‘Oh! my poor sun!’ he broke out, ‘I pity you for having to go down before your time into these black, stifling woods that rise up to smother you like giants—and not into your own broad, cool Atlantic, laughing up your own sparkles of light.’
‘We inland people can hardly appreciate your longing for space.’
‘It’s a very prison,’ said Ulick; ‘the horizon is choked all round, and one can’t breathe in these staid stiff hedges and enclosures!’ And he threw out his arms and flapped them over his breast with a gesture of constraint.
‘You seem no friend to cultivation.’
‘Why, your meadows would be pretty things if they were a little greener,’ said Ulick; ‘but one gets tired of them, and of those straight lines of ploughed field. There’s no sense of liberty; it is like the man whose prison walls closed in upon him!’ And he gave another weary sigh, his step lost elasticity, and he moved on heavily.
‘You are tired; I have brought you too far.’
‘Tired by a bit of a step like this?’ cried the boy, disdainfully, as he straightened himself, and resumed his brisk tread. But it did not last.
‘I had forgotten that you had not been well,’ she said.
‘Pshaw!’ muttered Ulick; then resumed, ‘Aye, Mr. Kendal brought in the doctor upon me—very kind of him—but I do assure you ‘tis nothing but home sickness; I was nearly as bad when I went to St. Columba, but I got over it then, and I will again!’
‘It may be so in part,’ said Albinia, kindly; ‘but let me be impertinent, Ulick, for my sister Winifred told me to look after you; surely you give it every provocation. Such a change of habits is enough to make any one ill. Should you not ask your uncle for a holiday, and go home for a little while?’