“Do you know where she is now?” asked Bunbury, after another silence.
“She said something about going to look for daffodils. I saw her going up the backway towards the woods some time ago.”
“Are you too tired to walk up to meet her? You may choose between that and playing the Impromptu.”
They went up the hill at the back of the house by a seldom-used avenue, where cart-wheels had made deep brown ruts in the grass, and the bordering oaks hung their branches low and unpruned; pale winter pastures spread on either side, and the cattle were already moving downwards towards their night’s lodging. Yet the hint of coming spring was in the lengthened afternoon; stiff-necked daffodil buds were beginning to bend their heads and show the hoarded gold through the jealous green, and thrushes were twining a net of song in the shrubberies below. It is in the days of February that the Irish air begins again to breathe suggestion—no longer mere food for the lungs, it invades the heart, and bewilders the brain with griefs and hopes. Even to the dimming of the eye that smell of the fields entered into Slaney; with a new and strong understanding of herself she could have wept for the guileless egoist who had been Slaney Morris when last the February winds blew sweet.
“Have you written that letter to say that you are not going home to-morrow?” said Bunbury, as he held open the gate that admitted them into the wood.
He had realized during his walk up across the pastures that days in which Slaney had no share would be strangely meaningless. Not being introspective the discovery was sudden enough to set his blood beating and his heart instinctively aching. He knew that she could look forward to days without him as unconcernedly as she would look back to days with him; she was self-sufficing, as the ideal ever seems to be the idealizer, and such as he had no portion beyond the opening of gates for her to pass through. Major Bunbury’s elder sister must have faithfully fulfilled the mission of elder sisters, or else his natural estimation of himself was low.
“No,” replied Slaney, with her eyes on the ground, “after all, I made up my mind not to write.”
“Your mind was made up the other way when you talked about it after breakfast,” said Bunbury, looking down at her as she flicked a fir-cone aside with her stick. “Do you generally change it every few hours?”
“Emerson says that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds,” replied Slaney, with a little sententious air that Bunbury found exasperatingly charming.
“Does Emerson say that Uncle Charles is a hobgoblin for small minds, and could very well look after himself for another week?” There was a resentment in Major Bunbury’s voice that he did not try to conceal.