Her father used to marvel at those sudden whims of silence and of song. He would come in on some poor excuse from his stable or cunningly listen above his book and try to understand; but he, the man of action, the soldier, the child of undying ambitions, was far indeed from comprehension. Only he was sure of her affection. She would come and sit upon his knee, with arms around his neck, indulgent madly in a child’s caresses. Her uncle James, finding them thus sometimes, would start at an illusion, for it looked as if her mother was back again, and her father, long so youthful of aspect, seemed the sweetheart husband once more.
“Ah! you randy!” he would say to his niece, scowling upon her; “the sooner you get a man the better!”
“If there is one in the world half so handsome as my father--yes,” she would answer merrily, nestling more fondly in the General’s breast, till he rose and put her off with laughing confusion.
“Away! away!” he would cry in pretended annoyance. “You make my grey hairs ridiculous.”
“Where are they?” she would say, running her white fingers over his head and daintily refastening the ribbon of that antiquated queue that made him always look the chevalier. She treated him, in all, less like a father than a lover, exceedingly proud of him, untiring of his countless tales of campaign and court, uplifted marvellously with his ambitious dreams of State preferment. For General Turner was but passing the time in Maam till by favour promised a foreign office was found for him elsewhere.
“And when the office comes,” said he, “then I leave my girl. It is the one thing that sobers me.”
“Not here! not here!” she cried, alarm in eye and tone. So he found, for the first time, her impatience with the quiet of Maam. He was, for a little, dumb with regret that this should be her feeling.
“Where better, where safer, my dear?” he asked.
“Come up to the bow-window.” And he led her where she could see their native glen from end to end.
In the farm-towns the cots were displayed; smoke rose from their chimneys in the silent air, grey blue banners of peace. “Bide at home, my dear,” said he softly, “bide at home and rest. I thought you would have been glad to be back from towns among our own kindly people in the land your very heart-blood sprang from. Quiet, do you say? True, true,” and still he surveyed the valley himself with solemn eyes. “But there is content here, and every hearth there would make you welcome if it was only for your name, even if the world was against you.”