Henrietta was still vaguely hung up on the idea that if she had been witty she would have been able to make a joke in response, but she was struggling to come up with anything she thought might sound funny. She fidgeted her hands in front of her stomach, grabbing one fingertip with her opposite hand. She was wearing a ring and she reached over to mess with it in the same distracted fashion, but only for a moment — it was slightly too loose and almost immediately started to slip off her finger, and she had to clutch her hand hard to prevent it from falling. That would have just been insult to injury, if her ring clattered down to the cobblestones and rolled away and was lost forever. Her mother probably would have said it served her right, for fidgeting.

"Well, if you fell through a hedge it would be much more of an ordeal," she said, very quietly. "It would leave such a gap in the branches they might just need to put in a new gate, rather than patching it up." This was her best attempt at a joke, after having considered the situation for several seconds trying to find something funny about it, but she was too insecure about the attempt to laugh. Suppose he was sensitive about how tall he was and he didn't find this humorous at all? Henrietta blushed and looked down at her hands, so that she wouldn't have to see how he reacted to it; she was becoming increasingly certain that it had been a terribly dull thing to say.

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