But this same Butcher Donnan being now driver and salesman-out-of-doors, and Mrs. Donnan equally busy in the kitchen, it was obvious that some one must be found for the shop. How _I_ should have loved the job! But a certain Eben Dickson, apprentice with Nipper at the down town business, was called in, and so thoroughly proved his liking for the place in the course of a single afternoon that a more permanent and less appreciative successor was sought for. Eben was laid up for several days, owing to an accident which happened to him when Butcher Donnan returned from his journeyings afield. It is understood that Nipper also remonstrated with him, without, however, the use of many words. The van had therefore to be put out of commission for several days till another arrangement was possible. And again it was Hugh John who, with his eyelids half closed and looking at the bright landscape through the long three-draw telescope, cut the knot with a carelessly breathed suggestion. "_Why not ask Elizabeth Fortinbras?_" "They would never dare!" said I. "Old Fortinbras thinks himself no end of a swell!" "Yes," said Hugh John, with tranquil irony, "he has failed in at least four businesses--last of all in a stamp-shop at East Dene, while the Donnans have only succeeded in one--and are on the point of making another fortune in the second. But let them ask Elizabeth. She will not say 'no'!" "What of her mother?" I said--"her father?" "Her mother cannot support her--her father won't. In six months she will have to support them both!" said the philosophic Hugh John. "You ask Lizzie. Lizzie is a sensible girl." I asked Hugh John how he knew. "Oh, just--I know!" he answered shortly. And in another than Hugh John I should have suspected something. Because, you know, Elizabeth Fortinbras is a very pretty girl--not beautiful, but with a freshness and charm that does far better, a laugh that is hung on a hair-trigger; not much education, of course, because her stupid old frump of a mother--yes, I can say it, though Lizzie would not--has never permitted her to be long away from her, but must be served like a duchess in her room on pretext of headaches and megrims. Being without a servant, she leaves Elizabeth to do all the housework, and all that she knows she has learned from the books I have lent her--and, as I now begin to suspect, Hugh John also. "And where _is_ Elizabeth?" I said, for I saw the three-draw glass hovering in the neighborhood of the Fortinbras Cottage. "Why, where should she be?" cried Hugh John. "At this hour of Monday morning she will certainly be hanging out the week's wash! There, put your eye down, don't stir the telescope, and you will see her. Also her sister Matilda sitting under a tree doing nothing but reading the latest story her mother has got out of the library!" Hugh John's grasp of detail was something marvelous.