As she spoke, she took the lamb, which was bleating like mad, laid it
on the ground and holding it still, firmly but gently, with her knee,
examined it with all the confidence and coolness of a vet.
"You'll make yourself most frightfully wet," said Stafford.
She glanced up at him with only faint surprise.
"You are a Londoner," she said, "or you would know that here, in these
parts, we are so often more wet than dry that it makes no matter. Yes,
I thought so; there was a thorn in its foot. May I trouble you to hold
him a minute?"
Stafford held the lamb, which was tolerably quiet now; and she slowly
took off her gauntlets, produced a little leather wallet from the
saddle--the horse coming at her call as if he were a dog--took out a
serviceable pair of tweezers, and, with professional neatness,
extracted an extremely ugly thorn. Stafford stood and watched her; the
collie and the fox-terrier upright on their haunches watching her also;
the collie gave an approving bark as, with a pat she liberated the
lamb, which went bleating on its way to join its distracted mother, the
fox-terrier leapt round her with yaps of excited admiration; and there
was admiration in Stafford's eyes also. The whole thing had been done
with a calm, almost savage grace and self-possession, and she seemed to
be absolutely unconscious of his presence, and only remembered it when
the lamb and its mother had joined the flock.
"Thank you again," she said. "It was very kind of you. I am afraid you
are wet."
As Stafford had gone completely under the water, this was a fact he
could not deny, but he said with a laugh: "Though I am a Londoner, in a sense, I don't mind a wetting--in a good
cause; and I shall be dry, or as good as dry, before I get to the inn.
You must have eyes like a hawk to have seen, from the top of the hill,
that that lamb was lame," he added, rather with the desire to keep her
than to express his admiration for her sight.
"I have good eyes," she said, indifferently. "One has to have. But I
saw that the lamb was lame from the way it kept beside its mother and
the fuss she made over it: and I knew, too, by Donald's bark, that
something was wrong. I am sorry you are wet. Will you--" She glanced
towards the opening in the hills, paused, and for the first time seemed
slightly embarrassed; Stafford fancied that a faint touch of colour
came to the clear pallor of the lovely young face. She did not finish
the sentence, but with another "Thank you," and "I should not have
liked to have lost the lamb," went towards her horse.