He opened the door and went away.
I had no heart to eat my breakfast; the tears were in my eyes as I poured out a cup of tea, and, making no pretence of eating anything, took it over and sipped it by the fire. All my gladness of the morning had died out; I could only feel illogically sorry at this utter break and severance in the old relations between Willy and me. I was still dawdling over my tea when Roche came in to clear away the breakfast-things. His professional eye at once detected my unused plate.
“Will I get another egg biled for you, miss? Them’s cold.”
“No, thank you, Roche. I am not very hungry this morning.”
Roche turned a shrewd eye, like a parrot’s, upon me.
“Fie, fie, miss! That’s no way for a young lady to be. And Masther Willy wasn’t much better than yourself. You have a right to be out this fine morning, and not sitting that way over the fire.”
Roche and I had become great friends. Early in our acquaintance I had found out that he was the Patrick Roche whose letters had given me my first impressions of Irish life, and I had often listened with affectionate patience to his rambling stories of my father’s prowess in all departments of sport. As much to escape from his acute observation as for any other reason, I left the dining-room, and wandered aimlessly into the hall.
A whining and scratching outside the door decided me to try what the day felt like. I wrapped a carriage rug round my shoulders, and, putting on the deer-stalker cap which Willy had once made over to me, I opened the hall door, and was at once assaulted by Pat and Jinny. Having exhausted themselves in ambitious attempts to lick my face by means of perpendicular leaps at it, they proceeded to explain to me as well as they could their wish that I should take them to the garden, to hunt, for the hundredth time, a rabbit which had long set at naught the best-laid plots for his destruction. I followed them to the old gate—a structure in itself very characteristic of Durrus—and opened it in the usual way, by kicking away a stone that had been placed against it, and by then putting my hand through a hole to reach the latch, whose catch on the outside had been broken.
I did not feel disposed to-day to help Pat and Jinny in their hunt, by struggling, as Willy and I had so often done, through the rows of big wet cabbages, whose crinkled white hearts showed the devastations of the enemy, and, leaving the dogs to form their own plan of campaign, I sauntered up and down the path between the lichen-crusted gooseberry-trees. In spite of Roche’s recommendation of the weather, I thought it a very cheerless morning. There was a bite in the chilly air, and each time I turned at the end of the walk and faced the gate, the breeze that met me was sharp and raw.
It was early in January—the deadest time of all the year, I thought, looking round. Not a sign of spring, no feeling even of the hope of it; and somehow, in this cold, leaden atmosphere, my own hopes began to lose half their life. I turned and once more walked towards the gate, thinking that I would call the dogs from their futile yelpings at the mouth of the hole to which the rabbit had long since betaken himself, and would go for a walk. I was not more than half-way down the path, when I saw a hand put through the hole in the gate. As it felt for the latch, I quickly recognized its lean pallor; the gate opened, and Uncle Dominick came into the garden.