‘This moment. What brought you up the hill?’
‘I saw a donkey browsing, and hoped it might be yours.’
‘It was my Gritty: she loves me like a dog, and bears me—like an angel. If it were not for her——’
‘Why do you stop?’
‘I think I should put a milestone round my neck and drown.’
Brion wondered. What tragedy spoke here—apart from the verbal accident? The young face was suddenly clouded; the voice spoke in dejection. But he had had already, in little Alse, some experience of the small tragedies of girlhood, and was not inclined to attach too much importance to their manifestations.
‘Is it like that?’ he said sympathetically. ‘Then, if one donkey can save you, two might make you happy.’
‘Yourself?’ she said, her eyebrows lifted at him. ‘So you are a donkey for wishing to know me?’
‘Ay, if losing me, you will promise to drown yourself.’
She looked at him, the sleepy merriment come back to her eyes; then got to her feet, and he with her.