honest duck’s piece of water was suddenly stolen from him, and he was subjected to insult on the top of injury.