“Yes.” The monosyllable spoke for itself. It shut down on the subject like an iron door.
“The old stock are thinning out, like my brown hairs,” laughed Minchin.
“Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto,” was the rejoinder.
“Per Bacco! you must taste the Falernian. I am Dominick—”
“Minchin,” interposed the O’Byrne, “the best angler in Wicklow. We disciples of the rod and reel scarcely need a formal introduction.”
Somehow or other, while the O’Byrne and Dominick Minchin were bandying quaint and courtly compliments, Philip managed to pull himself together and to engage in conversation with the daughter of the house.
“You perceive, Mr. Redmond, how fate is against our being introduced—so dead against as to compel me to make you and my father acquainted as if you and I were old friends.”
“I do feel as if I had known you for ever so long, and that a void—”
“Do look at the trout jumping. What perfect circles they make in the still water!”
She had interrupted with a woman’s tact. Redmond was unversed in the subtle distinctions which form the rungs of the ladder of love. Most of the girls whom he met in society were as so many agreeable nothings—exquisitely-attired statuettes, whose ideas were bounded by silk, satin, feathers, and lace. With them he had nothing in common save the weather and ice-cream; and being imbued with a feeling of aversive contempt for the whole sex, the revelation of light and love which now burst upon him revolutionized his whole being and begat an enthusiasm that forgot impossibilities. A child of nature sounds very well in poesy, but the article attired in broadcloth is very rapidly put down as a bore, if not a nuisance.