Red Rowans. Flora Annie Webster Steel
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had not expected. On the morning air one comprehensive monosyllable--"Damn." That was all. No affix, no suffix; without nominative or accusative; soft, but trenchant.
"A gentleman," said Marjory to herself, without a moment's hesitation, as she rose to peer through the thick tangle of alders. If so, the laird, of course. Yes! It must be he, on the opposite bank, standing irresolute; weighing the pros and cons of breaking in, no doubt. Marjory's experienced eyes following the taut line, rested finally on the cast looped round a branch just above her, and apparently within reach. The mere possibility was sufficient to make her forget all save the instinct to help.
"Don't break, please, I can get it."
Her eager voice, unmistakably girlish and refined, echoed across to Paul Macleod, who, after a moment's astonished search, traced it to a face half-seen among the parting leaves. He took off his hat mechanically, for though it might have been a pixie's there was no mistaking its gender, and the sex found a large measure of outward respect in Paul Macleod. For the rest, help offered was with him invariably help accepted; a fact which accounted for a large portion of his popularity, since people like those around whom the memory of their own benevolence can throw a halo. So he stood watching Marjory settle methodically to her task, wondering the while who the girl could possibly be. For that she had white hands and trim ankles was abundantly evident, and neither of these charms was to be expected in the rustic beauties of the Glen.
"I am afraid I am giving you a lot of trouble," he said sympathetically, as for the third time the branch flew back from Marjory's hold with a sudden spring.
"Not at all," she gasped jerkily; one cannot speak otherwise on tiptoe with both hands above one's head.
"Perhaps I had better help."
"Perhaps you had," she answered resentfully, desisting for a moment after a fourth rebuff. "There is no positive necessity for you to remain idle. You might for instance reel in as I pull."
His faint smile was tempered by respect. The young lady on the opposite bank knew what she was about, and, perhaps, might even be good looking, if she were not quite so red in the face. So he obeyed meekly, and was rewarded by a gasp of triumph.
"There! I've got it. I knew you could help if you tried."
"I'm immensely obliged," he began; then the girl's foot slipped, the branch sprang from her hand, she made an ineffectual jump after it, and the next instant the all but disentangled cast, flung into the air by the rebound, was hard and fast in a higher twig.
Marjory could have stamped with despite; thought it wiser to laugh, but found the opposite bank full of silent, grieved sympathy.
"I'll get it yet," she called across the water, with renewed determination.
"I think, if you'll allow me, I will break in," came the deferential voice after a time. "It really must be very tiring to jump like that."
"Not at all; thank you," she retorted, without a pause. "I never--give in."
"So it appears. Will you allow me to come over and help?"
Come over and help, indeed! Marjory's growing anger slackened to contempt. As if he could come over without a detour of half a mile down or quarter of a mile up the river; and he must know it, unless he had no memory. "You can't," she jerked between her efforts. "You had--better slack line--and sit down--I'll get it somehow."
Very much "somehow." Her hat fell off first. Then, after a desperate spring, in which she succeeded in clutching a lower branch, a hairpin struck work. Hot, dishevelled, exasperated, yet still determined, she persevered without deigning another reference to the silence over the way, until an arm clothed in grey tweed reached over hers and bent the branch down within her reach. She looked round, and, even in her surprise, the great personal charm and beauty of the face looking into hers struck her almost painfully; for it seemed to soothe her quick vexation, and so to claim something from her.
"I jumped," he said, answering the look on hers. "It is quite easy by the fall."
Something new to her, something which sent a lump to her throat, made her turn away and say stiffly: "I am sorry I gave you the trouble of coming. It would have been better if you had broken in. Good morning."
He stood grave as a judge, courteous, deferential, yet evidently amused, still bending down the bough.
"Will you not finish the task you began? You said you never gave in; besides, I can hardly do it for myself." The fact was palpable; it required two hands to disentangle a singularly awkward knot. To deny this would be to confess her own annoyance, so she turned back again. Rather an awkward task with a face so close to your own, watching your ineptitude. And yet she forgot her impatience in a sudden thought. If he had fallen! If that face had had the life crushed out of it!
"You ought not to have jumped," she said, impulsively. "It was very dangerous."
"Pardon me; I have done it hundreds of times when I was a boy."
"Boys may do foolish things."
He smiled. "And men should not; but are dangerous things necessarily foolish?"
"Needlessly dangerous things are so, surely?"
"In that case, what becomes of courage?"
She paused, frankly surprised both at herself and him. How came it that he understood so quickly, that she followed him so clearly? Yet it was pleasant.
"Courage has nothing to do with the question."
His smile broadened. "Thanks. I began by saying so. The fact being that the jump is not dangerous."
"No one else jumps it," she persisted.
"Pardon me for mentioning that I am an unusually good jumper. Besides--
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