A pretty sight! But for the pure white, blue-veined skin she might have been taken for a woman of Spain--the most natural, perhaps the most lovable, of the daughters of earth.

But all at once she remembered that I was a stranger, and with a blush turned aside and covered her fair skin.

Her shame, too, like her first simple unconscious action, was natural; for we live in a cooler climate, and are accustomed to more clothing than the Spanish; and our closer covering "has entered the soul," as the late Professor Kitchen Parker would have said; and that which was only becoming modesty in the English woman would in the Spanish seem rank prudishness.
In the afternoon I came to a slender stream, clear and swift, running between the hills that rose, round and large and high, on either hand, like vast downs, some grassy, others wooded.

This was the Branscombe, and, following it, I came to the village; then, for a short mile my way ran by a winding path with the babbling stream below me on one side, and on the other the widely separated groups and little rows of thatched cottages.
Finally, I came to the last and largest group of all, the end of the village nearest to the sea, within ten minutes' walk of the shingly beach.

Here I was glad to rest.