So we mounted the sides of the cars, and holding on to the polished rails, as we had been told was the proper fashion, we set out bravely on our way, little wotting what a wetting all Ireland was soon to have.
In a half hour or so we would be walking over Irish lawns and admiring Irish laces as they decked the forms of gaily clad femininity gathered for sociability and tea alongside the rhododendrons and fuchsia bushes.
Government Cottage, rent a shilling a week
A few drops of rain fell, but the wind was south and we seemed to be going east.
"Isn't this gay?" called the young girls, as we jiggled along in holiday mood. Suddenly a silver bolt of jagged lightning cleft the sky to the south, and almost instantaneously a peal of thunder that sounded as if it had been born and bred on Connecticut hills, so loud was it, told us that the people living to the south of us were going to get wet.
And then we came to a bend in the road and turned south.
"Ah, 'twill be nothin'," said our driver, in answer to a question.
To give up what one has undertaken is a poor way of playing a game and we were all for going on. "It's not so far," said the jarvey, but this was a sort of truth that depended on what he was comparing the distance with. It was not so far as Dublin, for instance, but 'twas far enough as the event proved.