CHAPTER XLI

During the next three weeks I led a solitary enough life, in the woods and by the sea. I read a good deal, and dreamed still more. In the mornings, and often in the afternoons as well, I went for long swims, and, coming back, lay in the sun on the rocks, sometimes for hours at a time, so that the skin all over my body had been tanned to a deep golden brown. And I was growing stronger. I could feel it; I could even see it in my limbs, which were becoming more muscular. And with my increasing physical strength I suppose other alterations took place――alterations in my outward appearance, marking the passage from boyhood to adolescence. Annie Breen, for instance, had spoken to me several times of late in a way that betokened a consciousness of this change; and more than one girl whom I met on the road in the evenings, when wishing me good-night, had put something into her greetings which made it quite different from what it would have been last year. Several of the village boys, no older than I, had already sweethearts, and I knew I had but to give a sign to any of these girls to have a sweetheart also; and while I held myself aloof, and responded with the barest politeness, I none the less felt flattered.

I received news of my examination. I had done better than I had expected, getting first place in the school and third in Ireland. Owen, too, had not done badly; at all events he had retained his exhibition.