Again he glanced down at her quickly, wondering.... But her eyes were those of a child.
Presently their path led them through a gate into a field in which a few cows were grazing; and on seeing them Dolly hesitated.
“You’ll think me awfully silly,” she faltered, swallowing nervously, “but I’m rather frightened of cows.”
He smiled down at her. “Take my arm,” he said; and without waiting for her to do so, he linked his own arm in hers and laid his hand over her fingers.
She looked anxiously at a mild-eyed, motherly cow which, weighed down by her full udder, moved towards them slowly. “Oh dear,” she whispered, “d’you think that cow is a bull?”
She tugged at his arm, hurrying him forward; and thereat he closed his hand more tightly over hers and drew her close to him. He had always regarded himself as a man of the world, and his intellect had ever poked fun at his sentiments. Yet now, in a situation so blatantly commonplace that he might have been expected to be totally unmoved by it, he was intrigued like a novice. Protecting a maiden from the cows!—it was the A.B.C. of the bumpkin’s lovelore; and yet that vulgar old lady, Nature, had once more effectually employed her hackneyed device to his undoing, and here was he rejoicing in his protective strength, thrilled by the beating heart of a frightened girl, as all his ancestors for hundreds of thousands of years had been thrilled before him in the heydays of their adolescence and in the morning of life.
The amiable cow breathed heavily at them from a discreet distance, and then, suddenly hilarious, lowered her head, kicked out her hind legs, and gambolled beside them for a few yards.
“Oh, oh!” cried Dolly, grabbing at Jim’s coat with her disengaged hand. “I’m sure he’s going to toss us! Oh, do let’s run!”
Jim halted, and held out his hand to the matronly beast. At that moment the jeering sprite which sits in the brain of every Anglo-Saxon, pointing with the finger of mockery at his heroics, was pushed from its throne; and for a brief spell the bravado of primitive, gasconading man—the young Adam cock-a-hoop—was dominant. Jim stepped forward, dragging Dolly with him, and hit the astonished cow sharply across her flank with his hand, whereat she went off at her best speed across the turf.
“Oh, how brave you are!” whispered Dolly; and with that the jesting sprite climbed back upon its throne, and Jim was covered with shame.