“What is the owner of this Fine Thing to do?” she repeated. “She must bite an inch off a stick,” responded the pupil-teacher, with a delighted giggle. The owner of the forfeit, a peculiarly stolid-looking child, came slowly up to redeem her pledge, and, after a mystified but determined attempt to obey the mandate literally, was duly initiated into the proper and innocuous manner of accomplishing it. Then the performance was resumed. “Here’s a Fine Thing and a very Fine Thing; and what must the owner of this very Fine Thing do?” chanted the schoolmistress. “Is it a boy or a girl?” asked the blindfolded oracle. “Boy,” responded the schoolmistress. “Then he must bow to the wittiest, kneel to the prettiest, and kiss the one he loves best.” A little round-faced urchin came forward to claim his cap, and, after much prompting and not a little pushing, was induced to carry out the prescribed programme. He duly pulled a forelock to the pupil-teacher, bent his knee to a small person with a necklace and a profusion of corkscrew ringlets, and bestowed a careless salute on the chubby cheek of a smaller and still more round-faced female edition of himself--evidently a sister. “Well, I’m dalled!” said the postman. “Them children ha’n’t got no eyes in their heads.” And with that he stepped back from the hedge, hitched up his bag a little higher on his shoulder, and strode off towards Branston. The next day at the same hour Ruby Damory, the schoolmistress, was standing on the threshold of the schoolhouse with a copybook in her hand. She sometimes lingered after school had broken up and the pupil-teacher had made things tidy and betaken herself homewards, to look over the children’s exercises before returning to her lodgings; and as the interior of the house was close and stuffy she preferred to accomplish this task in the porch. The school-yard was as dusty and bleak as such places usually are; but by some strange chance the rose-tree which was trained over the porch remained uninjured by the constant passing of little feet and contact of little persons. It grew luxuriantly, and its clustering blossoms formed a pretty setting to the slim figure which stood propped against the wall beneath. All at once Ruby raised her eyes from her book; a rapid step was advancing along the footpath from the direction of Riverton; over the irregular line of hedge she could see a straw hat set at a knowing angle on a head of bright red hair. It was the new postman from Chudbury--she had seen him go past that morning before she had yet left her room. Now he was opposite the schoolhouse gate, but instead of passing it he stood still, wheeled about with military precision, and took off his hat with a flourish. “I bow to the wittiest,” said Postman Chris. Then, before she had time either to respond or to turn away, he was marching on again, and soon disappeared behind the tall hedge on the other side of the school precincts.