"Gone!" she said, "gone! Jan Straw gone! The last link with my ain generation." She was silent, seeing the years which he had kept alive for her, fading away. "So Jan's gone, the old, old, creature, but younger than me by twenty winters. Poor Jan."
Then she turned upon Lucy. She must find some vent for the choking emotion of age.
"This o' comes of your fairy-tales," she said. "Six white horses and a coach! You'd better have left him sitting in the cow-house, waiting for the man with the reaping-hook."
"Don't blame me," cried the girl. "I would have saved him if I could."
"You'd have drownded yourself to no purpose. What could a lass like you do when the beck's in spate? It would have twisted you up like a windle-straw."
Lucy turned to Peter with entreaty in her eyes.
He took her hand and stroked it.
"I think you were very brave," he said.
He saw again the water with its tigerish lips, the crunching rocks, the broken body of a sheep tossing among the foam; he looked at the girl, at her tearful eyes, her damp hair hanging in jetty rings round her face; she seemed to be but a child, a forlorn, unhappy child, seeking for sympathy.
Hardly realizing what he did he bent down and kissed her.