The old gentleman laid his hand on Jack's shoulder and hobbled stiffly away, pausing just one moment to lift his hat and say courteously-- "My best thanks to you, madam, for your assistance." Jill and the pretty lady were left standing in the middle of the pavement, staring curiously into each other's faces. The pretty lady was dark, and quite young, astonishingly young, like a big girl dressed in important clothes. Her eyes were very bright and happy-looking, and her lips looked as though they were made for laughter. Jill's pert little face was left fully exposed by the cloth cap which was perched at the top of her curly locks; her expression was divided between triumph and consternation. "Do you think he is hurt, really hurt?" she asked eagerly. "He made a great fuss, but men generally do, and he walks nearly as well as before. He can't have broken anything, can he?" "Oh no!" cried the pretty lady. "I think you can be quite sure of that, but at such an age any shock of this kind may be serious. He is a very heavy old man." She paused, looking at the girl with an inquiring expression, as if waiting for something which had not yet been said, and to her own astonishment Jill found herself answering the unspoken question. "It was our fault that he fell at all. We did it. We were in the Square hiding behind the bushes, and we had a parcel just the right size to hold something nice and pretty--it was cotton-wool really!--very neatly tied up. We dropped it out through the railings and waited till people came along, and then we twitched it away by the end of a long black thread." The pretty lady's expression changed suddenly. Up till now she had been all interest and vivacity, almost one might have imagined of approval, but at the last word she frowned and shook her head. Jill expected a vigorous remonstrance, but the words, when they came, were not in the least what she had expected. "Thread!" echoed the pretty lady shrilly. "But how stupid! Elastic is far better. It jerks ever so much bet--" She stopped suddenly with a gasp of recollection, and continued in a stiff, mincing voice, "It is very unwise to play practical jokes. One can never tell what the consequence may be." Jill laughed gaily, being much too sharp to be put off with so transparent a pretence. She drew a step nearer to the pretty lady, and looked up in her face with twinkling eyes. "Oh, it's no use pretending! You weren't shocked a bit! I believe"-- she gave a little gasp at the audacity of the idea, but her courage did not fail--"I believe you have even--done it yourself. However did you manage to think of elastic? It's a lovely idea!" The pretty lady wrinkled her brows in a funny, apologetic fashion.