Her reply was a laugh which irritated Jerry exceedingly.

“Well, I’m here,” she said; “what are you going to do about it?”

“Do about it?” Jerry advanced two or three paces and stood looking down at her.  In our first conversation he told me that she seemed absurdly small, quite too insignificant to be so impudent.  In our second conversation I elicited the fact that he thought her skin smooth; in our third that her lips were much redder than mine.

When he got near her he paused, for she hadn’t moved away as he had expected her to and only looked up at him and laughed.

“Yes, do about it,” she repeated.

“You—­you know I could—­could throw you over the wall with one hand,” he stammered.

“Perhaps, but you wouldn’t.”

“Why not?’

“Because you’re a gentleman.”

“Oh, am I?”

“Yes.  Or if you aren’t you ought to be.”

He frowned at that, a little puzzled.

“Where do you come from?” he asked.

“I can’t see how that can possibly be any business of yours.”

“H-m.  How did you get in here?”

“I followed my nose.  How did you?”

“I—­I—­I belong here.”

“It’s an asylum, isn’t it?” she asked quite coolly.

“N—­no.”  Jerry missed the irony.  “Not at all.  I live here.  It’s my place.  You—­you’re the first woman that ever got in here, and I can’t imagine how you did it.  I—­I don’t want to be impolite, but I’m afraid you’ll have to go at once.”

The sound of her laughter was most disconcerting.  Jerry had no lack of a sense of humor and yet there was nothing that he could see to laugh at.

“That’s very amusing,” she said.  “A moment ago you were going to throw me over the wall and now you’re afraid you’re impolite.”

Jerry found himself smiling in spite of himself.

“I—­I don’t suppose I really meant that,” he muttered.

“What?  Throwing me over the wall or being polite?”

He looked rather bewildered, I think, at the inanity of her conversation.  Jerry wasn’t much given to small talk.

“I’m sorry you don’t think I’m polite.  I—­I’m not used to talking to women.  They’re too fussy about trifles.  What does it matter—­”

“I don’t call throwing a female visitor over a wall a trifle,” she broke in.  “And it isn’t quite hospitable.  Now is it?”

Jerry rubbed his head and regarded her seriously.

“Now that you mention it, I don’t suppose it is.  But nobody asked you.  You just came.  Didn’t you see the trespass signs?”

“Oh, yes, they’re all about,” she said carelessly, as she picked up her tin specimen-box and turned away.  “I didn’t mean to stay.  I followed a butterfly.  He came in the iron railings, where the stream goes through the wall.  I crawled under where the iron is bent.  If you’re afraid of women you’d better have it fixed.”