'You have crushed me,' he said, laughing, as he put the flower carefully into his pocket-book; 'but it is worth while to be crushed by any one who can give so much ground for their knowledge. How you do know your mountains—from their peasants to their plants!'
'I have had more than ten able-bodied years living and scrambling among them,' she said, smiling.
'Do you keep up all your visits and teaching in the winter?'
'Oh, not so much, of course! But people must be helped and taught in the winter. And our winter is often not as hard as yours down south.'
'Do you go on with that night-school in Poll Ghyll, for instance?' he said, with another note in his voice.
Catherine looked at him and coloured. 'Rose has been telling tales,' she said. 'I wish she would leave my proceedings alone. Poll Ghyll is the family bone of contention at present. Yes, I go on with it. I always take a lantern when the night is dark, and I know every inch of the ground, and Bob is always with me; aren't you, Bob?'
And she stooped down to pat the collie beside her. Bob looked up at her, blinking with a proudly confidential air as though to remind her that there were a good many such secrets between them.
'I like to fancy you with your lantern in the dark,' he cried, the hidden emotion piercing through, 'the night wind blowing about you, the black mountains to right and left of you, some little stream, perhaps, running beside you for company, your dog guarding you, and all good angels going with you.'
She flushed still more deeply; the impetuous words affected her strangely.