inity, but Mrs. Hamilton still had the
farm which, people understood, was to be left to Sheila when her aunt
died. He had not cared to go to the farm ... a mixture of pride and
shyness prevented him from doing so ... but he had hoped to meet her on
the roads about Ballymartin. "Perhaps by this time," he said to himself,
"she will have forgotten my funk!" But although he frequently loitered
in the roads about the "loanie," he never met her, and it was not until
he said some casual things to William Henry Matier that he discovered
that she was not at the farm. "I heerd tell she was visitin' friends in
Bilfast!" Matier said, and with that he had to be content. Ninian and
Gilbert and Roger were at Ballymartin then, and he had little
opportunity to mourn over her absence; indeed, when he remembered that
they were with him, he was glad that she was not at the farm: their
presence would have made difficulties in the way of his intercourse with
her. He would try to be alone at Ballymartin, in the next vacation, and
then he would be able to bring her to his will again. But he did not
spend the next vacation at home, and so, with this and other absences
from Ballymartin, he was unable to see her for the whole of his time at
Trinity. Neither he nor his father had spoken of her since the day when
Mr. Quinn had solemnly led him to the library to rebuke him for his
sweethearting. Mr. Quinn, indeed, had almost forgotten about Henry's
lovemaking with Sheila, and when he met the girl and remembered that
there had been lovemaking between his son and her, he thought to himself
that Henry had probably completely forgotten her....

He wished to see her again, and his desire became so strong that he
started to walk across the fields to the "loanie" that led to
Hamilton's farm before he was aware of what he was about. His mind
filled again with the visions he had had of her at Trinity, and he
imagined that he saw her every now and then hiding behind a tree, ready
to spring out on him and startle him with a loud whoop, or running from
him and laughing as she ran....

4

He met her in the "loanie," and for a few moments he did not recognise
her. She was sitting on the grass, in the shade of a hedge, huddling a
baby close to her breast, and he saw that she was suckling it.

"Oh, Henry, is that you?" she said, starting up hurriedly so that the
baby could not suck. She drew her blouse clumsily together, but the
fretful child would not be pac