He could not help it, and often laughed about it with comic frankness.

Here now was a sample of it, for he had just been thinking that Rose had better defer her run till the wind went down and the sun was warmer.

But Aunt Myra spoke, and he could not resist the temptation to make light of her advice, and let Rose brave the cold.

He had no fear of its harming her, for she went out every day, and it was a great satisfaction to him to see her run down the avenue a minute afterward, with her skates on her arm, looking like a rosy-faced Esquimaux in her seal-skin suit, as she smiled at Aunt Myra stalking along as solemnly as a crow.
"I hope the child won't stay out long, for this wind is enough to chill the marrow in younger bones than Myra's," thought Dr.Alec, half an hour later, as he drove toward the city to see the few patients he had consented to take for old acquaintance' sake.
The thought returned several times that morning, for it was truly a bitter day, and, in spite of his bear-skin coat, the Doctor shivered.
But he had great faith in Rose's good sense, and it never occurred to him that she was making a little Casabianca of herself, with the difference of freezing instead of burning at her post.
You see, Mac had made an appointment to meet her at a certain spot, and have a grand skating bout as soon as the few lessons he was allowed were over.

She had promised to wait for him, and did so with a faithfulness that cost her dear, because Mac forgot his appointment when the lessons were done, and became absorbed in a chemical experiment, till a general combustion of gases drove him out of his laboratory.