It was at the stile at the entrance into the High Wood that I found them. Elizabeth Fortinbras was seated on the top spar nursing her knees, and sucking the sorrel stems which Hugh John handed up one by one. They never looked at one another, but I saw in a moment (trust a girl!) that I would interrupt their talk. Just fancy _me_ playing gooseberry! No, thank you, kind sir, she said! Besides, I knew very well that Elizabeth did not consult her father--and her mother was not worth consulting. There remained only Hugh John. Of course she could have asked me, but what girl would have taken my advice when she could get Hugh John's? I don't know what they said--of course not. I did not ask. But what I _do_ know is that Elizabeth and Hugh John talked just as he and I would have done when taking counsel together up in the Cave or at the Feudal Tower. Sir Toady was better advised than to attempt to make fun, and though the Grown-ups might lift their eyebrows, even they had confidence in Hugh John. Sometimes they asked his advice themselves--though I never heard of their going so far as to take it. Grown-ups, to my thinking, get narrow-minded. Perhaps Hugh John will too some day. But now at least he always just sees the one thing to do, and does it--the one thing another ought to do, and tells him of it. Well, he never went to the new confectionery shop. He would pass it without lifting an eyelid--though I will wager that each time he did so Elizabeth Fortinbras saw him--and Hugh John knew that she did. And each was the happier for the knowledge. To me Elizabeth's determination seemed to brighten all that part of Edam. It was quite near our house, only just outside the gates. Behind the counter Elizabeth made a slender figure in black and white. Black dress well fitting, a present from Mrs. Donnan, large turn-back cuffs, and a broad Eton collar. It was no wonder that the business throve--I mean the business which was under the charge of Elizabeth Fortinbras. The other "down town" suffered exceedingly. You see, Nipper Donnan could not be in two places at the one time. And he found he had innumerable occasions to consult his father, or to have something mended by his mother. He could not possibly obtain the information or the reparations down town. Hence he spent much of his time hanging about the new confectionery shop opposite the Market hill. He became learned in the semophore signaling of the trains on the two little railways which diverged at Edam Junction. These he explained to Elizabeth. His step-mother secretly encouraged him. Nothing would have pleased her better than for Nipper to "settle down" with such a daughter-in-law. But she knew, perhaps better than his own mother would have done, that this strong, incult, fighting Nipper had little chance with a girl like Elizabeth Fortinbras, whose chief friend and confidant was a certain gray-eyed lad with a perpendicular frown of thought between his brows.