“That's exactly how it is,” said Waters, closing one eye to look more piercingly astute. “Did you ever see anything trust another so much as a cat does a mouse? She hasn't no dirty suspicions at all, but lets him run here and run there, only with a make-believe of her paw letting him feel that he an't to trespass too far on her patience.”
“Pshaw!” said Tony, turning away angrily; and he muttered to himself as he walked off, “how stupid it is to take any view of life from a fellow who has never looked at it from a higher point than a hayloft!”
As the steamer rounded Fairhead, and the tall cliffs of the Causeway came into view, other thoughts soon chased away all memory of the poor country fellow. It was home was now before him,—home, that no humility can rob of its hold upon the heart; home, that appeals to the poorest of us by the selfsame sympathies the richest and greatest feel! Yes, yonder was Carrig-a-Rede, and there were the Skerries, so near and yet so far off. How slowly the great mass seemed to move, though it was about an hoar ago she seemed to cleave the water like a fish! How unfair to stop her course at Larne to land those two or three passengers, and what tiresome leave-takings they indulge in; and the luggage, too, they 'll never get it together! So thought Tony, his impatience mastering both reason and generosity.
“I 'll have to take the horses on to Derry, Master Tony,” said Waters, in an insinuating tone of voice, for he knew well what able assistance the other could lend him in any difficulty of the landing. “Sir Arthur thought that if the weather was fine we might be able to get them out on a raft and tow them into shore, but it's too rough for that.”
“Far too rough,” said Tony, his eyes straining to catch the well-known landmarks of the coast.
“And with blood-horses too, in top condition, there's more danger.”
“Far more.”
“So, I hope, your honor will tell the master that I did n't ask the captain to stop, for I saw it was no use.”
“None whatever. I 'll tell him,—that is, if I see him,” muttered Tony, below his breath.
“Maybe, if there was too much sea 'on' for your honor to land—”