"Like a true prophet," said I, "you're working hard to bring your prophecy true."
"What prophecy?"
"That I should come to the cottage this year. But if I do stay it won't be true to the letter. There'll only be a coloring of truth in it. You said live there. I told you that was impossible."
"Oh—eat your lunch," said Cruikshank, "and go up with Bellwattle afterwards. There's no compulsion for you to stay if you don't like it. There's a bedroom ready for you here."
"Is he cross?" I inquired.
"Do I look it?" asked Cruikshank.
I had to admit that he did not. There was a twinkle of light in his eye the whole time that he was speaking.
It was soon after lunch then that I found myself with Bellwattle and Dandy making our way once more up that old boreen where they tell me the white hemlocks grow so high in summer and the wild geraniums break, in patches of color, the ever freshening wonder of the glorious green.
Heavens! What a rush of memory it brought, carrying me back to that first morning when Bellwattle had brought me up to see the cottage in the hollow. Were they the same sheep grazing there, lifting their heads to stare at us as we swung open the same old gate, whose rusty hinges played the very tune it had played last year? Doubtless they were the very same. This crying for everlasting change is only the restless craving of a neurotic race. There is change enough in the seasons, change enough in the sky to fulfil every requirement of my soul; only that I need another to note those changes with me.
Here the whole summer, the whole autumn and winter had passed with every varied color and design. The spring was back again, and the whole world about us was the same once more as it had been the previous year. The gulls were beating up against the thrusting wind; the songs of larks rose like glittering bells, trilling and tinkling in the bright air above us. Now the gorse was in its full blazonry of yellow, and all the heather buds shook out their music to each little breeze.