Explore "The Wild Geese" by Stanley J. Weyman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Uncle Ulick, with the mud of the road still undried on his boots, and the curls still stiff in the wig which the town barber at Mallow had dressed for him, rubbed his chin with his hand and, covertly looking round the room, owned himself puzzled. He had returned a week later to the day than he had arranged to return. But had his absence run into months instead of weeks the lapse of time had not sufficed to explain the change which he felt, but could not define, in his surroundings.
Certainly old Darby looked a thought more trim, and the room a trifle better ordered than he had left them. But he was sensible, though vaguely, that the change did not stop there -- perhaps did not begin there. Full of news of the outer world as he was, he caught himself pausing in mid-career to question himself. And more than once his furtive eyes scanned his companions' faces for the answer his mind refused to give.