rded by Hickey. As for me, I have grown so accustomed to
it that if the county Wicklow were to waltz off with me to Middlesex,
I should be quite impatient of any expression of surprise from my
friends in London.

"Is not the above a businesslike statement? Away, then, with this
stale miracle. If you would see for yourself a miracle which can never
pall, a vision of youth and health to be crowned with garlands for
ever, come down and see Kate Hickey, whom you suppose to be a little
girl. Illusion, my lord cardinal, illusion! She is seventeen, with a
bloom and a brogue that would lay your asceticism in ashes at a flash.
To her I am an object of wonder, a strange man bred in wicked cities.
She is courted by six feet of farming material, chopped off a spare
length of coarse humanity by the Almighty, and flung into Wicklow to
plough the fields. His name is Phil Langan; and he hates me. I have to
consort with him for the sake of Father Tom, whom I entertain vastly
by stories of your wild oats sown at Salamanca. I exhausted my
authentic anecdotes the first day; and now I invent gallant escapades
with Spanish donnas, in which you figure as a youth of unstable
morals. This delights Father Tom infinitely. I feel that I have done
you a service by thus casting on the cold sacerdotal abstraction which
formerly represented you in Kate's imagination a ray of vivifying
passion.

"What a country this is! A Hesperidean garden: such skies! Adieu,
uncle.

"Zeno Legge."

* * * * *

Behold me, at Four Mile Water, in love. I had been in love frequently;
but not oftener than once a year had I encountered a woman who
affected me so seriously as Kate Hickey. She was so shrewd, and yet so
flippant! When I spoke of art she yawned. When I deplored the
sordidness of the world she laughed, and called me "poor fellow!" When
I told her what a treasure of beauty and freshness she had she
ridiculed me. When I reproached her with her brutality she became
angry, and sneered at me for being what she called a fine gentleman.
One sunny afternoon we were standing at the gate of her uncle's house,
she looking down the dusty road for the detestable Langan, I watching
the spotless azure sky, when she said:

"How soon are you going back to London?"

"I am not going back to London. Miss Hickey. I am not yet tired of
Four Mile Water."

"I am sure that Four Mile Water ought to be proud of your
approbation."