ristian, still more slowly, her eyes lifting from the
woods and resting on a shining snowball of a cloud, "it's Religious
Intolerance, I think! That seems to me the Spirit of the Nation--my
side as bad as yours, and yours as bad as mine--"

"Oh, the parsons and the priests," said Larry, airily. "Oh you wait,
Christian! You don't know! You've been stuck down here in a hole. If
you met Father Nugent--"

"But I don't mean them only," said Christian, standing to her guns; "I
mean the individual--you and me! Just anybody--we're all the same. The
Shan van Voght has got to free us from each other before she takes on
England!" She looked at Larry; the seriousness left her face, and she
shook back the dark hair from her forehead with just the same gay,
mutinous toss of the head that a young horse will give when the rider
picks up the reins. "I may have been stuck down here in a hole!" said
Christian, mocking him; "but anyhow, I haven't lived in England and
lost my eye!"

"What about seeing from a distance, and seeing the whole and not the
part?" retorted Larry. "What about a bird's eye view?" He had risen to
his feet and was looking down at her, feeling the moral support of
physical elevation.

"That depends on the bird!" said Christian. "Now, if it were a goose,
for example! Like--Hi! Dogs! Look, Larry! Look! Down by the furze
bushes! A _huge_ rabbit!"

The discussion closed abruptly, as such discussions will, when the
disputants are at the golden age, and views and opinions are winged,
and have not yet become ballast, or, which is worse, turned to
mooring-stones.

CHAPTER XVII

The origin of the Coppinger's Court picnic was complicated and has
remained obscure. Whether its author had been Mrs. Mangan, or her
friend, Mrs. Whelply, or young Mr. Coppinger himself, was uncertain,
but the fact remained that a picnic, with indirect reference to the
blossoming of the bluebells (_i.e._, the wild hyacinths) was
decided upon, and that Larry, in the course of the visit that he never
failed to pay to the Mangan household, had placed the demesne of
Coppinger's Court at the disposal of the ladies of Cluhir, as a scene
for the entertainment.

Larry's fidelity to the Mangans was a matter that was undoubtedly
something of a trial to his Aunt Freddy. She was too inflexibly
conscientious to attempt to deny, even to Lady Isabel, still less to
herself, that such fidelity was creditable, but she felt justified in
considering it