(no subject)
Kialan stood by and put Moril off continually. Moril came so to resent it that he took refuge in more than his usual vagueness. He would sit on his perch behind the driving-seat, staring up the white road unfeeling ahead between the grey-green slopes of the South, basking in the hot sun--which never tanned him however long he sat in it--and dream of his birthplace in the North. It always saddened Moril that his father would never go to Hannart because of his disagreement with Earl Keril. He longed to see it, and he had built up in his mind a complete image of what it was like. There was an old grey castle, in it, rowan trees, and blue hills of a certain spiky shape. Moril saw it clearly. He saw the whoe North with it, spread over the grey-green Southern landscape as if it were painted on a window: dark woods and emerald dales, the queer green roadsf rom olden days which led to places that were not important any longer, hard grey rocks, and the great waterfall at Dropwater. In it lived all the stories of magic and adventure that seemed to go with the North. The South had nothing to compare with them.
Hearing Kialan talking behind him, Moril thought that the North had one new adantage. Kialan would leave them there.
"I've said that six times now," Kialan said. "Do you spend all your time a thousand miles away?"
Moril was annoyed. His family could accuse him of dreaminess if they wanted, but Kialan was a stranger. "You've no right to say that," he said.
It was possible Kialan did not ralise how annoyed Moril was. "You see," Brid explained to him later, a good long way behind the cart, "even when you're angry, you always look so sleepy and milky, that he probably didn't even notice you were attending. Not," she added tartly, "that he'd have noticed anybody's feelings but his own, mind you."
What Kialan had replied was: "Oh, good grief! I know you're the fool of the family by now, but you don't have to be rude as well as stupid!"
"And the same to you!" Moril retorted an took Kialan completely by surprise by butting him in the stomach. Kialan fell backward heavily--and painfully, Moril hoped--onto the winejar. Whereupon Moril found the prudent thing to do was to hop out of the cart double quick and scud off down the road behind it.