Meg's behaviour that day had been irritating to the last degree. She began by insisting on the wrong side of the road, and before Professor Scattergood could emerge from the traffic of the town he had been threatened with legal proceedings by two policemen and cursed by several drivers of wheeled vehicles. Arrived in the open country, Meg spent her time in examining the fields on either side of the road, in the hope apparently of again discovering the Hunt; she would dart down every lane and through every open gate, and now and then would stop dead and gaze at the scenery in the most provoking manner. Coming to a blacksmith's shop with which she was acquainted, a desire for new shoes possessed her feminine soul, and, suddenly whisking round through the door of the shoeing shed, she knocked off the Professor's hat and almost decapitated him against the lintel. The Professor had not recovered from the shock of this incident when a black Berkshire pig that was being driven to market came in sight round a turn of the road. Meg, as became a highbred horse, positively refused to pass the unclean thing, or even to come within twenty yards of it. She snorted and pranced, reared and curveted, and was about to make a bolt for home when the pig-driver, who had considerately driven his charge into a field where it was out of sight, seized Meg's bridle and led her beyond the dangerous pass. "Meg, Meg," said the professor, as soon as they were alone and order had been restored--"Meg, Meg, this will never do. You and I will have to part company. I don't mind your _looking_ like Ethelberta, but I can't allow you to _act_ as she did. To be sure, Ethelberta broke my heart thirty-five years ago. But that is no reason why I should suffer _you_ to break my neck to-day. We'll go home, Meg, and I'll take an early opportunity of breaking off the engagement, just as I broke it off with Ethelberta--though, between you and me, Meg, I was a damned fool for doing it."