had always been something desperate about his courtship of them, like the temper of a sermon against unbelief delivered by a priest who is haunted by sceptical arguments.  But to a woman whom he really loved he would be as dignified as befitted one who came as an ambassador from life itself, and gay as was allowed to one who received guarantees that the fair outward show of the world is no lie; in all the trivialities of courtship he would show his perfect quality without embarrassment.  She was angered that she would not be able to see him thus.  There struck through her an insane regret that being his mother she could not also be his wife.  But this was greed, for she had had her own good times, and Harry had been the most wonderful of sweethearts.

There had been a June day on this very hill....  She had been standing by the towers talking to Bob Girvan for a few minutes, and when she had left him she had felt so happy at the show of flowering hawthorn trees that stood red and white all the way down the inland slope of the ridge that she began to run and leap down the hill.  But before she had gone far, Harry had walked out towards her from one of the hawthorns.  She had felt confused because he had seen her running, and began to walk stiffly and to scowl.  “Good morning, Marion,” he had said.  “Good morning,” she had answered, feeling very grown-up because she had no longer bobbed to the squire.  He told her, looking intently at her and speaking in a queer, strained voice, that he had found a great split in the trunk of the white hawthorn, and asked her if she would like to see it.  She said, “Yes.”  It struck her that she had said it too loudly and in an inexpressibly foolish way.  Indeed, she came to the conclusion as she followed him down the hillside that nobody since the world began had ever done anything so idiotic as saying “Yes” in that particular manner, and she became scarlet with shame.

When they came to the dazzling tree he advanced to it as if he cared nothing for its beauty, and showed her with a gruff and business-like air a split in the trunk.  She could not understand how he had not seen it before, as it had been there for the last four months.  Then he had pointed up to the towers with his stick.  “Who’s that you were talking to up there?” “Bob Girvan,” she had answered; “did you want to speak to him, sir?” He seemed, she thought, cross about something.  “No, no,” he answered impatiently, “but he’s a silly fellow.  Why do you want to talk to him?” She told him that Bob had stopped to ask if his father could come over and look at the calf her grandmother wanted to sell, and that seemed to please him, and after that they had talked a little about how the farm had got on since Grandfather’s death.  Then he said suddenly, “I suppose that if you don’t go about with Bob Girvan there’s some boy who does take you out.  Isn’t there?” She whispered, “No.”  But he had gone on in a strange, insistent tone, “But you’re getting-quite a big girl now.  Seventeen, aren’t you, Marion?  There’ll be somebody soon.”