“But why do you let it worry you?” she asked. “I don’t let anything worry me. Of course, I don’t like to think of poor old Chester in the hands of those hikers; but it doesn’t worry me, because I know nothing really serious will happen to him.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t worry you in the least to know I love you?” he enquired gloomily.

“No, it wouldn’t worry me,” she murmured gently, casting a quick sidelong glance at that rosebrowned face gazing across the moor to where its enemy the world was lurking on the other side of the mountains. “Why should it worry me?” she added still more gently.

“Why indeed?” the poet asked, with Byronic scorn for the feminine wiles he despised even as he succumbed to them.

“It seems to worry you a lot,” she said.

“Well, it isn’t exactly soothing to fall madly in love with a girl utterly beyond one’s reach.”

“It doesn’t seem to me I’m so far beyond your reach. I couldn’t sit much closer to you unless I sat on your knee, and I can’t sit on your knee because you’re resting your head on your knee and making faces at the poor old world.”

“You needn’t jeer at me.”

“Oh, Alan, I never thought you were quite so dumb. When I met you first I thought you were shy, but that didn’t bother me because I liked your shyness. And when you read me that poem about the dark-brown water of life …” she sighed. “And then when you read me that poem with what you added about bog-myrtle …” she sighed again, and was silent.

“You have nothing to sigh about,” he observed severely.

I don’t think you’ve any right to say that about me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t think you know enough about me, Alan.”

“I’ll never have the chance to learn much more.”

“It’ll be your own fault if you don’t. You could learn pretty well all about me by asking one little question.”

“And what is that wonderful question?”

“Oh, you can look after the question, Alan. It’s my job to look after the answer.”

“There’s only one question I want to ask you,” he declared sombrely.

“Hadn’t you better ask it?”

“Do you think you could ever love me?”

“Alan,” she cried, “you really are too dumb. I thought you were going to ask me to marry you. It’s no good asking unnecessary questions. That’s just wasting time.”

“How can I ask you to marry me?” he demanded indignantly.

“I should think it would be pretty easy even in Gaelic.”

“How can I ask you to marry me? You rich and me poor!”

“Well, that’s a whole lot better than both of us being poor,” she pointed out.