It was the usual episode of the big bully, whom most public-schoolboys run up against sooner or later, and Chissleton was three years older and a good head taller than Jim. But Jim had the long years of the flats, and all the benefit of Mr. Eager's scientific fisticuffs, behind him. They fought ten rounds, each of which left Jim on the grass, his face a jelly daubed with blood, and his eyes so nearly closed up that it was only when the bulky Chissleton was clear against the sky that he could see him at all. But bulk tells both ways, and loses its wind chasing a small boy about even a circumscribed ring, and knocking him flat ten times only to find him dancing about next round, as gamely as ever, though somewhat dilapidated and unpleasant to look upon. So Jim wore the big one down by degrees, and in the eleventh round his time came. He hurled himself on the dim bulk between him and the sky with such headlong fury that both went down with a crash. But Jim was up in a moment daubing more blood over his face with the backs of his fists, and the big one lay still till long after the pæans of the small boys had died away into an interested silence. "But didn't it hurt dreadfully, Jim?" asked Gracie, long afterwards, with pitifully twisted face. "Sho! I d'n know. It was the very best fight I ever had." The Little Lady found the days without the boys long and slow, in spite of her close friendship with Margaret Herapath. Meg was everything a girl could possibly be. She was sweet, she was lovely, she was clever, she was a darling dear, she was splendid. She was an angel, she was a duck. She was Lady Margaret, she was dear old Meggums. And never a day passed but she was at the cottage or Gracie was over at Knoyle. They rode and walked and bathed and read together. They slept together at times, and talked half through the night because the days were not long enough for the innumerable confidences that had to pass between them. And Eager rejoiced in their close communion, for he had never met any girl whose friendship he would have so desired for Gracie. And he went about his duties, storming and persuading, fighting and tending, with new fires in his heart which shone out of his eyes, and his people all acknowledged that he was "a rare good un," even when he was scarifying them about manure-heaps and stinks, which they suffered as tolerantly as they did his vehemence, and as though such a thing as typhus had never been known in the land. And what times they all had when the holidays came round! A little shyness, of course, at first, while the various parties took stock of the changes in one another. For Gracie was growing so tall--"quite the young lady," as Mrs. Jex said; and such a change from the fellows at school, as Jack and Jim acknowledged to themselves. Girls--as girls--were somewhat looked down upon at school, you know. But this was Gracie, and quite a different thing altogether.