'Oh, it's holiday time, and the boarders can't hear. There's Mr.
Dutton's door!'

This might in one way be a relief to Miss Nugent, but she did not
like being caught upon the wall, and therefore made a rapid descent,
though not without a moment's entanglement of skirt, which delayed
her long enough to show where she had been, as Mr. Dutton was at the
same moment advancing to his own wall on the opposite side of the
Nugent garden. Perhaps he would have pretended to see nothing but
for Nuttie's cry of glee.

'You wicked elf,' said Miss Mary, 'to inveigle people into
predicaments, and then go shouting ho! ho! ho! like Robin Goodfellow
himself.'

'You should have kept your elevation and dignity like me,' retorted
Ursula; 'and then you would have had the pleasure of seeing Mr.
Dutton climbing his wall and coming to our feet.'

'Mischievous elves deserve no good news,' said Mr. Dutton, who was by
no means so venerable that the crossing the wall was any effort or
compromise of dignity, and who had by this time joined Mary on her
grass plat.

'Oh, what is it! Are we to go to Monks Horton?' cried Nuttie.

'Here is a gracious permission from Lord Kirkaldy, the only
stipulations being that no vestiges of the meal, such as sandwich
papers or gooseberry skins, be left on the grass; and that nobody