The treachery of his own private legs was most disheartening, for they wavered and wobbled deplorably, now threatening to cross each other, now veering alarmingly wide of his body.

He made a feebly desperate attempt to use his trail-pole; and the next second all that Geraldine could see of the episode was mercifully enveloped in a spouting pinwheel of snow.
Like all masculine neophytes, he picked himself up and came back, savagely confident in his humiliation.

She tried to guide his first toddling ski-steps, but he was mad all through and would have his own way.

With a set and mirthless smile, again and again he gave himself to the slope and the mercy of his insurgent legs, and at length, bearing heavily on his trail-pole, managed to reach the level below without capsizing.
She praised him warmly, rescued his wool gloves and cap from snowy furrows into which their owner had angrily but helplessly dived; and then she stepped into her skis and ascended the hill beside him with that long-limbed, graceful, swinging stride which he had ventured to believe might become him also.
He said hopelessly: "If you expect me to hunt wild boar with you on skis, there'll be some wild and widely distributed shooting in this county.

How can I hit a boar while describing unwilling ellipses in mid-air or how can I run away from one while I'm sticking nose down in a snow-drift ?" Too faint with laughter to reply, she stood leaning on her trailing-pole and looking over his shoulder as he repitched his sketching easel, squeezed the colours from the leaden tubes, and set his palette.
"I'm horribly hungry," he grumbled; "too hungry to make a decent sketch.
How cold is it, anyway?
I believe that this paint is trying to freeze on my palette!" "What are you going to paint ?" she asked, her rounded chin resting on his shoulder.
"That frozen brook." He looked around at her, hesitating; and she laughed and nodded her comprehension.
"You want to make a sketch of me, dear.