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
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.