It was an afternoon in May when they set out, bowling through Pedlinge in the dog cart behind Smiler’s jogging heels.  Joanna wore her bottle green driving coat, with a small, close-fitting hat, since Martin, to her surprise and disappointment, disliked her best hat with the feathers.  He sat by her, unconsciously huddling to her side, with his hand thrust under her arm and occasionally pressing it—­she had told him that she could suffer that much of a caress without detriment to her driving.

It was a bright, scented day, heavily coloured with green and gold and white; for the new grass was up in the pastures, releasing the farmer from many anxious cares, and the buttercups were thick both on the grazing lands and on the innings where the young hay stood, still green; the watercourses were marked with the thick dumpings of the may, walls of green-teased white streaking here and there across the pastures, while under the boughs the thick green water lay scummed with white ranunculus, and edged with a gaudy splashing of yellow irises, torches among the never silent reeds.  Above it all the sky was misty and fall of shadows, a low soft cloud, occasionally pierced with sunlight.

“It’ll rain before night,” said Joanna.

“What makes you think that?”

“The way of the wind, and those clouds moving low—­and the way you see Rye Hill all clear with the houses on it—­and the way the sheep are grazing with their heads to leeward.”

“Do you think they know?”

“Of course they know.  You’d be surprised at the things beasts know, Martin.”

“Well, it won’t matter if it does rain—­we’ll be home before night.  I’m glad we’re going down on the Ness—­I’m sure it’s wonderful.”

“It’s a tedious hole.”

“That’s what you think.”

“I know—­I’ve been there.”

“Then it’s very sweet of you to come again with me.”

“It’ll be different with you.”

She was driving him by way of Broomhill, for that was another place which had fired his imagination, though to her it too was a tedious hole.  Martin could not forget the Broomhill of old days—­the glamour of taverns and churches and streets lay over the few desolate houses and ugly little new church which huddled under the battered sea-wall.  Great reedy pools still remained from the thirteenth century floods, brackish on the flat seashore, where the staked keddle nets showed that the mackerel were beginning to come into Rye Bay.

“Nothing but fisher-folk around here,” said Joanna contemptuously—­“you’ll see ’em all in the summer, men, women and children, with heaps of mackerel that they pack in boxes for London and such places—­so much mackerel they get that there’s nothing else ate in the place for the season, and yet if you want fish-guts for manure they make you pay inland prices, and do your own carting.”

“I think it’s a delicious place,” he retorted, teasing her, “I’ve a mind to bring you here for our honeymoon.”