“I slipped down.”
She could not tell the truth, although usually so straightforward. Tom looked at her inquiringly as if he was not quite sure, but there was something in her face which forbade further investigation.
“You’ve lost your shoes; you cannot walk home; will you let me give you a lift to Chapel Farm?”
“They do not matter a straw: it is grass nearly the whole way.”
“I’ll fish them out, if you will show me where they are.”
“Carried down by this time ever so far.”
“But you will hurt your feet; it isn’t all grass; you had better get in.”
She thought suddenly of the bargee again, and reflected that the barge might still be moored where it was an hour ago.
“Very well, then, I will go.”
She essayed to put her foot upon the step, but the mud on her stocking was greasy, and she fell backwards. Tom caught her in his arms, and a strange thrill passed through him when he felt that the whole weight of her body rested on him. Many a man there is who can call to mind, across forty years, a silly passage like this in his life. His hair has whitened; all passion ought long ago to have died out of him; thousands of events of infinitely greater consequence have happened; he has read much in philosophy and religion, and has forgotten it all, and a slip on the ice when skating together, or a stumble on the stair, or the pressure of a hand prolonged just for a second in parting, is felt with its original intensity, and the thought of it drives warm blood once more through the arteries.