Hugh John set about his task of seeing Elizabeth Fortinbras in his own way. He chose his own time—a pleasant blowy afternoon when in all the vale of Edam there was nothing much doing. A sleepy place, Edam, on such a day—the morning calm, the forenoon disturbed only by a rattling red farm cart or two come in to bring meal and take back guano, then the afternoon drowned in the Lethe of a Scottish village in full summer-time. Hugh John looked in at the shop to inquire about the wasps. They had bothered Elizabeth a good deal at first, but Hugh John had devised traps with great ingenuity, though little success, before he thought of a hanging curtain of blue and green beads in the doorway which his father had brought back from Spain. It had lain in the garret ever since, and Hugh John simply appropriated it for the use of Elizabeth Fortinbras.

But Butcher Donnan, returning to a waspless shop, was brought up standing on the threshold—his mouth agape, his eyes stocky in his head, and his hand mutely demanding explanations from "Mary-and-the-Saints."

I think in her heart Elizabeth Fortinbras was a little afraid. Not only had no such article ever been seen in Edam, but it was out of the power of Edam and the Edamites to conceive such a thing as a door made of large blue and green beads, which they had to lift up and let down behind them, with the clashing of castanets before a play-acting booth.

Happily Hugh John was there, sitting calmly in the back kitchen watching Mrs. Donnan making currant short-bread.

"Hugh John!" Elizabeth Fortinbras called out, with, it must be owned, a little trouble in her voice.

"Certainly; come in, Mr. Donnan!" said Hugh John courteously, running to hold the trickling, clicking curtain aside for the ex-butcher to pass. "A little curious till you get used to it, don't you think, Mr. Donnan? But it will stir Edam. It will draw custom, and—what I put it up for—keep out the wasps and bluebottles! Oh, yes, my father brought it from Spain. It is quite an ordinary thing there. Indeed, I got the idea from him."

"But," said Butcher Donnan, slowly recovering his speech, "I must see your father about the price of it to-morrow—if I am to keep it."

"My father—sell that?" said Hugh John, coldly surprised. "He would as soon eat it!"

"But I can't take it from you, young master. It may be a valuable article."

"Take it—who asked you to take it?" demanded Hugh John. "I gave it to Elizabeth Fortinbras myself as a present on the occasion of her adoption, and if you want her as a permanence, I am afraid you must take the bead curtain along with her!"

"What, she has consented?" cried Butcher Donnan, forgetting everything.

But Mrs. Donnan, who was listening, put the short-bread into the oven quickly, and came out. She had begun to learn the tones of Hugh John's voice. She understood at once.

"My daughter!" she cried, and, opening wide her arms, kissed her. Butcher Donnan paused a moment, uncertain, and then, nudging his wife: "I ought to, I know," he said, "but just you do it for me—the first time." So Mrs. Donnan kissed Elizabeth again, and the Butcher wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, as if he had just had something good to drink. Then they looked about for Hugh John to make him share in the family joy, but that young gentleman, guessing ahead something of their intention, had disappeared with his usual thoroughness and absence of fuss. Some recognition from Elizabeth, privately bestowed, he was in no way averse to, the time being dusky and the place far from the haunts of men. But at mid-afternoon, opposite the railway station, and behind a green and blue bead curtain to which Edam had not yet awakened—on the whole, it is small wonder that Hugh John decided upon the better part of valor.

Safe in his cave on the hillside, he wiped his heated brow and congratulated himself on his escape. Perhaps he would not have rejoiced quite so much had he known that Sir Toady, entering at that moment in quest of gratuitous toffee scrapings, found himself at once heir to all the affection which was really his brother's due. Sir Toady accepted such things as they came in his way, much as a cat drinks from stray cream-jugs, but without giving particular thanks for them. His motto, slightly changed from the rhyming proverb, was ever—