"You old false alarm you!" She burrowed in his neck and he squirmed with delight.
Out in the orchard, Gregory and Jean wandered under the apple trees, great old things, cumbered with dead branches.
"They can't have made a cent from this place for years, and it would pay with a few hundreds put into it. But this eastern land, a lot of it, is just like the families, run to seed. The men who have enough kick in them to do anything go away. A place like this always makes me feel wonderfully business-like and efficient, as if I could make the dead thing live again."
"It doesn't make me feel business-like. It makes me feel vague and poetic and—and unresponsible. I can't imagine anything more peaceful than those old, useless, unfruitful things, all budded over with baby green. I wish humans could grow old like that, keeping the possibility of spring."
"That's properly vague and poetic, but I don't know that it would be such fun. Think of looking seventy and feeling twenty!"
"It would be better than looking seventy and feeling it. A wee bit of spring, every year, right to the end, would be better than none. Wouldn't it?"
Gregory laughed. "Half a loaf better than none? Not for me. I'd rather have nothing than a tantalizing dab like that."
A cold finger touched Jean's heart. Were their snatched hours more than a "dab," a half loaf to him? They were glorious hours, but after all they were only crumbs. Jean shook off the feeling, and her hand slipped into Gregory's.
"Well, when you're seventy and I'm sixty-five, you'll be so jealous of my little green leaves, you won't know what to do."
"Will I?" Gregory held her close and rubbed his cheek softly against her hair.