My thoughts at once reverted to poor Willy. I asked Mr. Dennehy if he had seen anything of him, and heard that he had passed my cousin, slowly making his way home.
“Oh, I think I ought to go home at once,” I said to Mr. O’Neill. “I might overtake him if you will tell me where I am to go.”
“If you will allow me, I think you had better let me show you the way,” he answered, with a resumption of the stiff manner which had at first struck me. Although I was quite aware that politeness alone prompted this offer, my ignorance of the country made it impossible for me to refuse it. Trusting, however, that by speedily overtaking Willy I should be able to release my unwilling pilot, I wished Mr. Dennehy good morning, and we made the best of our way to the nearest road.
Our way lay through what seemed to me a chessboard of absurdly small fields. I could not imagine where all the stones came from that were squandered in the heaping up of the walls that divided them from each other, nor did I greatly care, so long as the necessity of jumping them gave me something to amuse me, and made conversation with Mr. O’Neill disjointed and unexacting.
What little I had seen of him at the covert-side had not inspired me with any anxiety to pursue his acquaintance, and once we had got out on to the road, with all the responsibilities of a tête-à-tête staring us in the face, my heart died within me. Never had I met any one who was so difficult to talk to. I found that I was gradually assuming the ungrateful position of a catechist, and, while filled with smothered indignation at my companion’s perfunctory answers, I could not repress a certain admiration for the composure with which he allowed the whole stress of discourse to rest upon my shoulders. I at length made up my mind to give myself no more trouble in the cause of politeness, and resolved that until he chose to speak I would not do so.
A long silence was the result. We rode on side by side, my companion staring steadily between his horse’s ears, while I wondered how soon we should be likely to meet Willy, and thought how very much more I should have preferred his society.
“I suppose you find this place rather dull?” Mr. O’Neill’s uninterested voice at last broke the silence. “I have always heard that American young ladies had a very gay time.”
I at once felt that this insufferable young man was trying to talk down to my level—the level of an “American young lady”—and my smouldering resentment got the better of my politeness.
“I very seldom find myself bored by places. It is, as a rule, the people of the place that bore me.”
“Really,” he returned, with perfect serenity. “Yes, I dare say that is true; but ladies do not generally get on very well without shop and dances.”