The rain was not by any means over when we came out into the field. It was half-past four, but, though the sun had sunk, the clouds had lifted, and the misty orange light of the after-glow filled the air. A slim scrap of a moon had slipped up over the hill to the eastward, and the bats were swooping round our heads as we picked our way across the muddy yard of the demesne farm.
“I think you’ll find the field drier than the bohireen,” said Willy, in the same distant voice which he had last spoken; “we can get over the wall here.”
He took my hand to help me over, but dropped it as quickly as possible, and walked on with unnecessary haste, keeping a little in front of me. The field was, as he had said, rather better than the lane, but my feet sank in the soaked ground, the pace at which we were going took my breath away, and I began to be left behind. Willy still stalked on unrelentingly, with the enviable unpetticoated ease of mankind in wet weather.
“I wish you wouldn’t go so fast,” I called out at last. “I can’t possibly keep up if you go at that pace.”
He slackened at once.
“I thought you wanted to go fast,” he answered, without looking back.
“I don’t particularly care,” I said, as I struggled up alongside of him. “I should think Mr. O’Neill must have gone home some time ago.”
Willy made no comment. I took out my handkerchief and wiped the last raindrops from my face, feeling a good deal aggrieved by his behaviour.
“Your cap’s all wet too,” he said, looking down at me from under his eyelids—“soaking, and so is your coat,” putting his hand on my shoulder for a moment. “I think I ought to have carried you home in a turf-basket. Look at this bad bit here we’ve got to go through.”
“Thank you,” I said snappishly, taking off my wet cap and shaking the rain from it as I went, “I should rather not. I am about as wet as I can be now. It certainly was capital weather to go out ferreting in.”