Then a burst of catcalling caused us to fly from the verandah doorway. We had been seen from the hillside by the party with the mouth organs. Evie, adorably red, gave a low laugh ... and this time I did kiss her, to fresh cheers and calls of "Wot cher!" The lads and lasses outside did not see the caress, but perhaps, after all, it was not very wonderful thought-reading.
Then, after another delighted tour, we locked the house up and came out on to the Heath again.
And now that the scales of preoccupation were removed from our eyes, we could look on all the life and colour and movement spread before us and feel ourselves part of it. It was well worth looking at. There is a long ravine near the Viaduct; we looked across it through a bright stipple of sunny birches; and to close the eyes for a second or two only was to see, on reopening them, a new picture. Purple and lavender and the black lamb's-wool coats pervaded that picture; the colours were sown over the hillside like confetti. They moved slowly, as coloured granules might have moved in some half-fluid suspension; and spaces that one moment were spangled with them, the next were unexpectedly empty patches of green. I am speaking of the thing in the mass, as of a panorama. Doubtless the sprinkling of white that lay everywhere would resolve itself on the morrow into torn paper, to be laboriously impaled on spiked sticks and carried away in baskets; doubtless to-day much of it on a nearer view would consist of impure complexions and rank odour; but it was strong and piping-hot Life, inspiring, infinitely analysable, and irresistibly setting private griefs and joys and over-emphasised sensations into place and proportion.... And as we left the Viaduct road and approached a great show in a hollow, the increasing din of a steam organ became as if we waded deeper and deeper into a sea, not of water, but of sound.
I only remembered that I still had the key of the little house in my pocket as we pushed and jostled through the crowded town of striped canvas that covered the Lower Heath. My fingers encountered it as we took a back way behind a long fluttering sheet against which cocoanut balls smacked every moment. It was necessary to return with it; and, as men behind the lace-curtained caravans began to make ready the naphtha lights for the evening, we turned into another thoroughfare down which the purple and lamb's-wool and lavender and bright neckerchiefs poured as if down a river-bed. In twenty minutes we had reached the tea-garden again; I spied a couple in the act of leaving a leafy arbour that held a table awash with spilt beer; and I put Evie into a still warm seat and bade her hold it against all comers. I left her, and presently returned with two glasses, of which I had managed to retain the greater part of the contents; and I sat down by her.