ross flag
may be camouflage, you know! Very likely they're adventurers, after the
Beckett's money. We could advise Father and Mother Beck----"

"Let's follow a famous example, and 'wait and see'--if only for the
girl's sake."

"Oh, you think so well of her!"

"Not well, exactly," Brian hesitated. "I don't know what to think of her
yet. But--I think _about_ her. I feel her, as I feel electricity before
a thunderstorm bursts."

"A thunderstorm expresses her!" I laughed. "I thought of that myself.
She's sullen--brooding, dark as a cloud. Yet the _tiniest_ thing! One
could almost break her in two."

"I held out my hand for good-night," Brian said. "She had to give hers,
though I'm sure for some reason she didn't want to. It was small
and--crushable, like a child's; and hot, as if she had fever."

"She didn't want to take yours, because we're North of Ireland and she's
a fierce Sinn Feiner," I explained. Luckily Brian did not ask how I'd
picked up this piece of information! He was delighted with it, and
chuckled. "So she's a Sinn Feiner! She's very pretty, isn't she?"

"In a cross-patch way. She looks ready to bite at a touch."

"Poor child! Life must have gone hard with her. She's probably got a
grouch, as the American boys over here say. We must try and do something
to soften her down, and make her see things through rosier spectacles,
if she and her brother join on to our party for a while."

"Ye-es."

"You don't like her, Molly?"

"Oh, I've hardly thought of her, dear. But you seem to have made up for
that."

"Thunderstorms _make_ you think about them. They electrify the
atmosphere. I see this girl so distinctly somehow: little, white thing;
big, gloomy eyes like storms in deep woods, and thin eyelids--you know,
that transparent, flower-petal kind, where you fancy you see the iris
looking through, like spirit eyes, always awake while the body's eyes
sleep; and--and lots of dark hair without much colour--hair like smoke.
I see her a suppressed volcano--but not extinct."

"The day may come when we'll wish she were extinct. But really you've
described her better than I could, though I stared quite a lot last
night. Come along, dear. It's six minutes to nine. Let's trot down to
breakfast."

We trotted; but early as I'd meant to be, and early as we were, the
O'Farrells and the Becketts were before us. How long they had been
together I don't know, but they must have finished their first
instalment of talk ab