“Ah, that’s true. And a good hand at a pen, I suppose?” “I can scratch what I want.” “Ah!” He fell silent. “You don’t play the piano?” he asked after a pause. “No,” said Jinny. “Only the horn.” And she blew gaily upon it: whereupon to her surprise and satisfaction—for she had forgotten him, and it was necessary to tie him up against the sheep—Nip appeared, tearing from the rear. Farmer Gale watched musingly the operation of confining him to his basket by one of those pieces of hoop-borne rope that had excited the speculation of Mr. Elijah Skindle. “I suppose you could play a polka on it,” he remarked. Jinny obliged with a few bars of the “Buy a Broom.” “If you had a piano,” he observed with growing admiration, “I expect you’d soon learn to play it on that.” Jinny shook her head. “I shall never have the time. There’s the goats, and the garden, and Gran’fer, and Methusalem——” “Nearly all g’s,” laughed Farmer Gale, exhilarated by his own erudition. “And isn’t Methusalem a gee?” flashed Jinny, and exhilarated him further by her prodigious wit. They were both smiling broadly as, just outside the market, they came upon Will leaning against a lime-tree, a pipe between his teeth and a darkness palpable on his forehead despite its “ginger” aureola. Jinny’s smile died and her heart thumped. Instantaneously she decided that as the farmer had seen them together at “The Black Sheep,” to ignore Will absolutely would be to betray their quarrel to the world. “Fine morning!” she cried as the vehicles passed. Will sullenly touched his hat.