"MY SWEET CHILD,--Do take pity on my poor boy, and cheer him up with a sight of you; for he is so _triste_ it breaks my heart to see him. He has a new plan in his head, which strikes me as an excellent one, if you will only favor it. Let him come and take you for a drive this fine afternoon, and talk things over. It will do him a world of good and deeply oblige
Rose read the note twice, and stood a moment pondering, with her eyes absently fixed on the little bay before her window. The sight of several black figures moving briskly to and fro across its frozen surface seemed to suggest a mode of escape from the drive she dreaded in more ways than one. "That will be safer and pleasanter," she said, and going to her desk wrote her answer.
"DEAR AUNTY,--I'm afraid of Brutus; but, if Charlie will go skating with me, I should enjoy it very much, and it would do us both good. I can listen to the new plan with an undivided mind there; so give him my love, please, and say I shall expect him at three.
Punctually at three, Charlie appeared with his skates over his arm, and a very contented face, which brightened wonderfully as Rose came downstairs in a seal-skin suit and scarlet skirt, so like the one she wore years ago that he involuntarily exclaimed as he took her skates,--
"You look so like little Rose I hardly know you; and it seems so like old times I feel sixteen again."
"That is just the way one ought to feel such a day as this. Now let us be off and have a good spin before any one comes. There are only a few children there now; but it is Saturday, you know, and everybody will be out before long," answered Rose, carefully putting on her mittens as she talked: for her heart was not as light as the one little Rose carried under the brown jacket; and the boy of sixteen never looked at her with the love and longing she read in the eyes of the young man before her.
Away they went, and were soon almost as merry and warm as the children round them; for the ice was in good condition, the February sunshine brilliant, and the keen wind set their blood a-tingle with a healthful glow.
"Now tell me the plan your mother spoke of," began Rose, as they went gliding across the wide expanse before them; for Charlie seemed to have forgotten every thing but the bliss of having her all to himself for a little while.