"Time, how?" asked Gwenna guilelessly, without turning her head.
"Oh! As if you didn't know!" he retorted. "Wasting time talking about the Machine, to you. Catching hold of your hand, to show you what the camber was—and then letting it go! Instead of owning up at once, 'Yes. All right. You've got me. Pax!' And starting to do this——"
He was close up behind her now on the mountain-path, and because of the steep ground on which they stood, her head was on a higher level than his own. He drew it downwards and backwards, that brown, sun-warmed head, to his tweed-clad shoulder.
"You'll break my neck. I know you will, one day. You are so rough," complained Gwenna; twisting round, however, and taking a step down to him.
"I love you to be," she whispered. She kissed his coat-lapel. All the red of that rose bloomed now on her mouth.... They walked on, with his arm a close, close girdle about her. The luncheon basket was forgotten on the turfy slope on which he'd dropped it. So they lunched, late, in the farm-house four hundred feet above the Quarry village. It was a lonely place enough, a hillside outpost, fenced by stunted damson trees; a short slate-flagged end of path led to the open door where a great red baking crock stood, full of water. Inside, the kitchen was a dark, cool cave, with ancient, smooth-worn oaken furniture that squeaked on the slate-slabbed floor, with a dresser rich with willow-pattern and lustre, and an open fire-place, through which, looking up, they could see through the wood smoke a glimpse of the blue sky.
And in this sort of place people still lived and worked as if it were Seventeen Hundred and Something—and scarcely a day's journey away was the Aircraft Factory where people lived for the work that will remake the modern world; oh, most romantic of all ages, that can set such sharp contrasts side by side!
An old Welshwoman, left there by her sheep-farming sons at home in the chimney corner, set butter-milk before the lovers, and ambrosial home-churned butter, and a farm-house loaf that tasted of nuts and peatsmoke. They ate with astonishing appetites; Gwenna sitting in the window-seat under the sill crowded with flower-pots and a family Bible. Paul, man-like, stood as near as he could to the comfort of the fire even on that warm day. The old woman, who wore clumping clogs on her feet and a black mutch-cap on her head, beamed upon the pair with smiles as toothless and as irresistible as those of an infant.
"You must have a plenty, whatever," she urged them, bringing out another loaf, of bara breeth (or currant bread). "Come on, Sir! Come, Miss Williams, now. Mam, I mean. Yess, yess. You married lady now. Your husband," with a skinny hand on his grey sleeve, "your husband is not a minnyster?"
"He's a soldier, Mrs. Jones," explained Gwenna, proudly, and with a strengthening of her own accent, such as occurs in any of her race when revisiting their wilds. "He's an Airman."
"Ur?" queried Mrs. Jones, beaming.