The Real Charlotte. 349 



mud out of which their mystery of silver and gold was born ; 

 and, while the water outside moved piquantly to the breeze, 

 nothing stirred it within except the water spiders, who were 

 darting about, pushing a little ripple in front of them, and 

 finding themselves seriously inconvenienced by the pieces of 

 broken rush and the sodden fragments of turf that perpetu- 

 ally stopped their way. It had rained and blown very hard 

 all the day before, and the innermost corners of the tiny 

 harbour held a motionless curve of foam, yellowish brown, 

 and flecked with the feathers of a desolated moorhen's nest. 



Civilisation at Bruff had marched away from the turf 

 quay. The ruts of the cart-track were green from long 

 disuse, and the willows had been allowed to grow across it, 

 as a last sign of superannuation. In old days every fire at 

 Bruff had been landed at the turf quay from the bogs at the 

 other side of the lake ; but now, since the railway had come 

 to Lismoyle, coal had taken its place. It was in vain that 

 Thady, the turf-cutter, had urged that turf was a far hand- 

 somer thing about a gentleman's place than coal. The last 

 voyage of the turf boat had been made, and she now lay, 

 grey from rottenness and want of paint, in the corner of the 

 miniature dock that had once been roofed over and formed 

 a boat-house. Tall, jointed reeds, with their spiky leaves 

 and stiff stems, stood out in the shallow water, leaning 

 aslant over their own reflections, and, further outside, green 

 rushes grew thickly in long beds, the homes of dabchicks, 

 coots, and such like water people. Standing on the brown 

 rock that formed the end of the quay, the spacious sky was 

 so utterly reproduced in the lake, cloud for cloud, deep for 

 deep, that it only required a little imagination to beheve 

 oneself floating high between two atmospheres, The young 

 herons, in the fir trees on Curragh Point, were giving utter- 

 ance to their meditations on things in general in raucous 

 monosyllables, and Charlotte Mullen, her feet planted firmly 

 on two of the least rickety stones of the quay, was continu- 

 ing a conversation that had gone on one-sidedly for some 

 time. 



" Yes, Sir Christopher, my feeling for your estate is like 

 the feeling of a child for the place where he was reared ; it 

 is the affection of a woman whose happiest days were passed 

 with her father in your estate office ! " 



