He was absent from the village about three hours, and during that short period all manner of things had happened. The Yellow Leaf had often noted with regret that a strong leading incident rarely occurred in Highfield; but, when one did take place, it was almost sure to be accompanied by another, to the great confusion of the inhabitants who were compelled to discuss two incidents at the same time. The first, and by far the most startling, incident took place quite early in the afternoon. Nellie had gone into Miss Yard's bedroom to look up some mending, and presently seated herself beside the window which overlooked the village street. That letter from Sidney worried her, but the knowledge of his loose principles troubled her far more. She remembered the words of his defence, indeed there was nothing much about him she had forgotten, as her memory was much better than Miss Yard's; and still she could not decide whether to answer the letter or to ignore it; whether to meet him once more or to let him go; whether to go on thinking of him--but that she had to do; or to hate him--though she couldn't. "It's a dreary outlook," she murmured. "Little work and no love makes me a dull maid. I'm alone in the world, and somebody loves me, but he's a bad somebody. And another somebody is willing to marry me, but he's a silly old somebody. And I want the bad somebody." "Hook it!" shrieked a parrot from the garden, addressing a bumblebee which was threatening to enter its cage. "Polly gives me advice," she murmured. "Hook it! Hook George, and pour out rivers of tea, and put on his slippers in respectable humility. No, thankye, Poll! I won't hook it. I'll fish for something better, else, when Miss Sophy dies, I must find another job, and go on jobbing it," she whispered, looking into the glass, "until I don't look anything like so saucy as I'm doing now." "Nellie, where be to?" called the equally saucy parrot. "Here she be!" answered the girl from the window. "Her's going to write to the bad somebody, and her's going to meet him, and her's going to be a soft dafty little vule and believe his nonsense." While she spoke a rumbling of wheels heralded the approach of the incident, which had already occurred with disastrous results along the more important reaches of the street. Nellie remained at the open window out of curiosity until the incident, which was of no importance to her at the moment, became revealed in the form of a young and pretty girl, gazing about in a highly interested fashion as she swept past in an open wagonette; a beautifully dressed young lady, certainly no more than eighteen, who looked quite capable of travelling round the world without an escort. "Whoever can she be?" Nellie murmured, as she went towards her own room, to get that letter written before she changed her mind again.