"I think I loved you, Polly, directly I saw you."
In the distance a clump of hills rose steep and bare from the waste land
by the sea's edge--he could see them at this moment as he leant over
the taffrail: with the sun going down behind them they were the colour
of smoked glass. Last night they had been white with moonlight, which
lay spilled out upon them like milk. Strange old hills! Standing there
unchanged, unshaken, from time immemorial, they made the troth that had
been plighted under their shield seem pitifully frail. And yet. . . .
The vows which Polly and he had found so new, so wonderful; were not
these, in truth, as ancient as the hills themselves, and as undying?
Countless generations of human lovers had uttered them. The lovers
passed, but the pledges remained: had put on immortality.
In the course of their talk it leaked out that Polly would not feel
comfortable till her choice was ratified by brother John.
"I'm sure you will like John; he is so clever."
"I shall like everyone belonging to you, my Polly!"
As she lost her shyness Mahony made the discovery that she laughed
easily, and was fond of a jest. Thus, when he admitted to her that he
found it difficult to distinguish one fair, plump, sister Beamish from
the other; that they seemed to him as much alike as two firm, pink-ribbed
mushrooms, the little woman was hugely tickled by his his
masculine want of perception. "Why, Jinny has brown eyes and Tilly
blue!"
What he did not know, and what Polly did not confess to him, was that
much of her merriment arose from sheer lightness of heart.
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