“Get out with ’ee, do!” cried Mrs. Hardy, further relieving her lacerated feelings by making a swoop at him with the market-basket. Jim, however, pushed past her, and making a sudden dart at his supplanter, endeavoured to knock the picturesque hat from his head. But the yeoman was too quick for him: stepping swiftly to one side he allowed his assailant’s blow to expend itself on the empty air, and then closing with him, tripped him up and laid him neatly on his back in the miry road. “Good trick that, ain’t it?” he inquired pleasantly over his shoulder as he pursued his way. “Picked it up from the Lancashires.” Jim lay half stunned for a moment and then struggled up, foaming at the mouth. He would have rushed in pursuit of his adversary, but that before he was fairly on his feet his mother fell upon him, market-basket and all, and held him firmly embraced until the tantalising sound of Trooper Willcocks’ cheery whistle died away in the distance. “Well, I tell you what it is,” grumbled the hapless lover, when he had at last extricated himself. “We’ll have a try at that there image to-night, or my name bain’t Jim Hardy.” That evening accordingly, when the rheumatic old father had been hustled off to bed, and the younger members of the family disposed of for the night, Jim confronted his mother, holding a large slab of bees’ wax in his hand. “Where be the pins?” he asked in a fierce whisper. “Lard, it do make I go all flittery-twittery—folks do tell such tales! If ’twarn’t for sayin’ the words, I wouldn’t so much mind. But there—the notion do make I go quite cold down the back.” Meanwhile Jim, kneeling in front of the fire, had melted the wax sufficiently to make it malleable, and now began to knead and mould it. “Here be his legs,” he muttered to himself, “and now we must make thiccy hat stick out.” With a kind of groan his mother went over to a chest of drawers in a corner of the room, and after fumbling for some time returned with a paper of pins. “It be very nigh ready,” whispered Jim working away. “Ugh! I’d like to smash the cheeky face of ’en.” And with that he gave a fierce poke at the small knob which did duty for the gallant yeoman’s countenance. The figure being completed Mrs. Hardy bent downwards handing Jim the pins one by one; her son viciously proceeding to insert as many as the effigy would hold, and beginning by driving a particularly large and crooked one into the middle of its chest. The blazing logs threw large grotesque shadows of the stooping forms of the mother and son upon walls and ceiling, and when presently Jim held out the bristling little image at arm’s length, its fantastic reproduction, naturally much magnified, did indeed appear to bear some weird resemblance to the person whom it was meant to represent. “Now then, Mother, say the words,” ordered Jim, as he set down the figure on the hearth. “Lard, I dursn’t!” whimpered Mrs. Hardy. “Say ’em yourself; I don’t wish the poor young man no ’arm.”