He stepped back into the sun and sat down on the grass. Peaceful--very still! The haze of the distant downs was visible between his uncle’s old house and the next; and there was the clump of elms on the far side behind which the sun would be going down just as it used to then. He pressed the palms of his hands to the turf. A glorious summer--something like that summer of long ago. And warmth from the turf, or perhaps from the past, crept into his heart, and made it ache a little. Just here he must have sat, after his innings, at Mrs. Monteith’s feet peeping out of a flounced dress. Lord! The fools boys were! How headlong and uncalculating their devotions! A softness in voice and eyes, a smile, a touch or two--and they were slaves! Young fools, but good young fools. And, standing behind her chair--he could see him now--that other idol, Captain MacKay, with his face of browned ivory--just the colour of that elephant’s tusk his uncle had, which had gone so yellow--and his perfect black moustache, his white tie, check suit, carnation, spats, Malacca cane--all so fascinating! Mrs. Monteith, ‘the grass widow’ they had called her! He remembered the look in people’s eyes, the tone in their voices. Such a pretty woman! He had ‘fallen for her’ at first sight, as the Yanks put it--her special scent, her daintiness, her voice! And that day on the river, when she made much of him, and Captain MacKay attended Evelyn Curtiss so assiduously that he was expected to propose. Quaint period! They used the word courting then, wore full skirts, high stays; and himself a blue elastic belt round his white-flannelled waist. And in the evening afterwards, his aunt had said with an arch smile: “Good-night, _silly_ boy!” Silly boy, indeed, with a flower the grass widow had dropped pressed by his cheek into his pillow! What folly! And that next Sunday--looking forward to church--passionately brushing his top hat; all through the service spying at her creamy profile, two pews in front on the left, between goat-bearded old Hallgrave, her uncle, and her pink, broad, white-haired aunt; scheming to get near her when she came out, lingering, lurking, getting just a smile and the rustle of her flounces. Ah, ha! A little went a long way then! And the last day of his holidays and its night with the first introduction to reality. Who said the Victorian Age was innocent? Marsland put his palm up to his cheek. No! the dew was not yet falling! And his mind lightly turned and tossed his memories of women, as a man turns and tosses hay to air it; but nothing remembered gave him quite the feeling of that first experience.