Page 233 - sons-and-lovers

the beam in the darkness overhead, and was pushed back
over a peg in the wall.
‘It’s something like a rope!’ he exclaimed appreciatively;
and he sat down on it, anxious to try it. Then immediately
he rose.
‘Come on, then, and have first go,’ he said to the girl.
‘See,’ she answered, going into the barn, ‘we put some
bags on the seat”; and she made the swing comfortable for
him. That gave her pleasure. He held the rope.
‘Come on, then,’ he said to her.
‘No, I won’t go first,’ she answered.
She stood aside in her still, aloof fashion.
‘Why?’
‘You go,’ she pleaded.
Almost for the first time in her life she had the pleasure
of giving up to a man, of spoiling him. Paul looked at her.
‘All right,’ he said, sitting down. ‘Mind out!’
He set off with a spring, and in a moment was flying
through the air, almost out of the door of the shed, the up-
per half of which was open, showing outside the drizzling
rain, the filthy yard, the cattle standing disconsolate against
the black cartshed, and at the back of all the grey-green wall
of the wood. She stood below in her crimson tam-o’-shanter
and watched. He looked down at her, and she saw his blue
eyes sparkling.
‘It’s a treat of a swing,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
He was swinging through the air, every bit of him swing-
ing, like a bird that swoops for joy of movement. And he

Sons and Lovers