'Worm, come here, and help me to mount.' Worm stepped forward, and she was in the saddle in a trice.
Then they moved on, going for some distance in silence, the hot air of the valley being occasionally brushed from their faces by a cool breeze, which wound its way along ravines leading up from the sea.
'I suppose,' said Stephen, 'that a man who can neither sit in a saddle himself nor help another person into one seems a useless incumbrance; but, Miss Swancourt, I'll learn to do it all for your sake; I will, indeed.' 'What is so unusual in you,' she said, in a didactic tone justifiable in a horsewoman's address to a benighted walker, 'is that your knowledge of certain things should be combined with your ignorance of certain other things.' Stephen lifted his eyes earnestly to hers.
'You know,' he said, 'it is simply because there are so many other things to be learnt in this wide world that I didn't trouble about that particular bit of knowledge.

I thought it would be useless to me; but I don't think so now.

I will learn riding, and all connected with it, because then you would like me better.

Do you like me much less for this ?' She looked sideways at him with critical meditation tenderly rendered.
'Do I seem like LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI ?' she began suddenly, without replying to his question.

'Fancy yourself saying, Mr.Smith: "I sat her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long, For sidelong would she bend, and sing A fairy's song, She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild, and manna dew;" and that's all she did.' 'No, no,' said the young man stilly, and with a rising colour.
'"And sure in language strange she said, I love thee true."' 'Not at all,' she rejoined quickly.