“I have walked hard to come up with you,” said Vyner. “I wanted to have your company to the Gap.” The old man touched his hat in acknowledgment of this speech, and then bent down his head, while the child spoke to him in Irish.
“‘Tis deaf my grandfather is, Sir, and he didn’t hear you,” said the girl.
“Tell him I would be glad he’d be my guide as far as Mort-na———”
She laughed merrily at his poor attempt at the name, and said, with a racy intonation, “Mortnagheela. ‘Tis there we live ourselves.”
The old peasant munched his bread and lifted the bottle twice to his lips before he answered the girl’s question, and then said, “Ask him is he a gauger.”
“No,” said Vyner, laughing; “I have not come here to molest any one. I want nothing more than to look at your big mountains and grand old cliffs.”
“You’re a surveyor,” said the old man, whose hearing seemed to have not lost one word Vyner uttered.
“Not even that, my good friend—a mere idler, no more.”
The peasant said something in Irish to the child, and she laughed heartily at it, looking up the while in Vyner’s face, as though it made the jest more poignant.