Hugh John set about his task of seeing Elizabeth Fortinbras in his own way. He chose his own time--a pleasant blowy afternoon when in all the vale of Edam there was nothing much doing. A sleepy place, Edam, on such a day--the morning calm, the forenoon disturbed only by a rattling red farm cart or two come in to bring meal and take back guano, then the afternoon drowned in the Lethe of a Scottish village in full summer-time. Hugh John looked in at the shop to inquire about the wasps. They had bothered Elizabeth a good deal at first, but Hugh John had devised traps with great ingenuity, though little success, before he thought of a hanging curtain of blue and green beads in the doorway which his father had brought back from Spain. It had lain in the garret ever since, and Hugh John simply appropriated it for the use of Elizabeth Fortinbras. But Butcher Donnan, returning to a waspless shop, was brought up standing on the threshold--his mouth agape, his eyes stocky in his head, and his hand mutely demanding explanations from "Mary-and-the-Saints." I think in her heart Elizabeth Fortinbras was a little afraid. Not only had no such article ever been seen in Edam, but it was out of the power of Edam and the Edamites to conceive such a thing as a door made of large blue and green beads, which they had to lift up and let down behind them, with the clashing of castanets before a play-acting booth. Happily Hugh John was there, sitting calmly in the back kitchen watching Mrs. Donnan making currant short-bread. "Hugh John!" Elizabeth Fortinbras called out, with, it must be owned, a little trouble in her voice. "Certainly; come in, Mr. Donnan!" said Hugh John courteously, running to hold the trickling, clicking curtain aside for the ex-butcher to pass. "A little curious till you get used to it, don't you think, Mr. Donnan? But it will stir Edam. It will draw custom, and--what I put it up for--keep out the wasps and bluebottles! Oh, yes, my father brought it from Spain. It is quite an ordinary thing there. Indeed, I got the idea from him." "But," said Butcher Donnan, slowly recovering his speech, "I must see your father about the price of it to-morrow--if I am to keep it." "My father--sell _that_?" said Hugh John, coldly surprised. "He would as soon eat it!" "But I can't take it from you, young master. It may be a valuable article." "Take it--who asked you to take it?" demanded Hugh John. "I gave it to Elizabeth Fortinbras myself as a present on the occasion of her adoption, and if you want her as a permanence, I am afraid you must take the bead curtain along with her!" "What, she has consented?" cried Butcher Donnan, forgetting everything. But Mrs. Donnan, who was listening, put the short-bread into the oven quickly, and came out. She had begun to learn the tones of Hugh John's voice. She understood at once.