"Aw, yes, yes, that's the way with fathers," said Janet. "Big men as they may be themselves, they are prouder of their children's successes than of their own—far prouder."
The effect of Janet's scheme was the reverse of what she had expected. By a law of the heart of a boy, which the good soul knew nothing of, Victor resented the industry, success and reputation of Fenella Stanley. It was a kind of rebuke to his own idleness. The girl was a bookworm and would develop into a blue-stocking! He had not seen her for years and did not want to see her, but in his mind's eye he pictured her as she must be now—a pale-faced young person in a short blue skirt and big boots, with cropped hair and perhaps spectacles!
Describing this vision to Alick Gell, as they were drying themselves on the shore after a swim, Victor said with emphasis that if there was one thing he hated it was a woman who was half a man.
"Same here," said Alick, who had had liberal doses of the same medicine at home, less delicately administered by his sister Isabella.
But where Janet failed, a greater advocate, nature itself, was soon to succeed. The boys were then in their nineteenth year, a pair of full-grown, healthy, handsome lads as ever trod the heather, or stripped to the sea, but there was a great world which had not yet been revealed to either of them—the world of woman. That world was to be revealed to one of them now.
II
It was a late afternoon early in September. The day had been wonderful. Over the bald crown above Druidsdale the sun came slanting across the Irish Sea from a crimsoning sky beyond the purple crests of the Morne mountains. Stowell and Gell had been camping out for two days in the Manx hills, and, parting at a junction of paths, Gell had gone down towards Douglas while Stowell had dropped into the cool dark depths of the glen that led homewards.
Victor was as brown as a berry. He was wearing long, thick-soled yellow boots almost up to his knees, with his trousers tucked into them, a loose yellow shirt, rolled up to the elbows of his strong round arms, no waistcoat, his Norfolk jacket thrown over his left shoulder, and a knapsack strapped on his back.
With long, plunging strides he was coming down the glen, singing sometimes in a voice that was partly drowned by the louder water where it dipped into a dub, when, towards the Curragh end of it, on the "brough" side of the river, he came upon a startling vision.
It was a girl. She was about seventeen years of age, bare-headed and bare-footed, and standing ankle-deep in the water. Her lips, and a little of the mouth at either side, were stained blue with blackberries—she had clearly been picking them and had taken off shoes and stockings to get at a laden bush.