Willy had apparently made an effort on my behalf at early rising, and I found him making tea when I came into the dining-room. He came forward to meet me with a complacency in which I detected a consciousness of the added smartness of his Sunday attire; and, having satisfactorily ascertained the fact that I had slept well, he installed me behind the urn to pour out the superfluously strong tea which he had just brewed.
I experienced undeniable relief in the absence of Uncle Dominick, whom at this moment I saw pacing up and down a walk leading from the house to the sea. Willy saw the direction of my eyes.
“I hope you’re not insulted by only me breakfasting with you,” he said, with ungrammatical gallantry. “You can breakfast with the governor whenever you like, but you will have to be down at eight o’clock to do that!”
I intimated with fitting politeness that I was satisfied with the present arrangement, and we began our tête-à-tête meal in great amity. Willy, indeed, was an excellent host. He plied me with everything on the table, eating his own breakfast and talking all the time with unaffected zest and vigour, and I began to feel as if the time I had known him could be reckoned in months instead of hours.
The necessity of writing to announce my safe arrival to Aunt Jane was one that had already forced itself upon my notice.
“I thought you’d be wanting to write a letter,” Willy said, conducting me into the drawing-room after breakfast, “and I got the place ready for you.”
I sat down at the old-fashioned writing-table, and found that he had anticipated my wants with a lavish hand. Through the window I saw him, a few minutes afterwards, sauntering down the drive towards the lodge, smoking a cigarette, with two little white dogs flashing in circles round him; and as I watched him, I came to the conclusion that at first sight I had underestimated my cousin.
There was something to me half amusing and half touching in the anxiety of his little housewifely attentions to me. He was really unusually thoughtful for others; from various things he had said, it was evident that his father had allowed the whole management of the place to devolve on him, and I fell to idle speculation as to whether he ordered dinner, and if he were particular about the housemaids wearing white muslin caps; and I was only aroused from these, and other equally interesting reflections by hearing the clock strike the hour at which I had been warned I must get ready for church.
My uncle was standing on the steps, with his Prayer-book in his hand, when I came downstairs. He wished me good morning, with a polite apology for not having met me at breakfast, and stood looking about him, with eyelids narrowed by the white glare from the sea, till a minute afterwards the wagonnette in which we were going to church came to the door. My uncle and I got in behind; while Willy, with Mick by his side, sat on the box and drove. Once outside the gate, we took a road running at right angles to that by which I had arrived. It went round the head of Durrusmore Harbour, and, leaving the sea behind, turned inland through large woods, which my uncle told me were part of the demesne of Clashmore, The O’Neill’s place.
The road was level, and soft with the fallen red beech leaves, and the brown horses took us along it at a pace that showed they were none the worse for their journey the night before. The rough stone walls on either side of the road were covered with moss and small ferns. Here and there the wood was pierced by narrow rides—vistas in which the clumps of withering bracken repeated the brown and gold of the trees above.