Macmaster went down the tall steps to the car that gleamed in the summer sun. The roses shone over the supremely levelled turf. His heel met the stones with the hard tread of a conqueror. He could have shouted aloud! VI Tietjens lit a pipe beside the stile, having first meticulously cleaned out the bowl and the stem with a surgical needle, in his experience the best of all pipe-cleaners, since, made of German silver, it is flexible, won't corrode and is indestructible. He wiped off methodically, with a great dock-leaf, the glutinous brown products of burnt tobacco, the young woman, as he was aware, watching him from behind his back. As soon as he had restored the surgical needle to the notebook in which it lived, and had put the notebook into its bulky pocket. Miss Wannop moved off down the path: it was only suited for Indian file, and had on the left hand a ten foot, untrimmed quicken hedge, the hawthorn blossoms just beginning to blacken at the edges and small green haws to show. On the right the grass was above knee high and bowed to those that passed. The sun was exactly vertical; the chaffinchs said: "Pink! pink!": the young woman had an agreeable back. This, Tietjens thought, is England! A man and a maid walk through Kentish grass fields: the grass ripe for the scythe. The man honourable, clean, upright; the maid virtuous, clean, vigorous: he of good birth; she of birth quite as good; each filled with a too good breakfast that each could yet capably digest. Each come just from an admirably appointed establishment: a table surrounded by the best people: their promenade sanctioned, as it were, by the Church--two clergy--the State: two Government officials; by mothers, friends, old maids. . . . Each knew the names of birds that piped and grasses that bowed: chaffinch, greenfinch, yellow-ammer (_not_, my dear, hammer! _ammer_ from the Middle High German for "finch"), garden warbler, Dartford warbler, pied-wagtail, known as "dishwasher." (These _charming_ local dialect names.) Marguerites over the grass, stretching in an infinite white blaze: grasses purple in a haze to the far distant hedgerow: coltsfoot, wild white clover, sainfoin, Italian rye grass (all technical names that the best people must know: the best grass mixture for permanent pasture on the Wealden loam). In the hedge: Our Lady's bedstraw: dead-nettle: bachelor's button (but in _Sussex_ they call it ragged robin, my dear): So interesting! cowslip (paigle, you know, from old French _pasque_, meaning Easter): burr, burdock (farmer that thy wife may thrive, but not burr and burdock wive!); violet leaves, the flowers of course over; black briony; wild clematis: later it's old man's beard; purple loose-strife. (That our young maids long purples call and literal shepherds give a grosser name. _So_ racy of the soil!) . . . Walk, then, through the field, gallant youth and fair maid, minds cluttered up with all these useless anodynes for thought, quotation, imbecile epithets!