The while Kate turned his comparison over in her mind to judge whether she liked it or not, the young man shifted his gun to his shoulder, as if to indicate that the talk had lasted long enough. Then she swiftly blamed herself for having left this signal to him.
“I’ll not be keeping you,” she said, hurriedly.
“Oh, bless you—not at all!” he protested. “Only I was afraid I was keeping you. You see, time hangs pretty heavy on my hands just now, and I’m tickled to death to have anybody to talk to. Of course, I like to go around looking at the castles here, because the chances are that some of my people some time or other helped build ’em. I know my father was born somewhere in this part of County Cork.”
Kate sniffed at him.
“Manny thousands of people have been born here,” she said, with dignity, “but it doesn’t follow that they had annything to do with these castles.” The young man attached less importance to the point.
“Oh, of course not,” he said, carelessly. “All I go by is the probability that, way back somewhere, all of us O’Mahonys were related to one another. But for that matter, so were all the Irish who—”
“And are you an O’Mahony, thin?”
Kate was looking at him with shining eyes—and he saw now that she was much taller and more beautiful than he had thought before.
“That’s my name,” he said, simply.
“An O’Mahony of County Cork?”