Lady Alice watched him with dancing eyes for a little while. “Haply thou wilt spoil that poor vine,” said she by-and-by, breaking the silence and laughing, then turning suddenly serious again. “Didst thou hurt thyself by thy fall?”
“Nay,” said Myles, looking up, “such a fall as that was no great matter. Many and many a time I have had worse.”
“Hast thou so?” said the Lady Alice. “Thou didst fright me parlously, and my coz likewise.”
Myles hesitated for a moment, and then blurted out, “Thereat I grieve, for thee I would not fright for all the world.”
The young lady laughed and blushed. “All the world is a great matter,” said she.
“Yea,” said he, “it is a great matter; but it is a greater matter to fright thee, and so I would not do it for that, and more.”
The young lady laughed again, but she did not say anything further, and a space of silence fell so long that by-and-by she forced herself to say, “My cousin findeth not the ball presently.”
“Nay,” said Myles, briefly, and then again neither spoke, until by-and-by the Lady Anne came, bringing the ball. Myles felt a great sense of relief at that coming, and yet was somehow sorry. Then he took the ball, and knew enough to bow his acknowledgment in a manner neither ill nor awkward.
“Didst thou hurt thyself?” asked Lady Anne.
“Nay,” said Myles, giving himself a shake; “seest thou not I be whole, limb and bone? Nay, I have had shrewdly worse falls than that. Once I fell out of an oak-tree down by the river and upon a root, and bethought me I did break a rib or more. And then one time when I was a boy in Crosbey-Dale—that was where I lived before I came hither—I did catch me hold of the blade of the windmill, thinking it was moving slowly, and that I would have a ride i' th' air, and so was like to have had a fall ten thousand times worse than this.”