But at that moment there was a cheerful bark, and that inconsistent dog was curveting around him, its tall thumping wildly against his trousers in an ecstasy of recognition. So he was too late, he thought with a strange heart-sinking; knowing its rearguard habit. He pushed it away with his foot. If the beast thought he was going to carry it again, it was jolly well mistaken. No more cart-chasing for him. His “following time” was over. And as the creature persisted in gambolling round his legs, he made a swish in the air with his stick to drive it on its way, and it uttered a fearsome yell; it being part of Nip’s slyness to cry before he was hurt. But for once Nip was not a laggard, but an advance courier, and Fate brought Methusalem round the corner at the exact instant of his yell. “How dare you strike my dog?” It was an inauspicious reunion. Jinny had checked Methusalem, and her grey eyes were blazing down from their dark lashes; her face framed in its bonnet glowed like a dark flower, and he was confusedly aware that that lonely hamlet’s high-street was suddenly pullulating with people—the tapster and gapers at the inn door, the ploughman looking backwards, excited at last, the little children mysteriously out again with their mother, and other mothers and infants (in arms or at skirt) surging agitatedly from nowhere, whether at Nip’s cry or Jinny’s. Even the pump seemed to have spouted an old man, while an old lady arose, like an ancient Venus, from the pond. And every eye, he felt, was stabbing at the maltreator of Jinny’s animal; the cackle seemed a sinister clamour as of vengeance mounting from that swarm of sympathizers. “I didn’t strike him,” he answered sulkily. Clearly she had not recognized him—a position not without its advantages. Doubtless the raw youth of her childish memories was effectually buried beneath this manly form, set off by the elegant London suit, this well-barbered head, and the face that had exchanged freckles for the stamp of experience. “As a matter of fact,” he added, “I fed the brute at the inn.” “Which brute?” retorted Jinny sharply. But at this moment Nip, who had been calmly lapping the dregs of the pool, intervened by leaping up to lick Will’s hand. “I beg your pardon,” she murmured, coming to a standstill. “Granted,” he said, not to be outdone in graciousness, and beginning to enjoy the advantage her ignorance of his identity gave him. “But that’s no proof I haven’t beaten him. You remember the saying: _A woman, a dog, and a walnut-tree,_ _The more you beat them, the better they be._” “That’s all nonsense,” said Jinny, bridling up again. He changed the subject quickly. “Have you got a drumstick?” “Gracious! Do you want to try?” He laughed. “It’s for the drum at the show. Miss Flippance thinks you didn’t deliver it.” “Why, it was tied on the drum. The fool of a man must have dropped it—if he hasn’t poked it inside the drum. Did you look under the benches?”