But her dog Mick was the first to gain her side. Leaping forward at sound of her voice, he sprang into the carriage, whimpering with joy.
"Mick!—darling Mick! Oh, you bad thing!" She laughed again delightedly; then she turned, flushed and radiant, to greet her cousin.
"Hold him, Larry! That's better! Now, how are you?" She held out her hand and laid it in Asshlin's disengaged one.
Larry flushed with excitement and embarrassment.
"How are you, Clo? You're awfully unchanged! Let me help you out! The trap is waiting!"
As in a dream, she passed through the little station that had seemed so large and imposing to her childish eyes in the time when a day's shopping in Cork had represented the acme of adventure and enterprise; but half-way down the narrow platform she paused.
"Oh, the sea, Larry!" she exclaimed, drawing in a long, deep breath—"the heavenly smell of the sea!" Then she suddenly caught sight of Burke, waiting, as he might have waited six years ago, beside the high, old-fashioned trap.
"The same trap!" she said, with a little gasp.
Asshlin laughed.
"The same, only for a coat of varnish. But won't you speak to Tim?" He added the last a trifle diffidently, with a shy glance at her costly clothes and her general air of refinement and distinction.