It was a weary time, and a mockery for any one to call "holidays," especially after such a noble summer and autumn. But it cleared after Hugh John had been a week or two at college. During the wet weather I often went into the shop to see Elizabeth Fortinbras. I could now, you see, because Nipper Donnan was not always there. More than once, however, I encountered his father, Butcher Donnan, who went about smiling and rubbing his hands--as if _he_ had stopped the whole business. Of course I let him think so. For it is no good setting Grown-ups right. They always know better. Well, and do you know, every time I went Elizabeth asked all about Hugh John, and if I had heard from him. At first I thought, as, of course, any girl would, that Elizabeth was only foxing to take me in. But afterwards I found out that they really did not write to one another. She owned, though, to having kissed him good-by. But that was only on account of his split lip and what he had done about Nipper. Hugh John's explanation of his silence, given later, was that there were no sorrel stalks near the college, and that if Elizabeth really wanted anything, he knew that she would write and ask him. Now, on the face of it, you would never believe this. It simply could not be, you would say. Yet it was. Even Nipper, who held out longest, ended by believing it. I, who had a sneaking liking for a love-story, of any sort, was secretly disappointed. Mrs. Donnan could not move in her kitchen for Nipper, who came home early now to talk to Meg Linwood. Have you ever noticed that when any one has got a back-set in love, or what they think is love, they are quite apt to fly off at a tangent, and marry the least likely person in the world? To the common eye, no one could have been less likely to engage Nipper's attention--with his lost love still in the front shop--than Meg Linwood in the back. She was plump, rotund, rosy, where Elizabeth Fortinbras was slender, willowy, like Diana in the pictures and statues of her in the old _Art Journals_ and _Illustrated London News_ of the Exhibition year--I mean 1851. (As a child I always liked those volumes. There were such a lot of pictures in them, and so little reading.) But it was lost labor advising Nipper Donnan. He would show Elizabeth Fortinbras what she had missed. He would have the finest shop, the best meat, the most regularly paid monthly accounts, the biggest, squarest stone house with stables for the smartest trap to drive out his wife in. And then Elizabeth would awake to her folly. But too late! Too late! Elizabeth's goose was cooked. Nipper avoided the first outbreak of parental wrath by running off with Meg Linwood, and Mrs. Donnan consoled her husband by her usual reflection that all was for the best. There are, indeed, very few things breakable about a butcher's shop, and if Meg had stayed at New Erin Villa, a complete set of crockery would have been required at an early date.