"I'll jump!" she says, desperately, eyeing meanwhile the hurrying stream and space between bank and bank with calculating look. "You cannot," he cries, hastily; "you'll get a ducking as sure as I stand here. Don't be so silly!" The word "silly" acts as a whip and spur to Essie's flagging courage. She retreats a few yards from the edge, in order to get a little run to give her a better spring. "As headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile!" remarks Gerard, resignedly, quoting Mrs. Malaprop and folding his arms. Neither the preparatory run, nor the tremendous bound she takes, avail to save Miss Craven from the fate which her obstinacy and the comparative shortness of her legs render unavoidable. She jumps short, and falls forward on the wet bank; her lavender kid gloves digging convulsively into it, and her legs disporting themselves fish-like in the brook. He is at her side in an instant, raises gently and lifts her on to the grass, unmindful of the pollution caused to his coat by the muddy contact. "What a fool I was!" she cries, passionately, sinking down among a grove of huge burdock leaves, smothered in shame and angry blushes. St. John thinks it rude to disagree with her, so holds his peace. "Why don't you laugh at me? why don't you jeer me?" she continues, vehemently; "why don't you tell me you are very glad of it, and that I richly deserve it, as I see you are longing to do? Anything would be better than standing there like a stock or a stone!" "It is not of much consequence how I stand or how I look," he replies, coldly. "It would be more to the purpose to know how you are to get home!" "I will walk as I am," she cries impulsively, springing to her feet; "it will be a fit penance for my idiocy, and you shall go on ahead. I don't want you to be disgraced by being seen in company with such an object." "That is very probable, isn't it?" he answers, laughing good-humouredly. "No, I have a better proposition than that, I think. It has just occurred to me that an old servant of ours lives at no great distance from here, her cottage is not more than three or four fields off. If you can manage to get there she would dry your clothes for you in a minute." Rendered docile by her late disaster, feeling very small, and hanging her head, Esther acquiesces. Her gown, from which every particle of starch or stiffness has fled, clings to her limbs and defines their form; the water drips down from her in a thousand little spouts and rivulets: bang, bang, go her soaked petticoats against her ankles at every step she takes. "You have had almost enough of taking me out to walk, I expect," she remarks presently, rather grimly. "You have had almost enough of jumping brooks, I expect," he retorts, drily; and then they walk on in silence till they reach a little whitewashed cottage, with its slip of potato ground and plot of pinks and marigolds and lark-spurs--an oasis of tilled ground among the wilderness of pasturage.