“It’s a bit of fried skate, Miss, and I’m sorry it’s no better, but the potatoes is beautiful.”
“Then let me have them, and some milk. No milk—is that so?”
“There’s only one cow, Miss, on the island, and she’s only milked in the evening; but St. Finbar’s Well is the finest water ever was tasted.”
“To your good health, then, and St. Finbar’s!” said she, lifting a goblet to her lips. “You are right, Molly; it is ice-cold and delicious!” And now, as she began her meal, she went on inquiring which of the men about the place would be most likely as a gardener, what things could be got to grow, on which side came the worst winds, and where any shelter could be found. “Perhaps I shall have to take to fishing, Molly,” said she, laughing, “for something I must do.”
“You could make the nets, anyhow, Miss,” said Molly, in admiration of the white and graceful hands, and thinking what ought to be their most congenial labour.
“I can row a boat well, Molly,” said Kate, proudly.
“Whatever you’d do, you’d do well, God bless you!” cried the other; for in that hearty delight in beauty, so natural to the Irish peasant nature, she imagined her to be perfection, and the honest creature turned, ere she left the room, to give her a look of admiration little short of rapture.
CHAPTER XLVI. THE STRANGER AT THE WELL.
Before a couple of weeks passed over, Kate had contrived to divide her days so regularly, to establish for herself a certain routine of little duties, that the time slipped by—as time ever will do in monotony—unfelt. The season was the autumn, and the wild hills and mountains were gorgeous in all the brilliant colour of the ever varied heaths. In the little clefts and valleys, too, where shelter favoured, foxgloves and purple mallows grew with a rare luxuriance, while on every side was met the arbutus, its crimson berries hanging in festoons over rock and crag. The sudden, unexpected sight of the sea, penetrating by many a fissure, as it were, between the mountains, gave unceasing interest to the wild landscape, and over the pathless moors that she strayed, not a living thing to be seen, was the sense of being the first wayfarer who had ever trod these wastes.