“Yes, certainly,” he said:  “these are dogs that have something to recommend them.”

“Yes, and every one is good to them:  they are not in need of your favor.  But you don’t think of the wretched little brutes that have nothing to recommend them, that only live on sufferance, that every one kicks and despises and starves.”

“Well,” said he with some compunction, “look there!  That new friend of yours—­he’s no great beauty, you must confess—­is all right now.  The bath has cured him.  As soon as he’s done licking his paws he’ll be off home, wherever that may be.  But I’ve always noticed that about you, Wenna:  you’re always on the side of things that are ugly and helpless and useless in the world; and you’re not very just to those who don’t agree with you.  For after all, you know, one wants time to acquire that notion of yours—­that it is only weak and ill-favored creatures that are worthy of the least consideration.”

“Yes,” she said rather sadly, “you want time to learn that.”

He looked at her.  Did she mean that her sympathy with those who were weak and ill-favored arose from some strange consciousness that she herself was both?  His cheeks began to burn red.  He had often heard her hint something like that, and yet he had never dared to reason with her or show her what he thought of her.  Should he do so now?

“Wenna,” he said, blushing hotly, “I can’t make you out sometimes.  You speak as if no one cared for you.  Now, if I were to tell you—­”

“Oh, I am not so ungrateful,” she said hastily.  “I know that two or three do; and—­and, Mr. Trelyon, do you think you could coax that little dog over the stream again?  You see he has come back again—­he can’t find his way home.”

Mr. Trelyon called to the dog:  it came down to the river’s side, and whined and shivered on the brink.

“Do you care a brass farthing about the little beast?” he said to Wenna.

“I must put him on his way home,” she answered.

Thereupon the young man went straight through the stream to the other side, jumping the deeper portions of the channel:  he caught up the dog and brought it back to her; and when she was very angry with him for this mad performance, he merely kicked some of the water out of his trousers and laughed.

Then a smile broke over her face also.  “Is that an example of what people would do for me?” she said shyly.  “Mr. Trelyon, you must keep walking through the warm grass till your feet are dry; or will you come along to the inn, and I shall get you some shoes and stockings?  Pray do, and at once.  I am rather in a hurry.”

“I’ll go along with you, anyway,” he said, “and put this little brute into the highway.  But why are you in a hurry?”

“Because,” said Wenna, as they set out to walk down the valley—­“because my mother and I are going to Penzance the day after to-morrow, and I have a lot of things to get ready.”