The orchard was very silent and dreamy in the thick , deep tinted sunshine of the September afternoon , a sunshine which seemed to possess the power of extracting the very essence of all the odours which summer has stored up in wood and field . There were few flowers now ; most of the lilies , which had queened it so bravely along the central path a few days before , were withered . The grass had become ragged and sere and unkempt . But in the corners the torches of the goldenrod were kindling and a few misty purple asters nodded here and there . The orchard kept its own strange attractiveness , as some women with youth long passed still preserve an atmosphere of remembered beauty and innate , indestructible charm . Eric walked drearily and carelessly about it , and finally sat down on a half fallen fence panel in the shadow of the overhanging spruce boughs . There he gave himself up to a reverie , poignant and bitter sweet , in which he lived over again everything that had passed in the orchard since his first meeting there with Kilmeny . So deep was his abstraction that he was conscious of nothing around him . He did not hear stealthy footsteps behind him in the dim spruce wood . He did not even see Kilmeny as she came slowly around the curve of the wild cherry lane . Kilmeny had sought the old orchard for the healing of her heartbreak , if healing were possible for her . She had no fear of encountering Eric there at that time of day , for she did not know that it was the district custom to close the school for a funeral . She would never have gone to it in the evening , but she longed for it continually ; it , and her memories , were all that was left her now . Years seemed to have passed over the girl in those few days . She had drunk of pain and broken bread with sorrow . Her face was pale and strained , with bluish , transparent shadows under her large wistful eyes , out of which the dream and laughter of girlhood had gone , but into which had come the potent charm of grief and patience . Thomas Gordon had shaken his head bodingly when he had looked at her that morning at the breakfast table . `` She wo n't stand it , '' he thought . `` She is n't long for this world . Maybe it is all for the best , poor lass .
But I wish that young Master had never set foot in the Connors orchard , or XXXXX this house .
along as for if in on over since that with