to it for a second, while
she held out her hand to him.

"Pull me out, Mr. Moore!" she said.

"Good heavens, Miss Honnor!" he exclaimed--but instantly he caught her
hand, and she rose to her feet and began to shake the water from her as
best she might. "What do you mean?"

"You've pulled me out of the river," said she, laughing, as she shook
her dripping sleeves and kicked her skirts; and then she went on,
coolly, to explain, "I know you are rather sensitive to ridicule, and
you don't like to think of those people telling the story against you as
to how you fell into the Geinig Pool. Very well; there needn't be any
such story. If any one asks you how you came to be so wet, you can say I
got into the water, and you pulled me out. It will sound quite heroic."

"So I am to have the credit of having saved your life?" he said.

"You needn't put it that way," she answered, as she took up the
fishing-rod and resumed her homeward walk. "All kinds of accidents are
continually happening to people who go salmon-fishing, and no one takes
any notice of them. My maid is quite used to getting my things
dried--whether they're soaked through with rain or with river-water
doesn't much matter to her. And old Robert can take your clothes to the
fire in the gun-room long before the gentlemen come back from the hill.
So, you see, there will probably be no questions asked; but, if there
should be, you have what is quite enough of an explanation."

"Well, Miss Honnor," said he, "I never heard of such a friendly act in
all my life--such a gratuitous sacrifice; here you have risked getting
your death of cold in order to save my childish vanity from being
wounded. Really, I don't know how to thank you--though I wish all the
same you had not put me under such a tremendous obligation. But don't
imagine that I am going to claim--that I am going to steal--the credit
of having saved your life--I am not quite so mean--no, if I am asked, I
will tell the whole truth--"

"And make two people ridiculous, instead of one?" she said, with a
smile. "No, you can't do that."

However, as it turned out, this Quixotic act of consideration was
allowed to remain a dark secret between these two. With the brisk
walking and the warm, sunlit air around them, their clothes were already
drying; and when old Robert met them, in the dusky chasm at the foot of
the Bad Step, he was far too much engaged with the fish to notice their
limp and damp garments; while again