Its absurdity struck them both. Simultaneously, they burst out laughing: their reserve vanished from that moment. He took both her hands in his, and the rod lay neglected on the shingle, while he exclaimed—
"I am so pleased to see you again! Miss Macormac—Norah! I fished here all yesterday, hoping you'd come. I'm glad though you didn't; you'd have got such a wetting."
"Did you, now?" was her answer, while the beautiful grey eyes deepened, and the blood mantled in her cheek. "Indeed, then, it's for little I'd have counted the wetting, if I'd only known. But how was I to know, Captain Walters—well, Daisy, then—that you'd be shooting up the river, like a young salmon, only to see me? And supposing I had known it, or thought it, or wished it even, I'm afraid I ought never to have come."
"But now you are here," argued Daisy, with some show of reason, "you'll speak to me, won't you? and help me to fish, and let me walk back with you part of the way home?"
It seemed an impotent conclusion, but she was in no mood to be censorious.
"I'm very pleased to see you, and that's the truth," she answered; "but as for fishing, I'll engage ye'll never rise a fish in the Dabble with a sky like that. I'll stay just five minutes, though, while ye wet your line, anyhow. Oh! Daisy, don't you remember what a trouble we had with the big fish down yonder, the time I ran to fetch the gaff?"
"Remember!" said Daisy, "I should think I do! How quick you were about it. I didn't think any girl in the world could run so fast. I can remember everything you've said and done since I've known you. That's the worst of it, Norah. It's got to be different after to-day."
She had been laughing and blushing at his recollections of her activity; but she glanced quickly in his face now, while her own turned very grave and pale.
"Ye're coming to the Castle, of course," said she. "I'll run home this minute, and tell mamma to order a room, and we'll send the car round to the station for your things."