“Why did you ever wear them?” I asked, and almost choked on the words remembering what Mrs Valetta had said, “Is it true that some woman put them there?”
He turned and faced me quickly, looking into mine with those eyes of his which I knew could not lie.
“Not a woman, Deirdre, a girl—a little girl of ten. My sister put them in for a whim a few days before she died—and they’ve been there ever since. You are the only woman in the world I would take them out for.”
I remembered how they said he had almost killed a man for jeering at them, how much chaff he had stood from his friends on the subject. I knew that his sister had been dear to him.
“No, no,” I cried swiftly. “You must never take them out. Wear them always. I love them. To me they seem part of you.”
His passionate glance made me almost afraid as he whispered back under cover of the chatter and laughter around us:
“You shall kiss them in for me, my heart, and they shall never leave me again until I die.” When I looked away from him it was to see Maurice Stair’s pale, handsome face opposite, staring before him with moody eyes.
My last recollection before we went indoors, after good-nights all round and many handshakings, was the sight of Tommy Dennison seated at the summit of the glorified tea-house (which was Anthony Kinsella’s hut) performing on the flute in a most subtle manner while the mad Irishman, once more happy, sang:
“Oh, did you ne’er hear of the Blarney?
That’s found near the banks of Killarney.”