"That would be four missing, and we should have to hunt for them. But they are all there. Try again." He tried—and made it fifty-six.
"Didn't I tell you that I was an idiot!" he said, in despair.
"Oh, you can't expect to learn the first time," she said, consolingly. "It was weeks before I could do it; and I almost cried the first few times I tried: they would move just as I was finishing."
"Oh, well, then I can hope to get it in time," he said. "Did it ever strike you that though we think ourselves jolly clever, that there are heaps of things which a workingman—the men we look down upon—can do which we couldn't accomplish if it were to save our lives. For instance, I couldn't make a horseshoe if my existence depended upon it, and yet it looks as easy as—"
—"Counting sheep," she finished, with a twinkle in her grey-blue eyes.
"Just so," he said, with a laugh. "Shall I have another try?"
"Oh, no; you'd be here all day; and we've got to see if the others are all right; but first I think we'd better go and look at the weir; Jason says that a stone has got washed down, and that means that when the autumn rains come the meadows would be flooded."
"All right: I'm ready," he said, with bright alacrity. "I'm enjoying this. I know now why you look so happy and contented. You're of some use in the world, and I—the rest of us—That's the weir?" he broke off to enquire, as they came in sight of a rude barrier of stones which partially checked the stream.
"That is it," she said. "And Jason is right. Some of the big stones have been washed down. What a nuisance! We shall have to get some men from Bryndermere to put them up again."
Stafford rode up to the weir and looked at it critically.