‘Gimme t’other hand,’ returned young Devon. ‘I’ll pull ee out if I dies for’t.’
Paul surrendered the other hand, and she pulled. There was another suck at the bottom of the stream, and Paul came up by a foot. She went backwards for a new vantage-ground, and pulled again, and Paul came to bank, clothed from the waist downward in water-lily leaf and weed, and lay face downwards helpless on the turf at her feet.
‘Now,’ she said tartly, ‘you’re not goin’ to faint, I hope!’ Paul said nothing. ‘Like a girl,’ she added, with disdain.
‘Not me,’ answered Paul, with his nose in the turf. ‘What have I got to feint for?’
He asked the question with feeble scorn, and fainted.
May Gold stooped to a basket which lay near her, and, taking from it a pair of garden scissors, knelt beside Paul, and began to snip his bonds. He woke to find her thus engaged, and a virginal sweet sense of shame filled him. Her fingers touched his skin at times, and he tingled with a soft fire.
‘Nobody’d think it from they grimy paws,’ said May Gold to herself; ‘but he’ve got a skin as fair as a maid’s.’
Paul heard the words, and shuddered exquisitely as she laid her soft warm hand on his shoulder, leaning over him, and slicing away at the withes in a business-like fashion.
‘I’ll finish that,’ he said tremulously.
‘La,’ she cried, ‘the child’s awake all the time! There’s the scissors; I’ll go and wait in the lane.’