“Oh, I don’t mind it at all,” said Kate, with a little blush, which would have excited John’s mother wonderfully two days before. But custom is a great power, and she had got used to Kate. So Mrs Mitford went to her parish work, and the two young people went out on their expedition. They had nearly a mile to walk across fields, and then through the grateful shade of a little wood. It was a pretty road, and from the moment they entered the wood, the common world disappeared from about the pair. They walked like a pair in romance, often silent, sometimes with a touch of soft embarrassment, in that silent world, full of the flutter of leaves and the flitting of birds, and the notes of, here and there, an inquiring thrush or dramatic blackbird. Boughs would crackle and swing suddenly about them, as if some fairy had swung herself within the leafy cover: unseen creatures--rabbits or squirrels--would dart away under the brushwood. Arrows of sunshine came down upon the brown underground. The leaves waved green above and black in shadow, strewing the chequered path. They walked in an atmosphere of their own, in dreamland, fairyland, by the shores of old romance; the young man bending his head in that attitude of worship, which is the attitude of protection too, towards the lower, slighter, weaker creature, who raised her eyes to his with soft supremacy. It was hers to command and his to obey. She had no more doubt of the loyalty of her vassal than he had of her sweet superiority to every other created thing. And thus they went through the wood to the river,--two undeveloped lives approaching the critical point of their existence, and going up to it in a dream of happiness, without shadow or fear. The river ran through the wood for about a mile; but as it is a law of English nature that no stream shall have the charm of woodland on both sides at once, the northern bank was a bit of meadowland, round which ran, at some distance, a belt of trees. Kate recovered a little from the spell of silence as she took into her hands the cords of the rudder, and looked on at her companion’s struggle against the current. “It must be hard work,” she said. “How is it you are so fond of taking trouble, you men? They say it ruins your health rowing in all those boat-races and things--all for the pleasure of beating the other colleges or the other university; and you kill yourselves for that! I should like to do it for something better worth, if it were me.” “But if you don’t get the habit of the struggle, you will want training when you try for what is better worth,” said John. “How one talks! I say _you_, as if by any chance you could want to struggle for anything. Pardon the profanity--I did not mean that.”