Well, let that pass. This evening, or to-morrow morning, I shall make a proposal to you to do something which would please me very much, and I think would not hurt you."I broke in eagerly, saying that I would do anything in the world for her; for indeed, in spite of my years and the too obvious signs of them (though that feeling of renewed youth was not a mere passing sensation, I think)--in spite of my years, I say, I felt altogether too happy in the company of this delightful girl, and was prepared to take her confidences for more than they meant perhaps.
She laughed now, but looked very kindly on me. "Well," she said, "meantime for the present we will let it be; for I must look at this new country that we are passing through. See how the river has changed character again: it is broad now, and the reaches are long and very slow-running. And look, there is a ferry!"I told her the name of it, as I slowed off to put the ferry-chain over our heads; and on we went passing by a bank clad with oak trees on our left hand, till the stream narrowed again and deepened and we rowed on between walls of tall reeds, whose population of reed sparrows and warblers were delighfully restless, twittering and chuckling as the wash of the boats stirred the reeds from the water upward in the still, hot morning.
She smiled with pleasure, and her lazy enjoyment of the new scene seemed to bring out her beauty doubly as she leaned back amidst the cushions, though she was far from languid; her idleness being the idleness of a person, strong and well-knit both in body and mind deliberately resting.
"Look!" she said, springing up suddenly from her place without any obvious effort, and balancing herself with exquisite grace and ease;"look at the beautiful old bridge ahead!""I need scarcely look at that," said I, not turning my head away from her beauty. "I know what it is; though"(with a smile) "we used to call it the Old Bridge time agone."She looked on me kindly, and said, "How well we get on now you are no longer on your guard against me!"And she stood looking thoughtfully at me still, till she had to sit down as we passed under the middle one of the row of little pointed arches of the oldest bridge across the Thames.
"O the beautiful fields!" she said; "I had no idea of the charm of a very small river like this. The smallness of the scale of everything, the short reaches, and the speedy change of the banks, give one a feeling of going somewhere, of coming to something strange, a feeling of adventure which I have not felt in bigger waters."I looked at her delightedly; for her voice, saying the very thing that I was thinking, was like a caress to me. She caught my eye and her cheeks reddened under their tan, and she said simply:
"I must tell you, my friend, that when my father leaves the Thames this summer he will take me away to a place near the Roman wall in Cumberland; so that this voyage of mine is farewell to the south; of course with my goodwill in a way; and yet I am sorry for it. I hadn't the heart to tell **** yesterday that we were as good as gone from the Thames-side; but somehow to you I must needs tell it."She stopped and seemed very thoughtful for a wile, and then said, smiling:
"I must say that I don't like moving about from one home to another;one gets so pleasantly used to all the detail of the life about one;it fits so harmoniously and happily into one's own life, that beginning again, even in a small way, is a kind of pain. But I daresay in the country which you come from, you would think this petty and unadventurous and would think the worse of me for it."She smiled at me caressingly as she spoke, and I made haste to answer:
"O no, indeed; again you echo my very thoughts. But I hardly expected to hear you speak so. I gathered from all I have heard that there was a great deal of changing of abode amongst you in this country.""Well," she said, "of course people are free to move about; but except for pleasure-parties, especially in harvest and hay-time, like this of ours, I don't think they do so much. I admit that I also have other moods than that of stay-at-home, as I hinted just now, and I should like to go with you all through the west country--thinking of nothing," concluded she, smiling.
"I should have plenty to think of," said I.