eft, whizzing spray across the starboard beam, and drenching
the locks of a young lady who sat cloaked and hooded in frieze to teach
her wilfulness a lesson, because she would keep her place on deck from
beginning to end of the voyage. Her faith in the capacity of Irish frieze
to turn a deluge of the deeps driven by an Atlantic gale was shaken by
the time she sighted harbour, especially when she shed showers by
flapping a batlike wing of the cloak, and had a slight shudder to find
herself trickling within.
'Dear! and I'm wet to the skin,' she confided the fact to herself
vocally.
'You would not be advised,' a gentleman beside her said after a delicate
pause to let her impulsive naturalism of utterance fly by unwounded.
'And aren't you the same and worse? And not liking it either, I fear,
Sir!' she replied, for despite a manful smile his complexion was
tell-tale. 'But there 's no harm in salt. But you should have gone down
to the cabin with Father Boyle and you would have been sure of not
catching cold. But, Oh! the beautiful . . . look at it! And it's my first
view of England. Well, then, I'll say it's a beautiful country.'
Her companion looked up at the lighted sky, and down at the pools in
tarpaulin at his feet. He repressed a disposition to shudder, and with
the anticipated ecstasy of soon jumping out of wet clothes into dry, he
said: 'I should like to be on the top of that hill now.'
The young lady's eyes flew to the top.
'They say he looks on Ireland; I love him; and his name is Caer Gybi; and
it was one of our Saints gave him the name, I 've read in books. I'll be
there before noon.'
'You want to have a last gaze over to Erin?'
'No, it's to walk and feel the breeze. But I do, though.'
'Won't you require a little rest?'
'Sure and I've had it sitting here all night!' said she.
He laughed: the reason for the variation of exercise was conclusive.
Father Boyle came climbing up the ladder, uncertain of his legs; he
rolled and snatched and tottered on his way to them, and accepted the
gentleman's help of an arm, saying: 'Thank ye, thank ye, and good
morning, Mr. Colesworth. And my poor child! what sort of a night has it
been above, Kathleen?'
He said it rather twinkling, and she retorted:
'What sort of a night has it been below, Father Boyle?' Her twinkle was
livelier than his, compassionate in archness.
'Purgatory past is good for contemplation, my dear. 'Tis past, and
there's the comfor
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