“I’m with you,” he answered at once, “only you’ll have to show me the way.” “Let’s take hands and pretend we’re children again to begin with,” was the prompt reply, and then, hand in hand, they stood and looked across the water to Warrenpoint. “We’ve had some fun there, haven’t we!” said Paddy. “Do you remember the first time we crossed alone, when you were about ten and I was six, and what a row we got into afterward!—and three weeks later we decided it was worth it and went again? Jack! what a scoundrel you were!” and she laughed up into his face. “I, a scoundrel indeed! I like that! Why, you put me up to nearly everything, and called me a coward if I held back.” “Did I?” innocently. “How wrong of me! Good-by, my dear loch, we’re only going away for a little while, and well soon be back. Mind you don’t forget.” And she turned briskly away, pulling Jack after her. All through the grounds of The Ghan House and the Parsonage, path by path, they trampled, laughing at a recollection here, an escapade there, each pretending not to notice how near to tears they both felt. Last of all they came to the churchyard, and the hand in Jack’s tightened involuntarily. “It will be the making of us, you know, Jack,” she said, throwing back her head with an odd little jerk, and speaking at random. “I can see it well enough now. If you had not been suddenly awakened to the true state of things, you’d just have hung on here, and never been anything at all but two dear little old maids’ spoiled darling. By and by you would have taken to sipping tea, and knitting, and having your slippers warmed, and a hot-water bottle at nights, and grown very stout, and quite forgotten you were ever meant to be a man. You’d have been for all the world like one of Lady Dudley’s precious kittens, that are not allowed out in the rain for fear of getting their feet wet. You wouldn’t have been able to help yourself—just everything would have tended to it.