Emilia. "It must have been his own handkerchief!"

"You have achieved the discovery," quoth Wilfrid. "He dropped it there
overnight, and found it just as you were passing in the morning."

"That must be impossible," said Emilia, and dismissed the subject
forthwith, in a feminine power of resolve to be blind to it.

"I am afraid," she took up her narrative, "my father is sometimes really
almost mad. He does such things! I had walked under this gentleman's
umbrella to the bridge between the park and the gardens with the sheep,
and beautiful flowers in beds. In an instant my father came up right in
our faces. He caught hold of my left hand. I thought he wanted to shake
it, for he imitates English ways at times, even with us at home, and
shakes our hands when he comes in. But he swung me round. He stood
looking angrily at this gentleman, and cried 'Yes! yes!' to every word he
spoke. The gentleman bowed to me, and asked me to take his umbrella; but
I was afraid to; and my father came to me,--oh, Madonna, think of what he
did! I saw that his pockets were very big. He snatched out potatoes, and
began throwing them as hard as he could throw them at the gentleman, and
struck him with some of them. He threw nine large potatoes! I begged him
to think of our dinner; but he cried "Yes! it is our dinner we give to
your head, vagabond!" in his English. I could not help running up to the
gentleman to beg for his pardon. He told me not to cry, and put some
potatoes he had been picking up all into my hand. They were muddy, but he
wiped them first; and he said it was not the first time he had stood
fire, and then said good-bye; and I slipped the potatoes into my pocket
immediately, thankful that they were not wasted. My father pulled me away
roughly from the laughing and staring people on the bridge. But I knew
the potatoes were only bruised. Even three potatoes will prevent you from
starving. They were very fine ones, for I always took care to buy them
good. When I reached home--"

Wilfrid had risen, and was yawning with a desperate grimace. He bade her
continue, and pitched back heavily into his seat.

"When I reached home and could be alone with my mother, she told me my
father had been out watching me the day before, and that he had filled
his pockets that morning. She thought he was going to walk out in the
country and get people on the road to cook them for him. That is what he
has done when he was miserable,--to make himself qui