Kenny stood stock-still. Fate, he told himself, needed nothing further for his utter undoing. And if she did, it lay here in the orchard. He had come in blossom time.
Well, thanks to the crowded fullness of his emotional life, he knew precisely what it meant. He had adventured in blossoms before to the torment of his heart and head. In Spain. He had forgotten the girl's name but it began with an "I." Now in the dusk he faced gnarled and glimmering boughs of fleece. The wind, fitful and chill since the sunset, speckled the grayness beneath the trees with dim white fragrant rain and stirred the drift of petals on the ground. Stillness and blossoms and the disillusion of intrusive fact!
Joan, lovelier to Kenny's eye than any blossom, seemed unaware of the romance in the orchard. She was intent upon a man coming down the orchard hill. Kenny sighed as he turned his eyes from her.
"It's Hughie," she said. "He's watched for you too since the letter came. We all have. Hughie! Hughie!"
Hughie came toward them, sturdy, middle-aged and unpoetic for all his head was under blossoms.
"Hughie!" called Joan. "It's Mr. O'Neill. He must have some supper. Tell Hannah. And I'll go speak to Uncle Adam."
Romance flitted off through the twilight with her. Hungry, Kenny embarked upon a reactive interval of common sense and followed Hughie, who seemed inclined to talk of rain, to the kitchen door. It was past the supper hour. Beyond in a huge, old-fashioned kitchen, yellow with lamp light, Hughie's daughter, a ruddy-cheeked girl plump and wholesome as an apple, was washing dishes. Kenny liked her. He liked the shining kitchen. The wood was dark and old. He liked too the tiny bird-like wife who trotted to the door at Hughie's call. Her hair was white and scant, her skin ruddy, her eyes as small and black as berries.
Kenny made her his slave. He begged to eat in the kitchen.
Joan found him there a little later with everything in the pantry spread before him. His voice, gay and charming, sounded as if he had liked Hannah for a very long time. And Hannah's best lamp was on the table. There was a pleasant undercurrent of excitement in the kitchen. Joan found her guest's engaging air of adaptability bewildering. He seemed all ease and sparkle.
At the rustle of her gown in the doorway, he sprang to his feet.