She stood, turning the little cross in her fingers. "Thank you very much," she said nervously. "I should never have got it for myself."
"Are you quite sure?" he asked, with bitter distinctness. "I think you would have managed it much better."
"I'm sure I would rather not try." She dared not raise her eyes to his face, but she saw that he wore no glove, and that the thorns had torn his hand. He was winding his handkerchief round it, and the blood started through the white folds. "Oh, you have hurt yourself!" she exclaimed. He answered only with an impatient gesture of negation.
"How am I to thank you?" she asked despairingly.
"Don't you think the less said the better, at any rate for me?" he replied, picking a piece of bramble from his sleeve, and glancing aside, as if to permit her to go her way with no more words.
But Barbara held her ground. "I should have been sorry to lose that cross. I—I prize it very much."
"Then I am sorry to have given you an absurd association with it."
"Please don't talk like that. I shall remember your kindness," said the girl hurriedly. She felt as if she must add something more. "I always fancy my cross is a kind of—what do they call those things that bring good luck?"
"Amulet? Talisman?"