"I've always been just dilletentytating about till now, but I could work. I've just woke up. Wait till I've got a chance with the money I've got." "But you haven't got much money!" "I've got enough to take a chance with, some sort of a chance. I'd find a chance. I'll do that anyhow. I'll go away. I mean what I say--I'll stop trifling and shirking. If I don't come back it won't matter. If I do----" Her expression had become uneasy. Suddenly she bent down towards him. "Don't!" she said in an undertone. "Don't--what?" "Don't go on like this! You're different! Go on being the knight who wants to kiss my hand as his--what did you call it?" The ghost of a smile curved her face. "Gurdrum!" "But----!" Then through a pause they both stared at each other, listening. A muffled tumult on the other side of the wall asserted itself. "Shut _up_, Rosie!" said a voice. "I tell you I will see! I can't half hear. Give me a leg up!" "You Idiot! He'll see you. You're spoiling everything." The bottom dropped out of Mr. Polly's world. He felt as people must feel who are going to faint. "You've got someone--" he said aghast. She found life inexpressible to Mr. Polly. She addressed some unseen hearers. "You filthy little Beasts!" she cried with a sharp note of agony in her voice, and swung herself back over the wall and vanished. There was a squeal of pain and fear, and a swift, fierce altercation. For a couple of seconds he stood agape. Then a wild resolve to confirm his worst sense of what was on the other side of the wall made him seize a log, put it against the stones, clutch the parapet with insecure fingers, and lug himself to a momentary balance on the wall. Romance and his goddess had vanished. A red-haired girl with a pigtail was wringing the wrist of a schoolfellow who shrieked with pain and cried: "Mercy! mercy! Ooo! Christabel!" "You idiot!" cried Christabel. "You giggling Idiot!" Two other young ladies made off through the beech trees from this outburst of savagery. Then the grip of Mr. Polly's fingers gave, and he hit his chin against the stones and slipped clumsily to the ground again, scraping his cheek against the wall and hurting his shin against the log by which he had reached the top. Just for a moment he crouched against the wall. He swore, staggered to the pile of logs and sat down. He remained very still for some time, with his lips pressed together. "Fool," he said at last; "you Blithering Fool!" and began to rub his shin as though he had just discovered its bruises. Afterwards he found his face was wet with blood--which was none the less red stuff from the heart because it came from slight abrasions. Chapter the Sixth Miriam I