"Never mind about M--iss Con-stan-ti-a's," she said, making the word as long as she could--she was mad now and patting the short, stiff heather with her little bronze boot; "attend to me, if you please. And so you think my eyes are the colour of brown paint; is that the best you can do?" I thought a while, and she kept glaring up at me till I felt like a hen with its beak to a chalk line--I forget the word--something you are when you go on a platform and do silly things the man tells you. So, hoping she would stop, I said at last, "Well, perhaps they are more shiny, like brown paint--varnished." But this didn't please her either. Indeed, it was difficult to please Harriet Caw at all. She said that I was twice as stupid as a cow, and asked where I had lived all my life. "In Breckonside," I said, but I added that I had often been with my father at East Dene. And once I had crossed the ferry all by myself and spent Easter Monday at Thoisby itself. "Humph," she said, wrinkling up her nose with great contempt. "I suppose that you have never even heard of London." I told her "Yes, of course." And that I could tell her the number of its inhabitants. But this she didn't seem to think clever, or, indeed, to care about at all. She only said, "Are all country boys as stupid as you are?" To be called a boy like that made me angry, and I ran after her, determined to pay her out. I was going to show her that country boys could just be as sharp as there was any need for. But quick as I was, this city girl was quicker, and she slipped across the road almost at the very place where we had found the last traces of poor Harry Foster. She dived among the underbrush by the stile, and I lost sight of her altogether. But the next moment I heard a cry. You had better believe I wasted no time till I got there. I ran, opening a good, stout clasp knife that father had given me--or, if not "given" exactly, had seen me with, and not taken away from me. It comes to the same thing. Well, just a little away across a green glade, all pine needles and sun dapplings, stood Mad Jeremy, and he had Harriet Caw by the arm. I went at him as fast as I could--which was a silly thing to do, for, of course, with his strength he could have done me up in two ticks of a clock. Only, as mostly happens when one does fine things, it was all over before I thought. [Illustration: "Just a little way across a green glade--stood Mad Jeremy--he had Harriett Caw by the hand."] But when Mad Jeremy saw me, or, perhaps, before (I do not want to take credit for anything that isn't my due), he let go of Harriet Caw, saying just "She isn't the pretty one! What is she doing here?" And with a skip and a jump he was gone. That is, so far as I could see.