rish woods can offer in the
month of May. It is the month of the Mother of God, and in the fair
demesne of Coppinger's Court, Heaven had truly visited the earth, and
was chiefly and specially manifest in the Wood of the Ownashee. The
trees stood with their feet bathed in the changeful, passionate blue
of the wild hyacinths, a blue that lay sometimes in deep pools,
sometimes in thin drifts, like the azure of far skies; the pale ferns
rose in it, "like sweet thoughts in a dream"; the grey stems of the
beeches were chequered with the sunlight that their thin branches and
little leaves tried in vain to baffle and keep at bay. From the unseen
river came varying voices; sometimes a soft chuckle that had the
laughing heart of the spring in it, sometimes a rich and rushing
harmony, that told of distant heights and the wind on the hills. There
was a blackbird who was whistling over and over again the opening bar
of the theme of a presto, that, only last week, Larry had heard,
whipped out with frolic glee by the violins of a London orchestra. He
wondered if, with such themes, it is the blackbirds who inspire the
musicians, or if both have access to the same secret well of music, in
which each can dip his little bucket, and bring listeners in the outer
world a taste of the living water of melody. But since (in spite of
the Artistic Temperament) he was a normal boy, what he said was:

"Stunning! Isn't it!" while he stood still, waiting, for the hidden
artist to favour them with another flourish of that gay string of
jewels. "He's 'recapturing' it all right, eh?"

The much-quoted quotation passed by Tishy as the idle wind. Even had
she recognised the allusion, she would have considered the
professional raptures of a blackbird a rather dull subject of
conversation. The gallants of Cluhir did not deal in such matters in
_tete a tete_ with her, and she thought, as she had thought at
the children's party, long ago, that Larry, if not quite a bore,
might, in spite of Coppinger's Court, rather easily become one.

"Oh, he's stunning enough!" she replied, with her full-throated,
contralto laugh; "It must be his first cousin we have in the garden
behind Number Six! Dad says he doesn't know, does him or me sing the
loudest!"

By Jove! She sings! thought Larry (as he was meant to think). Of
course! What a fool he was to have forgotten it! And as, at this
period of his career, of the three arts, who were always riding a pace
in his soul, M