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“I shall know better next time,” she said with a wry smile. “Will it cost much?”

“Well, it can’t be mended for nothing,” said Jeff Ironside. “Things never are.”

Doris considered him for a moment. He was certainly a fine animal, as Hugh Chesyl had said, well made and well put together. She liked the freedom of his pose, the strength of the great bull neck. At close quarters he certainly did not look like an ordinary labourer. He had an air of command that his rough clothes could not hide. There was nothing of the clod-hopper about him albeit he followed the plough. He was obviously a son of the soil, and he would wrest his living therefrom, but he would do it with brain as well as hands. He had a wide forehead above his somewhat sombre eyes.

“I am very sorry,” she said again.

“I am sorry for you,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be as well to get out of this rain? It’s only a step to the mill.”

She turned with docility and looked towards the two horses standing patiently where he had left them on the brown slope of the hill.

“Not that way,” he said. “Come across this field to the road. It is no distance from there.”

Doris began to gather up her skirt. It was wet through and caked with mud. She caught her breath again as she did it. The pain in her shoulder was becoming intense.

And then, to her amazement, Jeff Ironside suddenly stooped and put his arms about her. Almost before she realized his intention, and while she was still gasping her astonishment, he had lifted her and begun to move with long, easy strides over the sodden turf.

“Oh,” she said, “you–you–really you shouldn’t!”

“It’s the only thing to do,” he returned.

And somehow–perhaps because he spoke with such finality–she did not feel inclined to dispute the point. She submitted with a confused murmur of thanks.

CHAPTER III

THE APOLOGY

On an old oaken settle, cushioned like a church-pew, before a generous, open fire, Doris began to forget her woes. She looked about her with interest the while she endeavoured to sip a cup of steaming milk treated with brandy that Jeff Ironside had brought her.

An old, old woman hobbled about the oak-raftered kitchen behind her while Jeff himself knelt before her and unlaced her mud-caked boots. She would have protested against his doing this had protest been of the smallest avail, but when she attempted it he only smiled a faint, grim smile and continued his task.

As he finally drew them off she thanked him in a small, shy voice. “You are very kind–much kinder than I deserve,” she said. “Do you know I’ve often thought that I ought to have come to apologize for–for ordering you off your own ground that day in the summer?”

He looked up at her as he knelt, and for the first time she heard him laugh. There was something almost boyish in his laugh. It transformed him utterly, and it had a marvellous effect upon her.

She laughed also and was instantly at her ease. She suddenly discovered that he was young in spite of his ruggedness, and she warmed to him in consequence.

“But I really was sorry,” she protested. “And I knew I ought to have told you so before. But, somehow”–she flushed under his eyes–“I hadn’t the courage. Besides, I didn’t know you.”

“It wasn’t a very serious offence, was it?” he asked.

“I should have been furious in your place,” she said.

“It takes more than that to make me angry,” said Jeff Ironside.

She put out her hand to him impulsively, the flush still in her cheeks.

“I am still perfectly furious with myself,” she told him, “whenever I think about it.”

His hand enclosed hers in an all-enveloping grasp. “Then I shouldn’t think about it any more if I were you,” he said.

“Very well, I won’t,” said Doris; adding with her own quaint air of graciousness, “and thank you for being so friendly about it.”