“I want to make a few sketches of the coast scenery about May Point,” he observed.
“There is better scenery in the Foil Dhuv, about two miles farther on; and, bless my heart! you’ll be quite close to Moynalty Castle, and why not go in and see their pictures, your own especially, in such a grand gilt Dublin frame?”
Simple priest! Artful artist!
It was a delightful morning that was shining over Monamullin as the artist quitted it en route to—May Point, of course. The sea, like a great sleeping monster, lay winking at the sun, and but one solitary ship was visible away in the waste—a brown speck in a flood of golden haze. If young gentlemen would only put the single “why?” to themselves in starting upon such expeditions, it might save them many a heartache; but they will not. Any other query but this one. What a talisman that small word in every effort of our lives!
Brown felt unaccountably joyous and brave, charmed with the present, and metaphorically snapping his fingers at the future. A morning walk by the deep and dark blue ocean summons forth this sensation. You bound upon air; champagne fills your veins; all the ills the flesh is heir to are forgotten, all the phantoms of care and sorrow are laid “a full fifty fathom by the lead.”
It is a glorious seed-time, when every thought bears luscious fruit.
He travels merrily onward, now humming a barcarolle, now whistling a fragment of a bouffe, until he reaches the gloomy defile known as the Valley of Glendhanarrahsheen. A turn of the sylvan sanded road brings him in sight of the lordly turrets of Moynalty; another turn, and lo! he comes upon no less a personage than Miss Jyvecote, who, with her married sister, a Mrs. Travers, are driving in the direction whence he had come. Juey was Jehu, and almost pulled the ponies upon their haunches on perceiving our hero.
“This is a condescension, Mr. Brown,” she said, presenting him to her sister. “Will you take a seat?”
“Thanks, no; I am about to ascend that mountain yonder,” pointing vaguely in the direction of the range known as the Twelve Pins.
“Then we shall expect you to luncheon at two o’clock.”