And the Little Lady struggled mistily into her things behind Jim's back, and then sat down alongside him without speaking. "Doesn't hurt a bit," said Jim, through clenched teeth and whitened lips. The Little Lady sniffed and looked at the distant sea. "Tell you it doesn't hurt," said Jim again. The Little Lady made no response. And presently--"Whew!" said Jim, with a frightful twist of the face, trying by instinct the other tack, "ah!--o-o-oh!"--but all to no purpose. The Little Lady's soft heart might be wrung, but at present she could not bring herself to speak to this dreadful sinner. "Now," said Eager, running up. "Stand up, Jim. Put your arms round my neck. Now your feet up, so, and off we go. I must get old Bent to make sandals for you youngsters. We can't have this kind of thing, you know. It'll be ten days before you can use that foot, old man." "Damn!" "Jim!" And the Little Lady fell solemnly into the rear. She would not speak to him for two whole days, though she did not mind sitting within sight of him in the side of a sand-hill, and she silently allowed him to instruct her in the art of making sand waterfalls. But the current of her usual merry chatter was frozen at the fount, and the unconscious Jim could make nothing of it. On the third day, tiring of an abstinence that was quite as irksome to herself as to her victim, she broke the ice by informing him of the painful fact that he was doomed to everlasting punishment. She put it very shortly and concisely. "Jim," she said, "you'll go to hell." "Um?" chirped Jim cheerfully, glad to hear her voice once more, even at such a price. "An' why?" "'Cause you swear." "Ho! Very well! So will HE"--the emphatic use of the third person singular in the boys' vernacular was always understood to stand for Sir Denzil Carron of Carne--"and so will Kennet, and so will Dr. Yool." "I don't care about any of them," said Grace impartially, "unless, perhaps, Dr. Yool. I do rather like him. But it will be such a pity for you." The prospect did not seem to trouble him greatly, perhaps because his views on the subject were not nearly so clearly defined as hers. "Oh, well, I won't if you don't like," he answered cheerfully. "Thank you," said the Little Lady; and from that time, simply to oblige her, and from no great fear of direr consequences, he really did seem to do his best to avoid the use of any words which might offend her. He even went so far as to assume an oversight of his brother's rhetorical flights, and many a pitched battle they had in consequence.