Then she said, looking very gravely in front of her at the dark bend of the road, “There must be such a storm coming up. I feel it all through me. It was depressing to-night, was n't it?”
“Just a little,” he said.
“Anyhow, I'm glad you like it—being here. Mind you always do. I don't want to be pessimistic when you are just beginning; but—well, you don't mean to stay here for ever, do you?”
“I should think not,” he answered eagerly. “Only a term or two at the most, and then I hope to go back to Clifton, my old school.”
“That's right—because—really it isn't a very good place to be—this.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“It's difficult to explain without maligning people and making things out worse than they really are.” She paused a moment, and then she went on: “Do you know, at the bottom of the hill, just before you get into the village, a melancholy orchard? One always passes it. You will see at the right time of the year lots of green apples on the trees, but they never seem to come to anything. And such blossoms in the spring! I 've seen men working there sometimes. I don't know what it is, but nothing 's any good there. They call it in the village 'Green Apple Orchard.'... Well, I've stayed here a great deal, and there's an obvious comparison.”
“That's cheerful,” he said, laughing. “It would, I suppose, be awful if one had to stay here for ever like Perrin and Dormer and the rest of them; but this time next year will see me somewhere better, I hope.”
“Mind you stick to that,” she said eagerly. “I have a horrible kind of feeling that they all meant to go very soon; but here they are still—soured, disappointed. Oh! it doesn't bear thinking of.”
“One must have ambition,” he answered her confidently.