"Hum!" said Hugh John, after a minute's thought, "if I were you I should get rid of the whole indoor crowd, and work the business myself for a month or two, with a couple of 'prentices _and_ the toe of my boot!" Hugh John's eyes were distant, grave, thoughtful--Nipper's little, black, and virulent with suppressed anger. But the Thinker had grown man of action also, and Nipper felt no security that he could win a victory against Hugh John even with his fists. As to the mind, he felt instinctively the grip of his master. _That_ was not to be gainsaid. "Yes," he said, jerking out his words like leaden pellets on a table, "I suppose that _is_ the plan. I will fire the whole lot this very night!" Hugh John nodded quietly. "It will be best!" he said, and the advice once given, his mind would have passed to another question had not Nipper recalled him suspiciously. "Has my father not been speaking to you?" he growled ungraciously. "Your father? No, not that I remember!" said Hugh John, staring in wonder. "Nor my--Mrs. Donnan, I mean?" "Never spoke to her in my life, I believe--Sis has, though!" "_Nor Elizabeth?_" Nipper's eyes were like gimlets now, but the calm serenity in those of Hugh John baffled them. "Elizabeth Fortinbras? Oh, yes," said Hugh John tranquilly, "when she wants to ask me about anything--as you are doing now--then she speaks to me." "_Is that all?_" Nipper's face worked. His lips were bitten so close that the words had almost to force themselves between the clenched teeth. Hugh John regarded him a moment gravely, as he did all things, with gaze unhurried, undismayed. Then he put his hands in his pockets and turned his back on Nipper with only the words, "Enough for you to know, anyway!" And if ever Nipper came near striking any one a dastardly blow from behind, it was Hugh John who was in danger and at that moment. XII FIGS AND FIG-LEAVES _September 23. And my Age still going Sixteen._ It was the week before Hugh John went to college that what I am going to tell took place. September is almost always nice about Edam--with the corn standing white in stooks all down the valley, waving blonde half-way up the sides of the wide glen, and looking over into it from the heights of Kingside still as green as grass. Yes, in our part September is wonderfully quiet and windless--generally, that is. Yet withal, there is the stir of harvest about the farm-town, the merry whirr of the "reaper" over the hedge, and always the clatter of voices as the workers go homeward in the twilight. The big scythe is now only used about our house for "opening up" a field. After that the horses pull the red-and-blue "McCormick" round as neatly as a toy. The squares get less and the yellow stooks rise, as it were, out of the very ground.