Photo by W. Leonard
Kylemore Castle
"'Creature,' she says, 'do you speak Hebrew?' 'I'd speak anything,' he answers, 'to speak with you.' 'Then,' she says again, 'have you seen my skin?' 'Yes, darling,' he says in reply, looking at her with every eye in his head. 'Where, where is it?' she cries, jumping up and clasping her two little hands together, and dropping on her knees before John.
"'Where is it?' he repeats, raising her gently up; 'why, on yourself, to be sure, as white and as clear as the foam on a wave in June.'
"'Oh, it's the other skin I want,' she cries, bursting into tears. 'Shall I skin myself and give it you, to please you, my lady?' he replies; 'sure I will, and welcome, if it will do you any good, sooner than have you bawling and roaring this way,' he says, 'like an angel,' he says.
"'What a funny creature you are!' she answers, laughing a lilt of a laugh up in his face; 'but you're not a seal,' she says, 'and so your skin would do me no good.'
"'Whew!' thought John O'Glin; 'whew! now all the blossom is out on the May-bush; now my eyes are opened'; for he knew the sense of what he had seen, and how the whole was a memory of the old world.
"'I'll tell you what it is,' said the poor fellow, for it never took him any time at all to fall in love; 'I'll tell you what it is, don't bother any more about your bit of a skin, but take me instead of it—that is,' he said, and he changed colour at the bare thought of it, 'that is, unless you're married in your own country.' And as all their discourse went on in Hebrew and Latin, which John said he had not a perfect knowledge of, he found it hard to make her understand at first, though she was quick enough too; and she said she was not married, but might have been, only she had no mind to the seal, who was her father's prime minister, but that she had always made up her mind to marry none but a prince. 'And are you a king's son?' she says. 'I am,' says John, as bould as murder, and putting a great stretch on himself. 'More than that, I'm a king's great-grandson—in these twisting times there's no knowing who may turn up a king; but I've the blood in my veins of twenty kings—and what's better than that, Irish kings.'