Her own little white teeth flashed out in a mocking smile: “Lucky you are going to buy me another pair!” “Me! Why, you wouldn’t let me when I offered.” “Of course not. I’m thinking of the pair you’ll be owing me.” “Owing you?” “You don’t suppose you’ll win the wager, do you?” “Oh, that!” He was disconcerted again. “Of course I’ll win it,” he said defiantly in a bombastic burst. “It won’t take me a day’s practice to blow down the walls of Jericho.” She laughed. “So you do remember your Bible. Well, I’ll be satisfied if you blow Nip back from a rabbit.” “We shall see. Have you superscribed again?” he asked pompously, assured of his accuracy this time. “Not yet—I expect the horn’ll be at Chipstone by Tuesday—you shall have it the same evening.” “And the next day I’ll be wanting gloves,” he said loftily. “We shall see—or rather hear. What size do you take, though?” “Oh, I don’t know—twice yours, I suppose.” “Oh, not twice!” “Why, sure!” And he suddenly prisoned her little ungloved hand between his brawny palms. “I could easily crush it,” he said, with a strange desire to do so, pressing it indeed almost to hurting-point. At that instant a far-palpitating blueness transfigured the courtyard, and from above-stairs came a terrific racket as if all the plates and dishes in the dining-room were hurling themselves at one another. Will felt the girl’s fingers curl spasmodically round his and hold them tight: her face went white, and he seemed to hear her heart thumping. “Don’t be frightened!” he said, with his first manly satisfaction in her. Surely she was clinging to him for protection. “That’ll be a fireball down the chimney,” she observed with disappointing coolness. “There was one came down last year in Long Bradmarsh and killed a poor little chimney-sweep who had got stuck in the flue. It’ll set the chimney on fire, I expect.” “This rain will put it out,” he said, still cheerfully conscious of her warm fingers, and feeling a joy in the deluge that had been so damp in his father’s company. She drew back, however, into the passage to avoid the big plopping and ricochetting rain-drops and her hand got disentangled. “What fun if it’s fallen down Mr. Flippance’s chimney,” she laughed. “Make him get up early.” Her laughter seemed to ring untrue, hysterical. “Isn’t he up yet?” he asked, trying to speak lightly. “Oh, he never gets up on a Sunday—not properly, I mean. I saw him half up, but he’s gone back to bed and is already snoring—I heard him.” “But how could you hear him?” he asked, with careful carelessness. “Oh, I was in his daughter’s room, whiling away the time of waiting—she’s got ten times his sense—when, woke up by our voices, I suppose, in he trails through the communicating door in his fancy dressing-gown, yawning like a mouse-trap, and asks me to buy him a horse at the fair.”