id aloud, "what an ass I am!"

6

Sheila was sitting on a stool in front of the door. Her uncle had gone
to bed, and her aunt, tired after her day's work and her attendance on
the sick man, was lying on the sofa, dosing.

"I wondered were you comin'," Sheila said as he came up to her.

"You knew I'd come," he answered.

"I didn't know anything of the sort," she exclaimed, getting up from the
stool. "Fellas has disappointed me before this."

"Have you had other sweethearts?" he asked, frowning.

She laughed at him. "I've had boys since I was that high," she replied,
holding out her hand to indicate her height when she first had a
sweetheart. "What are you lookin' so sore about? D'ye think no one never
looked at me 'til you came along? For dear sake!"

She rallied him. Was she the first girl he had ever loved? Was she? Ah,
he was afraid to answer. As if she did not know! Of course, she was not
the first, and dear knows she might not be the last....

"I'll never love any one but you, Sheila!..."

"Wheesht will you, or my aunt'll hear you!"

"I don't care who hears me!..."

"Well, I do then. Come on down the loanie a piece, an' you can say what
you like. I love the way you talk ... you've got the quare nice English
accent!"

He followed her across the farmyard and through the gate into the
"loanie."

"My father wouldn't like to hear you saying that," he said.

"Why?" she asked. "Does he not like the English way of talkin'?"

"Indeed, he does not. He loves the way you talk, the way all the Ulster
people talk!..."

"What! Broad an' coarse like me?" she interrupted.

Henry nodded his head. "He doesn't think it's coarse," he said. "He
thinks it's fine!"

Sheila pondered on this for a few moments. "He must be a quare man, your
da!" she said.

They walked to the foot of the "loanie" and then turned along the
Ballymena road.

"Does he know you come out with me?" she said.

"Who?" he answered.

"Your da."

"No. You see!..." He did not know what to say. It had not occurred to
him to talk about Sheila to his father, and he realised now that if it
had, he probably would not have done so.

"But if you're goin' to marry me?..." Sheila was saying.

"Oh, of course," he replied. "Of course, I shall have to tell him about
you, won't I? I just didn't think of it.... Then you're going to marry
me, Sheila?" he demanded, turning to her quickly.

"Och, I don't know," she answered. "I'm too young to be marrie