“Francie!” he called with perceptible impatience; “what are you at down there?”
The steam-launch had by this time passed the opening, and Francie turned and rode towards him. Her hat was a good deal on the back of her head, and her brilliant hair caught the sunshine; the charm of her supple figure atoned for the crookedness of her seat, and her eyes shone with an excitement born of the delightful sight of soldiery.
“Oh, Mr. Lambert, weren’t those the officers?” she cried, as he rode up to her; “which was which? Haven’t they a grand little steamer?”
Lambert’s temper had apparently not been improved by his conversation with Julia Duffy; instead of answering Miss Fitzpatrick he looked at her with a clouded brow, and in his heart he said, “Damn the officers!”
“I wonder which of them is the captain?” continued Francie; “I suppose it is the little fair one; he was much the best dressed, and he was making the other one do all the work?”
Lambert gave a scornful laugh.
“I’ll leave you to find that out for yourself. I’ll engage it won’t be long before you know all about them. You’ve made a good start already.”
“Oh, very well,” replied Francie, letting fall both the reins in order to settle her hat; “some day you’ll be asking me something, and I won’t tell you, and then you’ll be sorry.”
“Some day you’ll be breaking your neck, and then you’ll be sorry,” retorted Lambert, taking up the fallen reins.
They rode out of the gate of Gurthnamuckla in silence, and after a mile of trotting, which was to Francie a period of mingled pain and anxiety, the horses slackened of their own accord, and began to pick their way gingerly over the smooth sheets of rock that marked the entry of the road into the stony tract mentioned in the last chapter. Francie took the opportunity for a propitiatory question.