The beautiful eyes grew wide and gazed at him with girlish amusement,

and something of indignation.

"I'm older than you think. I'm not a girl!" she retorted. "And I am as

strong as a horse." She drew herself up and threw her head back. "I am

never tired--or scarcely ever. One day I rode to Keswick and back, and

when I got home Jason met me at the gate and told me that the steers

had 'broken' and had got on the Bryndermere road. I started after them,

but missed them for a time, and only came up with them at Landal

Water--ah, you don't know where that is; well, it is a great many

miles. Of course I had a rest coming back, as I could only drive them

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slowly."

Something in his eyes--the pity, the indignation, the wonder that this

exquisitely refined specimen of maidenhood should be bent to such base

uses--shone in them and stopped her. The colour rose to her face and

her eyes grew faintly troubled, then a proud light flashed in them.

"Ah, I see; you are thinking that it is--is not ladylike, that none of

your lady-friends would do it if even if they were strong enough?"

Stafford would have scorned himself if he had been tempted to evade

those beautiful eyes, that sweet, and now rather haughty voice;

besides, he was not given to evasion with man or woman.

"I wasn't thinking quite that," he said. "But I'll tell you what I was

thinking, if you'll promise not to be offended."

She considered for a moment, then she said: "I do not think you will offend me. What was it?"

"Well, I was thinking that--see here, now, Miss Heron, I've got your

promise!--it is not worthy of you--such work, I mean."

"Because I'm a girl?" she said, her lip curving with a smile.

"No," he said, gravely; "because you are a lady; because you are so--so

refined, so graceful, so"--he dared not say "beautiful," and

consequently he floundered and broke down. "If you were a farmer's

daughter, clumsy and rough and awkward, it would not seem to

inappropriate for you to be herding cattle and counting sheep; but--now

your promise!--when I come to think that ever since I met you,

whenever I think of you I think of--of--a beautiful flower--that now I

have seen you in evening-dress, I realise how wrong it is that you

should do such work. Oh, dash it! I know it's like my cheek to talk to

you like this," he wound up, abruptly and desperately.




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