"Perhaps you had," she answered resentfully, desisting for a moment after a fourth rebuff. "There is no positive necessity for you to remain idle. You might for instance reel in as I pull." His faint smile was tempered by respect. The young lady on the opposite bank knew what she was about, and, perhaps, might even be good looking, if she were not quite so red in the face. So he obeyed meekly, and was rewarded by a gasp of triumph. "There! I've got it. I knew you could help if you tried." "I'm immensely obliged," he began; then the girl's foot slipped, the branch sprang from her hand, she made an ineffectual jump after it, and the next instant the all but disentangled cast, flung into the air by the rebound, was hard and fast in a higher twig. Marjory could have stamped with despite; thought it wiser to laugh, but found the opposite bank full of silent, grieved sympathy. "I'll get it yet," she called across the water, with renewed determination. "I think, if you'll allow me, I will break in," came the deferential voice after a time. "It really must be very tiring to jump like that." "Not at all; thank you," she retorted, without a pause. "I never--give in." "So it appears. Will you allow me to come over and help?" Come over and help, indeed! Marjory's growing anger slackened to contempt. As if he could come over without a detour of half a mile down or quarter of a mile up the river; and he must know it, unless he had no memory. "You can't," she jerked between her efforts. "You had--better slack line--and sit down--I'll get it somehow." Very much "somehow." Her hat fell off first. Then, after a desperate spring, in which she succeeded in clutching a lower branch, a hairpin struck work. Hot, dishevelled, exasperated, yet still determined, she persevered without deigning another reference to the silence over the way, until an arm clothed in grey tweed reached over hers and bent the branch down within her reach. She looked round, and, even in her surprise, the great personal charm and beauty of the face looking into hers struck her almost painfully; for it seemed to soothe her quick vexation, and so to claim something from her. "I jumped," he said, answering the look on hers. "It is quite easy by the fall." Something new to her, something which sent a lump to her throat, made her turn away and say stiffly: "I am sorry I gave you the trouble of coming. It would have been better if you had broken in. Good morning." He stood grave as a judge, courteous, deferential, yet evidently amused, still bending down the bough.