The curious expression--or rather eclipse of expression--was still in her eyes, a purely negative defensiveness that seemed as though it could spring only from an instinctive resolve to show nothing of her feelings. The eyes were a dark blue; but with Vivien's eyes colour never counted for much, nor their shape, nor what one would roughly call their beauty, were it more or less. Their meaning--that was what they set a man asking after. "It really would be very kind of you," she said. Andy mounted her on the suppositiously lame pony--her weight wouldn't hurt him much, anyhow--and they set out at a walk towards the highroad which led to Nutley and thence, half a mile farther on, to Meriton. She was silent till they reached the road. Then she asked abruptly, "Are you ever afraid?" "Well, you see," said Andy, with a laugh, "I never know whether I'm afraid or only excited--in fighting, I mean. Otherwise I don't fancy I'm either often." "Well, you're big," she observed. "I'm afraid of pretty nearly everything--horses, dogs, motor-cars--and I'm passionately afraid of hunting." "You're not big, you see," said Andy consolingly. Indeed her hand on the reins looked almost ridiculously small. "I've got to learn not to be afraid of things. My father's teaching me. You know who I am, don't you?" "Oh yes; why, I remember you years ago! Is that why you're out hunting?" "Yes." "And why you think that the pony--?" "Is lame enough to let me risk going home? Yes." There was a hint of defiance in her voice. "You must think what you like," she seemed to say. Andy considered the matter in his impartial, solid, rather slowly moving mind. It was foolish to be frightened at such things; it must be wholesome to be taught not to be. Still, hunting wasn't exactly a moral duty, and the girl looked very fragile. He had not arrived at any final decision on the case--on the issue whether the girl were silly or the father cruel (the alternatives might not be true alternatives, not strictly exclusive of one another)--before she spoke again. "And then I'm fastidious. Are you?" "I hope not!" said Andy, with an amused chuckle. A great lump of a fellow like him fastidious! "Father doesn't like that either, and I've got to get over it." "How does it--er--take you?" Andy made bold to inquire. "Oh, lots of ways. I hate dirt, and dust, and getting very hot, and going into butchers' shops, and--" "Butchers' shops!" exclaimed Andy, rather hit on the raw. "You eat meat, don't you?" "Things don't look half as dead when they're cooked. I couldn't touch a butcher!" Horror rang in her tones. "Oh, but I say, Jack Rock's a butcher, and he's about the best fellow in Meriton. You know him?" "I've seen him," she admitted reluctantly, the subject being evidently distasteful. For the second time Andy Hayes was conscious of a duty: he must not be--or seem--ashamed of Jack Rock, just because this girl was fastidious.