an effect? For the face of the speaker had been ashen.

This helped matters beautifully.

"Ah, mynheer," Hans hurried to say, "from the first start I felt stiff and strange on my feet. I was well out of it so long as I had no chance of winning."

Peter looked rather distressed.

"We may hold different opinions here. That part of the business troubles me. It is too late to mend it now, but it would be really a kindness to me if--"

The rest of Peter's speech was uttered so confidentially that I cannot record it. Enough to say, Hans soon started back in dismay, and Peter, looking very much ashamed, stammered out something to the effect that he would keep them, since he won the race, but it was "all wrong."

Here Van Mounen coughed, as if to remind Peter that lecture hour was approaching fast. At the same moment Ben laid something upon the table.

"Ah," exclaimed Peter, "I forgot my other errand. Your sister ran off so quickly today that Madame van Gleck had no opportunity to give her the case for her skates."

"S-s-t!" said Dame Brinker, shaking her head reproachfully at Gretel. "She was a very rude girl, I'm sure." Secretly she was thinking that very few women had such a fine little daughter."