“By Jove, I hardly knew you when I saw you first!” responded Larry, his sails filling on a fresh tack with characteristic speed.  “It’s not as light as it used to be.  I’m not sure that I like it up.”

He looked at her critically.  Her hair, thick and waving lay darkly on her forehead, and was stacked in masses upon her small head on a system known only to herself.

“That’s a pity,” said Christian, coolly, “and I hate it, too.  But unluckily, whether you and I hate it or not, it’s got to stay up now—­that’s to say, when it will.  I am supposed to be ‘out.’  I’m nearly eighteen, you know.  I never thought I’d live to such an age.”

“Oh, wait till you’re ‘of age,’ like me!” said Larry, impressively.  “Then you’ll know the horrors of longevity.  I’ve got to take over the show—­the tenants and all the rest of it—­from your father, and Aunt Freddy, next week!  An awful job it’s going to be!  Cousin Dick says that these revisions of rent have played the deuce all round.  I shall make old Barty Mangan my agent.  He’s a solicitor now all right.  He can run the show.  I like old Barty, don’t you?”

“I hardly ever see him,” said Christian, cautiously.  “He has rather nice looks—­more like a poet than a solicitor.”

“You see, I want to go abroad, and do some music, and paint,” said Larry, pressing on with his own subject.  “Take painting on seriously, you know—­”

“I know,” said Christian, thoughtfully, “I don’t envy Barty Mangan!  I know Papa’s having botheration with our people—­”

“All the more reason for me to earn my living by painting!” responded Larry cheerfully.

They were sitting at the edge of a patch of plantation.  It was the middle of May, and the young larches behind them were clad in a cloud of pale emerald; the clumps of hawthorn, that were dotted about the park, between the kennels and the river, were sending forth the fragrance of their whiteness; the new green had come into the grass, though it was almost smothered in the snow of daisies; primroses and wild hyacinths had strayed from the little wood, and straggling down the hillside, had joined hands and agreed, the first, to linger, the latter, to hasten into blow, and so to share the month between them.  Just below, on the turn of the hill, was a big thicket of furze bushes, more golden than gold, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.  From Larry’s woods across the Ownashee, the cuckoo’s voice came, as melodiously monotonous and as full of associations as the bell of a village church.  Silvery clouds were sailing very high in a sky of thinnest, sweetest blue; little jets of sparkling sound, rising and falling in it, bespoke the invisible, rapturous larks, tireless as a playing fountain; and the sun blazed down on the boy and the girl and the two little dogs seated there in the full of it.

Larry rolled over and over on the grass like a young colt.

“Oh, murder-in-Irish!” he groaned, in sheer ecstasy, “isn’t it gorgeous!  I always forget how entirely stunning Ireland is, till I come back to it!”