They had been so fleet of foot, and had so doubled on the unknown, that, from this upper window, they had presently the satisfaction of seeing him come sauntering along the empty street, careless, indifferent, with dreamy eyes looking forward into vacancy, a man without a care. ‘He doesn’t look as if he minded our having given him the slip one little bit,’ said Daphne. ‘Why should he?’ asked the matter-of-fact Martha. ‘I daresay he was tired of carrying the basket.’ ‘Go your ways,’ said Daphne with a faint sigh, waving her hand at the vanishing figure. ‘Go your ways over mountain and sea, through wood and valley. This world is a big place, and it isn’t likely you and I will ever meet again.’ Then, turning to her companion with a sudden change of manner, she exclaimed: ‘Martha, I believe we have both made a monstrous mistake.’ ‘As how?’ asked Miss Dibb stupidly. ‘In taking him for a poor artist.’ ‘He looks like one.’ ‘Not he. There is nothing about him but his coat that looks poor, and he wears that as if it were purple and ermine. Did you notice his eye when he ordered us to change the conversation, an eye accustomed to look at inferiors? And there is a careless pride in his manner, like a man who believes that the world was made on purpose for him, yet doesn’t want to make any fuss about it. Then he is engaged to a rich lady, and he has been at a university. No, Martha, I am sure he is no wandering artist living on his pencil.’ ‘Then he must think all the worse of us,’ said Martha, solemnly. ‘What does it matter?’ asked Daphne, with a careless shrug. ‘We have seen the last of each other.’ ‘We can never be sure of that. One might meet him at a party.’ ‘I don’t think you will,’ said Daphne, faintly supercilious, ‘and the chances are ever so many to one against even my meeting him anywhere.’ Here Miss Toby burst into the room. She had been lying down in an adjacent chamber, resting her poor bilious head, when the girls came softly in, and had only just heard their voices. ‘Oh, you dreadful girls, what hours of torture you have caused me!’ she exclaimed. ‘I thought something must have happened.’ ‘Something did happen,’ said Daphne; whereupon Martha thought she was going to confess everything. ‘What?’ ‘A lizard.’ ‘Did it sting you?’ ‘No; it darted away when I looked at it. A lovely glittering green thing. I wish I could tame one and wear it for a necklace. And I nearly fell off a rock; and I tried hard to paint the valley, and made a most dismal failure. But the view from the hill is positively delicious, Toby dear, and the rocks are wonderful; huge masses of granite tumbled about among the trees anyhow, as if Titans had been pelting one another. It’s altogether lovely. You must go with us to-morrow, Toby love.’ Miss Toby, diverted from her intention to scold, shook her head despondingly.