We were now at the “bad bit” of which Willy had spoken,—a broad, dark stripe, vivid green by daylight,—across a hollow in the field, with a gleam of water here and there in it.
“You’d much better let me carry you over this,” said Willy, stopping.
“No, thank you,” I said again, eyeing, however, with an inward tremor, the long distances between the tussocks of grass which might serve as stepping-stones. “You have the eggs to carry, and I have no wish to be dropped with them into the bog.”
“Ah! nonsense now; you know there’s no fear of that,” he said, and put his arm round me as if to lift me. “Do let me.”
“I am not going to be carried,” I said, with determination. “If you’d only let me alone, I should get over quite well.”
He did not take his arm away, and bent down over me.
“You’re always getting angry with me these times,” he said.
“No, indeed I’m not,” I answered, trying to speak pleasantly, and to move forward at the same time.
His quick breathing was at my ear, and for one moment his lips touched my hair; the next I was floundering with a burning face through the deepest of the quagmire. At every step my feet sank ankle-deep; I dragged out each in succession with an effort that nearly pulled my boots off, and when I gained firm ground again, my feet had become shapeless brown objects, weighed down with mud, with which my skirt was also thickly coated. Willy had made no further effort to help me, and, having followed me across with caution, walked silently beside me as I hurried along, trying to ignore my uncomfortable and ignoble plight.
But one field now divided us from the road, and as I scrambled up on to the high fence I heard wheels, and saw something moving along it away from the Durrus gate.