“If I am walking too fast for you, tell me,” he said, when he found himself upon the road with the small, timid figure keeping a respectful distance at his side.
“Oh, no, sir,” but with a little pant of breathlessness, she said.
“I _am_ going too fast--how thoughtless of me! Is that better? And so you are not used to country roads?”
“I am only a little cockney, sir. I have never been out of London before. It’s a bad time to come to the country in the winter: for one forgets how short the days are, and it’s silly to be frightened. I am silly, I suppose.”
“Let us hope not about other things,” said Walter. “The road is very dark, to be sure.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, with a little shiver, drawing closer. They were still in the hollow and the hedges were high on either side, and the darkness was complete upon their path, though a little way above the moon penetrated, and made the ascent as white as silver and as light almost as day.
“Should you like,” he said, with a little laugh of embarrassment, yet an impulse which gave him a curious pleasure, such as he was quite unfamiliar with, “to hold on by me?--would you like to take my arm?”
The suggestion seemed to fill her with alarm, and she shrunk away after coming so close. Walter was, on the whole, relieved that she did not take his offer, but he was pleased with himself for having made it, and immensely interested in this little modest unknown, who was unseen as well--this little mysterious being by his side in the dark.
“The wood is very pretty,” he said, “although you can’t see it, and there are no lamps.”
“You are laughing at me, sir; but if you consider that I never was out of the reach of the lamps before. Hampstead is the furthest I have been, and there are lamps there even on the heath. The darkness is one of the things that strikes me most. It is so dark you can feel it. It’s black.” She gave another little shiver, and said, after a moment, “I do so love the light.”
Her tone, her words, the ease with which she spoke, filled Walter with surprise--a surprise which he expressed without thinking, with a frankness which perhaps he would not have displayed had his companion not been Martha’s friend.
“And what,” he said, “can you be doing in our village, and at old Crockford’s? I can’t understand it. You are a--you’re not a--”