I declare it was five years since I had had time to look at a robin. But there seemed to be time for everything this fine May day.
And ever as we went, it seemed that we had been a long time alone, and that it would soon come time to be turning back again. Then to which soever of us the thought came, that we were now on the long lane that has no turning (save that which turns in at the kirkyaird loaning), there would also come the desire to touch and to look. And even thus did Nell Kennedy often, reaching her hand across to me from her gentle, equal-pacing steed.
Then would she fall back on the things that had been, and which now were passed away.
'Yesterday, at such a time,' she would say, 'I thought that to-day would never come. And now—'
Whereupon with her eyes she would look the rest.
Then I told her how that I had seen the Dominie but yestereven, when she was sewing at the pearling of her bridal dress and thinking of me. He had gone back with his pipes to the school by the kirk at Maybole.
'And what said he of our wedding?' asked my dear.
'Why I was instant with him to come and bide at Palgowan,' I made answer. 'Shall I tell thee what he said?'
'Ay, tell it me, indeed!' quoth she, blithely, stopping a moment on a high-lying moorish summit, with her hand above her eyes and looking to the Spear of the Merrick towards which we rode.
'Well, then, he said that those that were but newly wed had no use for carven negro-heads, wherein to put the ashes of their loves.'