Her gaze at the far woods became fixed, and her hands ceased to play with the soft, tan ears.

“Is what?” said Larry, rather impatiently.  He was bewildered by this grave, young debater, and was trying to reconcile her with the child he had left behind him last year, or even with the child who, five minutes ago, had wished to impress a comprehensive kiss on all the hounds at once.  Moreover, a young gentleman on the imminent verge of official manhood, is justified in resenting ideas, in opposition to his own, being offered to him by a little girl, with her hair only just “up,” whom he regards as no more than a niece, or thereabouts.

“Well,” said Christian, still more slowly, her eyes lifting from the woods and resting on a shining snowball of a cloud, “it’s Religious Intolerance, I think!  That seems to me the Spirit of the Nation—­my side as bad as yours, and yours as bad as mine—­”

“Oh, the parsons and the priests,” said Larry, airily.  “Oh you wait, Christian!  You don’t know!  You’ve been stuck down here in a hole.  If you met Father Nugent—­”

“But I don’t mean them only,” said Christian, standing to her guns; “I mean the individual—­you and me!  Just anybody—­we’re all the same.  The Shan van Voght has got to free us from each other before she takes on England!” She looked at Larry; the seriousness left her face, and she shook back the dark hair from her forehead with just the same gay, mutinous toss of the head that a young horse will give when the rider picks up the reins.  “I may have been stuck down here in a hole!” said Christian, mocking him; “but anyhow, I haven’t lived in England and lost my eye!”

“What about seeing from a distance, and seeing the whole and not the part?” retorted Larry.  “What about a bird’s eye view?” He had risen to his feet and was looking down at her, feeling the moral support of physical elevation.

“That depends on the bird!” said Christian.  “Now, if it were a goose, for example!  Like—­Hi!  Dogs!  Look, Larry!  Look!  Down by the furze bushes!  A huge rabbit!”

The discussion closed abruptly, as such discussions will, when the disputants are at the golden age, and views and opinions are winged, and have not yet become ballast, or, which is worse, turned to mooring-stones.

CHAPTER XVII

The origin of the Coppinger’s Court picnic was complicated and has remained obscure.  Whether its author had been Mrs. Mangan, or her friend, Mrs. Whelply, or young Mr. Coppinger himself, was uncertain, but the fact remained that a picnic, with indirect reference to the blossoming of the bluebells (i.e., the wild hyacinths) was decided upon, and that Larry, in the course of the visit that he never failed to pay to the Mangan household, had placed the demesne of Coppinger’s Court at the disposal of the ladies of Cluhir, as a scene for the entertainment.