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"I felt so uneasy, that I was just going to send Ralph in search of you, when you got home." After that day it required considerable coaxing to induce Tiger to go upon the boys' skating-ground.
A narrow river wound like a silver thread through the landscape. Groups of trees on either bank bent over as if to see themselves reflected in the rapid stream. At one point a dam had been built across from bank to bank, above which the river widened and deepened, affording an excellent skating-ground for the boys in the cold days of December and January. A whirring noise was heard.
A still burlier Prussian from Tübingen, however, appeared at last, and so carved our valiant borderer's face, that thereafter with its criss-cross scars it looked like a well-frequented skating-ground. Football, too, in America probably kills and maims more in a year than all the German duels.
As a matter of fact the ice is generally dead and lacking in that elasticity and spring which is characteristic of our English ice. It is too thick for elasticity, though the surface is beautifully kept and scientifically treated with a view to skating wherever a space is flooded or an acre or two of the Neva's broad bosom is reclaimed to make a skating-ground.
It happened I went to the skating-ground alone at midday; mingling with the crowd I saw Nadenka go up to the ice-hill and look about for me . . . then she timidly mounted the steps. . . . She was frightened of going alone oh, how frightened! She was white as the snow, she was trembling, she went as though to the scaffold, but she went, she went without looking back, resolutely.
Very soon, every thing was ready, and they started for the scene of operations, eager for their work, Oliver and Rollo drawing the sled, and Nathan and Franco following on behind. When they arrived near the pond, Oliver pointed to a little mound, not far from the edge of the water, which overlooked the principal skating-ground of the village boys in winter.
He went towards the mounds, whence came the clank of the chains of sledges as they slipped down or were dragged up, the rumble of the sliding sledges, and the sounds of merry voices. He walked on a few steps, and the skating-ground lay open before his eyes, and at once, amidst all the skaters, he knew her. He knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized on his heart.
He walked along the path towards the skating-ground, and kept saying to himself "You mustn't be excited, you must be calm. What's the matter with you? What do you want? Be quiet, stupid," he conjured his heart. And the more he tried to compose himself, the more breathless he found himself. An acquaintance met him and called him by his name, but Levin did not even recognize him.
"In our country, the boy's career is often a series of skirmishes with society. He wants to skate, and contrives ingeniously to dam the course of a brook and flood a meadow which makes a splendid skating-ground. Great is the joy for a season, and great the skating. But the water floods the neighboring cellars. The boys are cursed through all the moods and tenses, boys are such a plague!
You lie awake till midnight, crying, and don't know yourself what you are crying for. . . ." "We must walk about the skating-ground before it gets dark," said the governor's wife, who was bored with listening. "Who's coming with me?" The governor's wife went out and the whole company trooped out of the pavilion after her. Only the governor, the bishop, and the mayor remained.
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