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The girl Megan seemed the only active creature-drawing cider and passing with the jugs from cask to table. Seeing them thus about to eat, Garton said: "Ah! If you'll let us, we'll come back when supper's over," and without waiting for an answer they withdrew again to the parlour.
She took the pillow up, holding it as if reluctant to shake out the impress of his cheek, dropped it, and turned round. "Megan!" She put her hands up to her cheeks, but her eyes seemed to look right into him. He had never before realised the depth and purity and touching faithfulness in those dew-bright eyes, and he stammered: "It was sweet of you to wait up for me last night."
While she was gone he stood disconsolately eyeing the models in the window, and suddenly it seemed to him incredible that Megan his Megan could ever be dressed save in the rough tweed skirt, coarse blouse, and tam-o'-shanter cap he was wont to see her in. The young woman had come back with several dresses in her arms, and Ashurst eyed her laying them against her own modish figure.
Her quick, straight handshake tightened suddenly, and as suddenly became slack. Ashurst stood motionless in the empty sitting-room. Only last night, under the apple tree and the living blossom, he had held Megan to him, kissing her eyes and lips. And he gasped, swept by that rush of remembrance. To-night it should have begun-his life with her who only wanted to be with him!
Megan dropped her hands, and shrank behind a tree trunk; the boy gave an angry grunt, rushed at the bank, scrambled over and vanished. Ashurst went slowly up to her. She was standing quite still, biting her lip-very pretty, with her fine, dark hair blown loose about her face, and her eyes cast down. "I beg your pardon," he said.
Then he saw her quite close her dark form part of a little tree, her white face part of its blossom; so still, and peering towards him. He whispered: "Megan!" and held out his hands. She ran forward, straight to his breast. When he felt her heart beating against him, Ashurst knew to the full the sensations of chivalry and passion.
Was it true that twenty-six years had passed, or had he dreamed and awakened to find Megan waiting for him by the big apple tree? Unconsciously he put up his hand to his grizzled beard and brought himself back to reality. Opening the gate, he made his way down through the docks and nettles till he came to the edge, and the old apple tree itself. Unchanged!
And, yielding to a swift impulse, he put his arms round her, pressed her to him, and kissed her forehead. Then he was frightened she went so pale, closing her eyes, so that the long, dark lashes lay on her pale cheeks; her hands, too, lay inert at her sides. The touch of her breast sent a shiver through him. "Megan!" he sighed out, and let her go. In the utter silence a blackbird shouted.
There was one whose colour he liked, a dove-grey, but to imagine Megan clothed in it was beyond him. The young woman went away, and brought some more. But on Ashurst there had now come a feeling of paralysis. How choose? She would want a hat too, and shoes, and gloves; and, suppose, when he had got them all, they commonised her, as Sunday clothes always commonised village folk!
The Lloyd George family at home consisted of Mr. and Mrs. George, two sons, and two daughters. Of the two boys, both in the twenties, one was at Cambridge University and the other in a responsible position as a civil engineer. Both are now soldiers, fighting in France. There are two girls, Megan and her sister, Olwen, a charming girl who has lately become engaged to a medical officer in the army.
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