Miranda was thirteen years old, and she lived in the next house. She was Peter's best friend. They had soon discovered that their ideas as to a good game were similar, and for many years they had played inseparably. Already Mrs. Paragon and Mrs. Smith had decided to open a way through the wall that divided the two gardens. To-day this breach in the wall had been filled in by Miranda with packing-cases and an old chair. Miranda stood beside her defences of the breach with sword and shield on the summit of a wall less than nine inches across. At the wall's foot was Peter. He was his favourite hero--Shakespeare's fifth Henry. "How yet resolves the governor of the town? This is the latest parle we will admit." The moment had come for Miranda to descend from the wall and deliver the keys of the city. But Miranda this morning refused the usual programme. Peter, hearing that the text of Shakespeare would not on this occasion be followed, resolved that none of the horrors of war should be spared. He came to the attack with a battering-ram. "Saint George! Saint George!" he shouted, and the ram rushed forward. "France! France!" Miranda screamed, and unexpectedly emptied a pail of cold water upon Peter's head. Peter left the ram and swiftly retreated. Both parties were by this time lost to respect of consequences. Into Peter's mind there suddenly intruded Shakespeare's vision of himself. "... And at his heels, Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire Crouch for employment." Fire! Obviously this was the retort. Nothing in the world burns so fiercely as a well-dried bundle of straw. Within half a minute of the match there was literally a roar of flame, ascending into the crevices of Miranda's breach. She rushed into the smoke, swayed, and leaped blindly into her father's marrow-bed. Her father's marrows had been tenderly nursed to the threshold of perfection. It was a portion of his routine to come into the garden after breakfast to inspect, feel, weigh in his hands, and liberally to discourse upon marrows. But nothing at that moment could sober Miranda. She did not care. Peter was for the moment awed into inaction by a fire which burned more rapidly than he had intended; but he climbed at last upon the wall, saw Miranda prone among the marrows, and, surging with conquest, leaped furiously upon her. Peter was more complicated than Miranda. Miranda did not yet know that she had ruined her father's marrows. She was mercifully made to feel and to know one thing at a time; and at this moment she felt that the only thing in the world that mattered was to kill Peter.