We had changed our positions, and were now carrying her, head foremost, up the hill. Percivale led, and I followed. Now I could see every change on her lovely face, and it made me strong to endure; for I did find it hard work, I confess, to get to the top. It lay like a little sunny pool, on which all the cloudy thoughts that moved in some unseen heaven cast exquisitely delicate changes of light and shade as they floated over it. Percivale strode on as if he bore a feather behind him. I did wish we were at the top, for my arms began to feel like iron-cables, stiff and stark—only I was afraid of my fingers giving way. My heart was beating uncomfortably too. But Percivale, I felt almost inclined to quarrel with him before it was over, he strode on so unconcernedly, turning every corner of the zigzag where I expected him to propose a halt, and striding on again, as if there could be no pretence for any change of procedure. But I held out, strengthened by the play on my daughter’s face, delicate as the play on an opal—one that inclines more to the milk than the fire.
When at length we turned in through the gothic door in the battlemented wall, and set our lovely burden down upon the grass—
“Percivale,” I said, forgetting the proprieties in the affected humour of being angry with him, so glad was I that we had her at length on the mount of glory, “why did you go on walking like a castle, and pay no heed to me?”
“You didn’t speak, did you, Mr. Walton,” he returned, with just a shadow of solicitude in the question.
“No. Of course not,” I rejoined.
“O, then,” he returned, in a tone of relief, “how could I? You were my captain: how could I give in so long as you were holding on?”
I am afraid the Percivale, without the Mister, came again and again after this, though I pulled myself up for it as often as I caught myself.
“Now, papa!” said Connie from the grass.
“Not yet, my dear. Wait till your mamma and Wynnie come. Let us go and meet them, Mr. Percivale.”
“O yes, do, papa. Leave me alone here without knowing where I am or what kind of a place I am in. I should like to know how it feels. I have never been alone in all my life.”