"Why, Miss Margaret!" said he, as he came up, with something of surprise, but also—ah yes—something of pleasure, in his tone. "Fancy finding you such a long way from home!"
"Oh, I often come here," I said. "It is but a step."
I was longing to remind him that it was but just yonder on the marsh that I had met him for the first time, but I could not. "What is that?" I asked, abruptly, instead, as a bird flew out of one of the caves that the sea once filled, and hovered over our heads. It hung there some forty feet aloft, winnowing the air gently; then fell like a stone upon the field. "A hawk, I call it," added I; "but I know you have some strange name for it."
When we were together we went back naturally, I think, with one accord to our little altercations about the names and manners of beasts and birds; it was on such little things that the first good beginning of our friendship had been built. It set me at my ease that day.
"It's a kestrel, not a sparrow-hawk," said Harrod. "It's a pity keepers ever mistake them. The kestrels are useful birds. They kill mice. That was a mouse it got now."
"What is your name for it?" I repeated.
"Windhover," he answered.
"Ah yes, it's a pretty name," I said.
And we went on discussing the habitations of the bird, and how it loved to dwell in old buildings; and as we talked we climbed the flight of rough steps, hewn, winding up the face of the rock, and stood on the bald top, with the wind fresh in our faces and nothing but sea, sea all around, in the midst of which we almost seemed to stand as on an island. The little struggle with the breeze did me good, and the familiar way in which he went from one subject to another of our every-day interests put stormier thoughts for a moment out of sight.