Marsh's anger became intensified. "That's the Belfast spirit in you," he exclaimed. "The pounds, shillings and pence mood! I know what you think of the language. You think, what is the commercial value of it? Will it enable a boy to earn thirty shillings a week in an office? Is it as useful as Pitman's Shorthand? That's what you're thinking!..."
"No, it's not, but if it were, it would be very sensible!"
"My God, Henry, can't you realise that a nation's language is the sound of a nation's soul? Don't you understand, man, that if we can't speak our own language then our souls are silent, dumb, inarticulate?... don't you see what I mean?... and all the time we're using English, we're like people who read translations. I don't care whether it is commercially valuable or not. That's not the point. The point is that it's us, that it's our tongue, our language, that it distinguishes us from the English, insists on our difference from them. Do you see what I mean, Henry? We are different, aren't we? You realise that, don't you? We are different from the English, and nothing will ever make us like them. My God, I'd hate to be like them!..."
Henry fled from him, and, scarcely knowing what he was doing, ran across the fields towards Hamilton's farm. As he went up the "loanie," he remembered that Sheila had struck him in the face in her rage at his cowardice, and he stopped and wondered whether he should go on or not. And while he was waiting in the "loanie," she came out of a field, driving a cow before her.
2
She did not speak, though he waited for her to say something. The cow ambled up the "loanie," and Sheila, glancing at him as if she did not recognise him, passed on, following it.
"Sheila!" he called after her, but she did not answer, nor did she turn round.
"I want to speak to you," he said, going after her.
"I don't want to speak to you," she replied, without looking at him.
"But you must!..." He thrust himself in front of her, and tried to take hold of her hands, but she eluded him. She lifted the sally rod she had in her hand and threatened him with it. "I'll lash your face with this if you handle me," she said.