"I love to have them nice to you," I answered.
A few days later Helen and I stood far forward on the boat deck, straining our eyes for the first glimpse of land. She was all excitement, dancing up and down with little steps and squeezing my arm in between times. "It is just like one of our fairy stories, Ted," she whispered, her face so close that the sea wind blew a damp lock of her hair across my eyes. From the ship's bridge a cynical first officer, telescope under arm, smiled down at us. Helen turned toward him and called: "Oh, please tell us as soon as you see anything." He nodded and sent a sailor down to us with a pair of binoculars. Porpoises were leaping and playing about the ship; the sea gulls were beginning to accumulate off the stern. Helen tried to focus the glasses, but her hands shook so with joy and excitement, I had to help her.
Suddenly the look-out called from the crow's nest on the mast. According to the experts of the sea the noise he made should have been "Land-ho!" but it did not sound like anything articulate. We could still see nothing, for we were lower down. The officer on the bridge pointed the direction for us; Helen and I kept snatching the binoculars from one another. Then the top of a light-house stuck up above the horizon. We could hear a scurrying of passengers.
"How disappointing!" exclaimed Helen. "I thought we would see white chalk cliffs."
"This is Ireland—not England," I answered. "The Old Head of Kinsale is dark rock a few miles behind the light-house. If the Irish cliffs were like the English, Irishmen would paint them a different colour."
It was not long before we were close enough to the coast to see the emerald of the fields at the summit of the rocky cliffs. A line of white edged the meeting of the black rocks with the blue of the sea. Helen drew a long breath as she gazed at the startling beauty of the Irish coast.
"Ted! Ted!" she whispered. "It makes me want to cry."
Passengers crowded about us, and the wise man who knows everything began explaining in a loud voice to all and sundry.
"Ted, take me away. Isn't there somewhere on this boat that we can see all by ourselves?"