‘Fifteen last April, and she is like an April wind, when it comes warm and frolicking over the sea! So wild and free, and yet so gentle and soft! Ellen and Mary are grave and steady, and work hard--every stitch of my stockings was poor Mary’s knitting, except what poor old Peggy would send up for a compliment; but Rosie--I don’t think she does a thing but sing, and ride, and row the boat, and keep the house alive! My mother shakes her head, but I don’t know what she’ll say when she gets my aunt’s letter. My Aunt Goldsmith purses up her lips, and says, “I’ll write to advise my sister to send her daughters to some good school.” Ellen, maybe, might bear one, but ah! the thought of little Rosie in a good school!’ ‘Like her brother Ulick in a good bank, eh?’ ‘Why,’ he cried, ‘they always called me the steady Englishman!’ Albinia laughed, but at that moment the sounds of the hunt again occupied them, and all were interpreted by Ulick with the keenest interest, but he would not run away again, though she exhorted him not to regard her. Presently it swept on out of hearing, and by-and-bye they reached the summit of the hill, and looked forth on the dark pine plantations on the opposite undulation, standing out in black relief against a sky golden with a pale, pure, pearly November sunset, a ‘daffodil sky’ flecked with tiny fleeces of soft bright-yellow light, reminding Albinia of Fouque’s beautiful dream of Aslauga’s golden hair showing the gates of Heaven to her devoted knight. She looked for her companion’s sympathy in her admiration, but the woods seemed to oppress him, and his panting sigh showed how real a thing was _he-men_. ‘Oh! my poor sun!’ he broke out, ‘I pity you for having to go down before your time into these black, stifling woods that rise up to smother you like giants--and not into your own broad, cool Atlantic, laughing up your own sparkles of light.’ ‘We inland people can hardly appreciate your longing for space.’ ‘It’s a very prison,’ said Ulick; ‘the horizon is choked all round, and one can’t breathe in these staid stiff hedges and enclosures!’ And he threw out his arms and flapped them over his breast with a gesture of constraint. ‘You seem no friend to cultivation.’ ‘Why, your meadows would be pretty things if they were a little greener,’ said Ulick; ‘but one gets tired of them, and of those straight lines of ploughed field. There’s no sense of liberty; it is like the man whose prison walls closed in upon him!’ And he gave another weary sigh, his step lost elasticity, and he moved on heavily. ‘You are tired; I have brought you too far.’ ‘Tired by a bit of a step like this?’ cried the boy, disdainfully, as he straightened himself, and resumed his brisk tread. But it did not last. ‘I had forgotten that you had not been well,’ she said.