I clasped it in my hands, sitting meantime on a great stone in the angle, while she stood beside me with the dogs on either side of her. It was a smooth, well-rounded arm, cool and delicate of skin, that she gave into my fingers. Her loose sleeve fell back, and if I had dared to follow my desire, I should have set my lips to it, so delightful did the touch of it seem to me. But I refrained me, and presently underneath the satin skin I felt the muscles rise nobly, tense yet easy, clean of curve and spare flesh, moulded alike for strength and suppleness.
“I would not like to pull at the swingle-tree with you, my lass,” said I, “and if it came to a Keltonhill collieshangie I would rather have you on my side than against me.”
And I think she was more pleased at that than if I had told her she was to be a great heiress.
As I waited there on the rough stones of the sheepfold, and looked at the slight figure sitting frankly and easily beside me, thinking, as I knew, no more of the things of love than if she had been a neighbour lad of the hills, a kind of jealous anger came over me.
“Jonita,” said I, “had ye never a sweetheart?”
“A what?” cried Jonita in a tone of as much surprise as if I had asked her if she had ever possessed an elephant.
“A lad that loved you as other maids are loved.”
“I have heard silly boys speak nonsense,” she said, “but I am no byre-lass to be touselled in corners by every night-raker that would come visiting at the Drumglass.”
“Jonita,” I went on, “hath none ever helped you with your sheep on the hill, run when you wanted him, stopped when you told him, come like a collie to your foot when he was called?”
“None, I tell you, has ever sat where you are sitting, Hob MacClellan! And hear ye this, had I thought you a silly ‘cuif’ like the rest, it would have been the short day of December and the long again before I had asked you to view my bower under the rock.”