But next morning, as Gheena and Crabbit forgot troubles among the daffodils under the trees, with the wind making the flowers as a sea of silvery gold, floating on spears of green, Mr. Freyne showed that he was in earnest.
Coming across the grass, he nodded good morning and called to his wife. Unsoftened by sheen of gold, by glimpse of blue restless sea, he scanned futurity with mental field-glasses and mapped out the following winter's campaign with precision.
He regretted it, but except Mrs. Freyne's cob—she was afraid of her weight and must ride—there would be no horses at Castle Freyne.
"And mine?" Gheena cried. "My horses, Dearest?"
Gheena's stepfather observed that there would not be anybody's horses. He reminded her coldly that until she came of age or married, she had not even an allowance.
Redbird, Whitebird, Blackbird—friends true and tried—to go to France as troopers; Redbird, little Redbird, with her fretful temper; Blackbird, fretful and excitable. Gheena heard the words pour on, catching one here and there, realizing vaguely their tone of threatening anger rather than their full sense. Then she recovered. It was nonsense! In four years she would have too much in her power. Even in war-times her stepfather would not dare to sell her horses. But four years! Forty-eight months! how many hundred days?—an age interminable!
"You don't mean it really, Dearest?" she said, smiling bravely. "Now, do you? And poverty is nonsense."
Mr. Freyne had delivered himself of much oratory; this retort snapped the thin thread of his patience.
His dark look at his stepdaughter worried her far more than any outburst of rage would have done.
"If you marry," he said smoothly, "the power will be in your own hands."