"It _would_ look like all Dublin Castle and Sackville Street!" said Mrs. Donnan, visibly flinching as her own inner eye built up the green figs, and decorated the epergne with the leaves that had proved so useful early in the history of the world. "Well," I answered, taking my leave, "Hugh John and I will be round about four to see if it is as fine as you say." "It will be finer," cried Mrs. Donnan eagerly; "I have got another idea entirely since I set eyes on it." But after all it was the deft hands of Elizabeth Fortinbras which decorated our long-condemned and dusty epergne. She polished it, she set it on foot again as good as new, mingling the tawny-red-bitten oak-leaves and acorns with the deep green figs, and making the thing a joy, if not for ever, at least for as long as it remained in Mrs. Donnan's window. This, however, was not for long. For Fuz--yes, the very old Fuz as ever was--coming home from a tramp with his eyes apparently mooning, but really registering everything as remorselessly as a calculating machine marshals figures, spied the green figs in Mrs. Donnan's window. Hardly in Edam was there any one else, at that date, who so much as knew what they were. He saw. He admired. There was a little dinner at our house that night to which just a couple of neighbors were coming. The idea of a surprise germinated in the mind of Fuz, and he came home the happy possessor of his own epergne, with the green and yellow leaves cinturing it round! Poor Mrs. Donnan dared not say a word, and as for Elizabeth, it was not her business. Moreover, she had far too great a sense of the ridiculous. You see, Fuz carried his own parcel off, with his invariable remark that "it is a proud horse that will not carry his own corn!" Nothing like Fuz's pride that night! Nothing more knowing than the smiles of the initiated! Only Hugh John did not consider it "quite the square thing," and obstinately refused to attend the banquet, which, however, passed off very well without him. Fuz became quite poetic over his new acquisition. To find such a thing in Edam! These cherubs' heads now! Just look at them. They reminded him of--I think, something in the Cathedral at Florence which you had to strike matches to see--little cublets squirming about a font or something. He had quite forgotten having ordered the identical thing into the ignominy of a dungeon for obscuring the prospect. Now it was the finest piece of "Dresden" he had ever set eyes upon. And he promised--if I were a good girl--to give it to me as a wedding present. That is Fuz all over. He says he is Scotch, but his part of Scotland is so near Ireland that (according to the best authorities) Saint Patrick swam across with his head between his teeth. Perhaps Fuz did too. But don't tell Hugh John that I said so.