'Oh, no, it would be bad for their little digestions to hurry them.'
He sat down. Her face gave him as much credit as though he had done some fine self-abnegating deed.
They spoke of that Sunday walk in the valley below the Ulland links, and the crossing of a swollen little stream on a rotting and rickety log.
'I _had_ to go,' she explained apologetically. 'Hermione had gone on and forgotten the puppy hadn't learnt to follow. I was afraid he'd lose himself.'
'It _was_ a dangerous place to go across,' he said, as if to justify some past opinion.
Her eyes were a little mischievous. 'I never thought _you'd_ come.'
'Oh, because I thought you'd be too----' His slow look quickened as if to surprise in her some reflection upon his too solid flesh--or might it even be upon the weight of years? But the uncritical admiration in her face must have reassured him before the words, 'I thought you'd be too grand. It was delightful to find you weren't.'
He kept his eyes on her. 'Are you always so happy?'
'Oh, I hope not. That would be rather too inhuman, wouldn't it?'
'Too celestial, perhaps!' He laughed--but he was looking into the blue of her eyes as if through them he too had caught a glimpse of Paradise. 'I remember thinking at Ulland,' he said more slowly again, 'I had never seen any one quite so happy.'
'I was happy at Ulland. But I'm not happy now.'
'No, I am very sad. I have to go away from this delightful London to Scotland. I shall be away for weeks. It's too dismal.'
'My grandfather makes me. He hates London. And his dreary old house on a horrible windy hill--he simply loves that!'
'And you don't love it _at all_. I see.' He seemed to be thinking out something.
Compunction visited the face before him. 'I didn't mean to say I didn't love it _at all_. It's like those people you care to be with for a little while, but if you must go being with them for ever you come to hate them--almost.'
They sat silent for a moment, then with slow reflectiveness, like one who thinks aloud, he said--
'Why shouldn't I drop down upon you some day?'
'Oh, _will_ you? That would be----' She seemed to save herself from some gulf of betrayal. 'There are walks about my grandfather's more beautiful than anything you ever saw--or perhaps I ought to say more beautiful than anything _I_ ever saw.'