That was a bad day. I hope never to revisit Dundale. The field, which began dry and short-grassed at the top of the slope, was every bit as deep and damp by the time it got down to the corner we were obliged to camp in because of the wind as the meadow by the Medway had been. We had the hedge between us (theoretically) and the wind, but the wind took no notice of the hedge. Also we had a black-looking brook of sluggish movement sunk deep below some alders and brambles at our side, and infested, it appeared, with a virulent species of fly or other animal, for while we were wondering (at least I was) what we were going to do to pass the hours before bed time, and what (if any) supper there would be, and reflecting (at least I was) on the depressing size and greenness of the field and on the way the threatening clouds hung lower and lower over our heads, the fledgling Jumps appeared, struggling up from the brook through the blackberry bushes, and crying that she had been stung by some beast or beasts unknown, flung herself down on the grass and immediately began to swell. Everybody was in consternation, and I must say so was I, for I have never seen anything to equal the rapidity of her swelling. Her face and hands even as she lay there became covered with large red, raised blotches, and judging from her incoherent remarks the same thing was happening over the rest of her. It occurred to me that if she could not soon be stopped from further swelling the very worst thing might be anticipated, and I expressed my fears to Menzies-Legh. “Nonsense,” said he, quite sharply; but I overlooked it because he was obviously in his heart thinking the same thing. They got her into the Ilsa and put her, I was informed, to bed; and presently, just as I was expecting to be scattered with the other gentlemen in all directions in search of a doctor, Mrs. Menzies-Legh appeared in the doorway and said that Jumps had been able to gasp out, between her wild scratchings, that when anything stung her she always swelled, and the only thing to do was to let her scratch undisturbed until such time as she should contract to her ordinary size again. Immensely relieved, for a search for a doctor in hedges and ditches would surely have been a thing of little profit and much fatigue, I sat down in one of the only three chairs that were at all comfortable and spent the rest of the afternoon in fitful argument with Jellaby as he came and went, and in sustained, and not, I trust, unsuccessful efforts to establish my friendship with Lord Sigismund on such a footing that an invitation to meet his Serene Aunt, the Princess of Grossburg-Niederhausen, would be the harmonious result. The ladies were busied devising methods for the more rapid relief of the unhappy and still obstinately swollen fledgling. There was no supper except ginger-biscuits. “You can’t expect it,” said Edelgard, when I asked her (very distantly) about it, “with sickness in the house.”