ld my hand."

Lawrence was six and thirty. At eighteen he would have snatched
her up and carried her over: at thirty-six he said: "Thanks very
much," touched the tips of her fingers, let them fall. . . .
Unfortunately however he weighed more than Isabel or the
shepherds, and, half way across, the green floor quietly gave way
under him: first one foot immersed itself with a gentle splash
and then the other--"Oh dear" said Isabel, seized with a great
disposition to laugh. Lawrence was not amused. His boots were
full of mud and water and he had an aching sense of injured
dignity. The bog was not even dangerous: and ankle-deep,
calf-deep, knee-deep he waded through it and got out on the
opposite bank, bringing up a cloud of little marsh-bubbles on his
heels. Isabel would have given all the money she had in the
world--about five shillings to go away and laugh, but she had
been well brought up and she remained grave, though she grew very
red.

"I am so sorry!" she faltered, looking up at Lawrence with her
beautiful sympathetic eyes (one must never say I told you so).
"I never thought you really would go in. You must be very heavy!
Oh! dear, I'm afraid you've spoilt your trousers, and it was all
my fault. Oh! dear, I hope you won't catch cold. Do you catch
cold easily?"

"Oh no, thanks. Do you mind showing me the way to Wanhope?"

Isabel without another word took the steep hillside at a run. In
her decalogue of manners to refuse an apology was an unpardonable
sin. How differently Val would have behaved! Val never lost his
temper over trifles, and if anything happened to make him look
ridiculous he was the first to laugh at himself. At this time in
her life Isabel compared Val with all the other men she met and
much to his advantage. She forgot that Lawrence was not her
brother and that no man cares to be made ridiculous before a
woman, or rather she never thought of herself as a woman at all.

She pointed east by south across the Plain. "Do you see that
hawk hovering? Carry your eye down to the patch of smoke right
under him, in the trees: those are the Wanhope chimneys. If you
go straight over there till you strike the road, it will bring
you into Chilmark High Street. Go on past Chapman the draper's
shop, turn sharp down a footpath opposite the Prince of Wales's
Feathers, cross the stream by a footbridge, and you'll be in the
grounds of Wanhope."

"Thank you," said Lawrence, "your directions are mos