ncing with
delight and amusement! The laughter shone in her eyes like dazzling
sunlight and quivered on the firm but delicate lips. But it was only
for a moment; before Stafford had fully taken it in and had responded
to it with one of his own short laughs, her face was grave and calm
again. "Thank you." she said, with a gravity matching her face, and
very much as one is thanked for passing the salt. "It would have
drowned if you had not been there. It is lame and couldn't swim. I saw,
from the top of the hill, that it was lame, and I was afraid something
would happen to it."

As she spoke, she took the lamb, which was bleating like mad, laid it
on the ground and holding it still, firmly but gently, with her knee,
examined it with all the confidence and coolness of a vet.

"You'll make yourself most frightfully wet," said Stafford.

She glanced up at him with only faint surprise.

"You are a Londoner," she said, "or you would know that here, in these
parts, we are so often more wet than dry that it makes no matter. Yes,
I thought so; there was a thorn in its foot. May I trouble you to hold
him a minute?"

Stafford held the lamb, which was tolerably quiet now; and she slowly
took off her gauntlets, produced a little leather wallet from the
saddle--the horse coming at her call as if he were a dog--took out a
serviceable pair of tweezers, and, with professional neatness,
extracted an extremely ugly thorn. Stafford stood and watched her; the
collie and the fox-terrier upright on their haunches watching her also;
the collie gave an approving bark as, with a pat she liberated the
lamb, which went bleating on its way to join its distracted mother, the
fox-terrier leapt round her with yaps of excited admiration; and there
was admiration in Stafford's eyes also. The whole thing had been done
with a calm, almost savage grace and self-possession, and she seemed to
be absolutely unconscious of his presence, and only remembered it when
the lamb and its mother had joined the flock.

"Thank you again," she said. "It was very kind of you. I am afraid you
are wet."

As Stafford had gone completely under the water, this was a fact he
could not deny, but he said with a laugh:

"Though I am a Londoner, in a sense, I don't mind a wetting--in a good
cause; and I shall be dry, or as good as dry, before I get to the inn.
You must have eyes like a hawk to have seen, from the top of the hill,
that that lamb was lame," he added, rather