"Vara," said Cleg, "what's your hurry for a minute? There's—there's a terrible bonny view frae hereaboots."
Cleg, the uninstructed, was plunging into deep waters. Vara turned towards the garden beneath at his word. There were three people to be seen in it. First there was a young woman in a bright summer dress, with a young man who walked very close beside her. Over a thick wall of beech, which went half across the orchard, an older man was standing meditatively with his hands clasped behind his back. He was apparently engaged in trying how much tobacco smoke he could put upon the market in a given time, for he was almost completely lost from sight in a blue haze.
The young people walked up and down, now in view of their meditative elder and now hidden from him by the hedge. And as Cleg and Vara watched, they noticed a wonderful circumstance. As often as the young man and his companion were behind the young beech hedge, his arm stole round the waist of the summer dress; but so soon as they emerged upon the gravel path, lo! they were again walking demurely at least a yard apart.
The strangest thing about it all was, that the young woman appeared to be entirely unconscious of the circumstance.
"That's an awesome nice view," said Cleg, when the pair beneath had done this four or five times. And such is the fatal force of example that he put his own arm about Vara's waist each time the young man in the orchard below showed him how. And yet, stranger than all, Vara also appeared to be entirely unconscious of the fact.
This went on till the pair beneath were at their tenth promenade—the elderly man over the beech hedge was still studying intently an overgrown bed of rhubarb—when, at the innermost corner, the young lady in the summer dress paused to pluck a spray of honeysuckle. The youth's arm was about her waist at the moment. Perhaps it was that she had become conscious of it for the first time, or perhaps because it cinctured the summer dress a little more tightly than the circumstances absolutely demanded. However this may be, certain it is that the girl turned her head a little back over her shoulder, perhaps to reproach the young man, to request him to remove his property, and in the future to keep it from trespassing on his neighbour's premises. Cleg and Vara could not tell from the distance. But, at any rate, the young man and the young woman stood thus a long moment, she looking up with her head turned a little back and he looking intently down into her eyes. Then their lips drew together, and softly, as if they sighed, rested a moment upon each other.
"It's an awesome nice view," said Cleg, with conviction and emphasis. And forthwith did likewise.
The old man with his hands behind his back had a little while before ceased his meditations upon the rhubarb leaves, and had walked quietly all unperceived to the corner of the beech hedge. Here he stood looking down towards the corner of the orchard, where the summer dress was plainly in view. Then he raised his eyes to the road above, where stood Vara and Cleg Kelly. His pipe fell from his mouth with astonishment, but he did not stop to pick it up. He turned and stole hastily away on tiptoe.
Then he too sighed, and that more than once, as soon as he had got out of the orchard into the garden.
"It's just thirty years since—last July," he said.