We had walked some distance without exchanging a word, when Bellwattle stopped and pointed to a small thatched roof that rose above a hollow in the undulating land.
"That's the place," said she.
I stood awhile and looked at it from there. It was the only habitation within sight. Great lines of gorse bushes clustered all around it, dipping down out of view into the hollow below. High above it in the clear air a kestrel hawk hung poised upon the wind and far away along the near line of the land's horizon a man was driving a team of horses with his harrow, while in his wake there followed a glittering white mass of hungry sea-birds, twisting and turning in the air like myriads of paper pieces tossing in the wind.
"Is it always like this?" I asked presently. "Always as big and broad and grand?"
"Always."
"What a brave blast of yellow there will be when the gorse is out!"
"But has color got sound?" said she.
"Sound! Why, when that gorse is all in blossom, it'll be like a thousand silver trumpets ringing their voices all day long."
"And the heather—when that's out? All this place is one mass of purple. What sound has that?"
I shook my head and laughed. It is the habit I have noticed in her before, that habit of taking one too literally when one's mood is serious.