"My dear Musichetta," said Joly, his voice muffled by three thick scarves, "are you quite sure this is a very good idea?"
"Of course I am," she replied, putting three pairs of skating blades into various of his overcoat pockets. "It will be great fun."
"It will be wet and freezing!" he protested. "We shall all catch colds!"
"If we do, then we'll get over them sitting by the fire together with nice cups of hot chocolate."
"But pneumonia!" Joly cried. "Influenza! All manner of—mmmph!"
Bossuet entered the room as Musichetta's lips insistently sought out Joly's, rendering him quite breathless.
"There," she said, as she pulled away from the kiss. "Now, stop that kind of talk and be cheerful, you understand? Ah, Bossuet. You are coming, of course?"
"Yes," he said, buttoning up his old overcoat. "But I must warn you both—or perhaps you can guess—my balance is no better on a pair of metal blades than it is ordinarily. If I manage to fall through the ice, Joly, you must promise not to take on about how quickly I'm going to die. I'd rather not be told."
When they had arrived, Joly courteously fixed Musichetta's skates onto her little boots, then went over to keep Bossuet from mangling the ties that fastened his. When he had pulled on his own, still muttering a little under his breath about the perils of cold and snow, Musichetta took him by one hand and Bossuet by the other, and they tottered onto the ice.
Musichetta was a very graceful skater; Joly could see at once why she had wanted to come. She nearly danced on the ice. He himself managed to stay upright and move along without much difficulty, while Bossuet had to use Joly's cane to balance and propel himself.
Before long, Musichetta was pulling Joly along after her, and they attained a speed Bossuet could not hope to match. He bumbled about by himself, bumping into people and laughing, even taking a few tumbles—after one of them, a rather pretty young girl helped him up and smiled at him, but she glided off before he could make her acquaintance or even properly thank her. Still, despite the mishaps, real disaster did not strike until he was back at Joly's side, at which point Lady Luck graciously allowed him to find the one spot of thin ice in the whole area.
The point of his left skate broke through, and as he slid desperately away with his right leg, the left went crashing in. Joly, shouting his name, caught hold of his arm and tugged with all his might as the ice cracked and cracked—and stopped.
Bossuet's leg was submerged, but the ice he sat on was solid.
This realized, he burst into laughter as he pulled himself up, with Joly's help, and floundered back to shore. "I knew this was an awful idea," Joly was crying, "I knew it! You are going to have pneumonia; you are going to have frostbite and gangrene; you are going to be sneezing and coughing and sore-throated for months; you are going to die, Bossuet, because you went ice skating! Here, take my scarves—we must keep you warm—though I doubt it'll do much good, soaked through as you are. Merciful heavens, have we ever had such a disaster?"
"Every day," muttered Bossuet through chattering teeth, "every day."
"We shouldn't have come!" Joly shouted, as Musichetta came to support Bossuet on the other side.
"Hush, mon joli," said Musichetta, laughingly. "Must I really shut you up in public?"
