"Not see him! Why, he is a big one, a monster! Michael," says Lilian, reproachfully, "you are growing either stupid or short-sighted, and I didn't expect it from you. Now follow the tip of my finger; look right along it now—now"—with growing excitement, "don't you see it?"
"I do, I do," says the old man, enthusiastically; "wait till I get 'en—won't I pay him off!"
"Is it a plum you want?" asks Guy, who has come up behind her, and is lost in wonder at what he considers is her excitement about the fruit. "Shall I get it for you?"
"A plum! no, it is a snail I want," says Lilian eagerly, "but I can't get at it. Oh, that I had been born five inches taller! Ronaldson, you are not tall enough; Sir Guy will catch him."
Sir Guy, having brought a huge snail to the ground, presents him gravely to Lilian.
"That is the twenty-third we have caught to-day," says she, "and twenty-nine yesterday,—in all forty-eight. Isn't it, Michael?"
"I think it makes fifty-two," suggests Sir Guy, deferentially.
"Does it? Well, it makes no difference," says Miss Chesney, with a fine disregard of arithmetic; "at all events, either way, it is a tremendous number. I'm sure I don't know where they come from,"—despairingly,—"unless they all walk back again during the night."
"And I wouldn't wonder too," says Michael, sotto voce.
"Walk back again!" repeats Guy, amazed. "Don't you kill them?"