The next day being Monday, Greeba was sent on to Lague, that her mother and brothers might see her after her long absence from the island. She was to stay there until the Monday following, that she might be at Ramsey, to bid good-bye to Michael Sunlocks on the eve of his departure for Iceland.
Three days more Sunlocks spent at Government House; and on the morning of Friday, being fully ready and his leather trunk gone on before in care of Chalse A'Killey, who would suffer no one else to carry it, he was mounted for his journey on the little roan Goldie, when up came the Governor astride his cob.
"I'll just set you as far as Ballasalla," he said jauntily, and they rode away together.
All the week through, since their sad talk on Easter-Day, old Adam had affected a wondrous cheerfulness, and now he laughed mightily as they rode along, and winked his grey eyes knowingly like a happy child's, until sometimes from one cause or other the big drops came into them. The morning was fresh and sweet, with the earth full of gladness and the air of song, though Michael Sunlocks was little touched by its beauty, and thought it the heaviest he had yet seen. But Adam told how the spring was toward, and the lambs in fold, and the heifers thriving, and how the April rain would bring potatoes down to sixpence a kishen, and fetch up the grass in such a crop that the old island would rise—why not? ha, ha, ha!—to the opulence and position of a state.
But rattle on as he would, he could neither banish the heavy looks of Michael Sunlocks nor make light the weary heart he bore himself. So he began to rally the lad, and say how little he would have thought of a trip to Iceland in his old days at Guinea; that it was only a hop, skip, and a jump after all, and, bless his old soul, if he wouldn't cut across some day to see him between Tynwald and Midsummer—and many a true word was said in jest.
Soon they came by Rushen Abbey at Ballasalla, and then old Adam could hold back no longer what he had come to say.
"You'll see your father before you sail," he said, "and I'm thinking he'll give you a better reason for going than he has given to me; but if not, and Bishop John and the Latin school is all his end and intention, remember our good Manx saying, that 'Learning is fine clothes to the rich man, and riches to the poor one.' And that minds me," he said, plunging deep
