sighed. "Theory is one thing; practice is another.
We count without our antagonists. I forgot they will set their wits
against mine; and they are many, I am but one. And I have been so often
defeated. Do you know I have observed that whenever I say beforehand, Now
I am going to do something clever, I am always defeated. Pride really
goes before destruction, and vanity before a fall."

The female mind, rejecting all else, went like a needle's point at one
thing in this explanation. "Our antagonists?" said Helen, looking sadly
puzzled. "Why, what antagonists have we?"

"The messengers," said Hazel, with a groan. "The aerial messengers."

That did the business. Helen dropped the subject with almost ludicrous
haste; and, after a few commonplace observations, made a nice comfortable
dose of grog and bark for him. This she administered as an independent
transaction, and not at all by way of comment on his antagonists, the
aerial messengers.

It operated unkindly for her purpose; it did him so much good that he
lifted up his dejected head, and his eyes sparkled again, and he set to
work, and, by sunset, prepared two more bags of bladder with inscriptions
inside, and long tails of fine gut hanging. He then set to work, and,
with fingers far less adroit than hers, fastened another set of rushes
round the hoop. He set them less evenly, and some of them not quite
perpendicular; and, while he was fumbling over this, and examining the
effect with paternal glances, Helen's hazel eye dwelt on him with furtive
pity; for, to her, this girdle of rushes was now an instrument that bore
an ugly likeness to the scepter of straw, with which vanity run to seed
sways imaginary kingdoms in Bedlam or Bicetre.

And yet he was better. He walked about the cavern and conversed
charmingly; he was dictionary, essayist, _raconteur,_ anything she liked;
and, as she prudently avoided and ignored the one fatal topic, it was a
delightful evening. Her fingers were as busy as his tongue. And, when he
retired, she presented him with the fruits of a fortnight's work, a
glorious wrapper made of fleecy cotton inclosed in a plaited web of
flexible and silky grasses. He thanked her, and blessed her, and retired
for the night.

About midnight she awoke and felt uneasy. So she did what since his
illness she had done a score of times without his knowledge--she stole
from her lair to watch him.

She found him wrapped in her present, which gave her great pleasure