"Dandy was the mother," said Gheena impatiently, "Dandy the terrier. And the pup is some kind of hound one side. I said Dandy, not Dandies."
Stafford stopped the car suddenly. He was sorry to disturb her, but he had forgotten to put in petrol.
Far below them lay the sea, dimpling and flashing in the sunlight, greeny dark by the cliffs, grey blue in the long neck of the harbour, a great carpet of diamond points outside. Leeshane rose its long grey hump from the flash; Innisfail was vaguely purple. Here and there on the great splashing water-way a red sail glinted, or a smudge of smoke hung darkly as some steamer thrashed its uneasy way to harbour.
Gheena sat on the step of the car, looking out. Just behind these hills and across the harbour they hunted. It was hilly and boggy; there were woods and lakes, but patches of grass gave them short glimpses of gallops, and when one got used to it there was joy in the scramble: in hounds hunting over the heathery hills and the ever-constant fear of losing them when they vanished into a glen, or one of the thick little pine woods which were set as dark emeralds in the grey hill-sides. Joy in the perfection of those bursts over grass fields with low banks to jump. And quite far inland, if their fox was kind enough to avoid a chain of lakes and a big bog, there was quite a stretch of good country. It was fox-hunting with its hopes and fears, its joys and sorrows, its mystery of uncertainty. The little field down there was as keen watching hounds run as though they rode in far-famed Leicestershire, and crossed the fox-hunting paradise in Limerick.
Peace hung over the land; the withering heather gave tinge of purple still; the sun caught the slate beds on the hills, making them gleam dull red and brown, and below there was the wonder of the sea.
"One cannot realize it—here," almost whispered Gheena. "Dust and the pound of feet, and the rattle of guns, and men out to kill each other in this quiet world."
"France was as quiet as this—two months ago," Basil said quietly. "Rows of poplars, long white roads, sluggish rivers, great patches of yellowing corn, grapes growing purple. I've been at a big camp," he said, "and seen and heard the rattle and the tramp and the men's faces come out of the cloud of yellow dust—kindly, merry faces, all so keen for war—and now all fighting...."
"For us," said Gheena very deliberately—"fighting."
"For—us," he said after a pause, looking straight at her. It was Gheena who flushed; except when speared on by patriotism, she was naturally polite and averse to hurting people's feelings.
Something in the flash in Stafford's eye made her look away for quite a long time at the nearest smudge of smoke.