`` What did that say to you ? '' she wrote . `` It said something like this , '' answered Eric , falling into her humour smilingly . `` Welcome , my friend . It is a very beautiful evening . The sky is so blue and the apple blossoms so sweet . The wind and I have been here alone together and the wind is a good companion , but still I am glad to see you . It is an evening on which it is good to be alive and to wander in an orchard that is fine and white . Welcome , my friend . '' She clapped her hands , looking like a pleased child . `` You are very quick to understand , '' she wrote . `` That was just what I meant . Of course I did not think it in just those words , but that was the FEELING of it . I felt that I was so glad I was alive , and that the apple blossoms and the white lilacs and the trees and I were all pleased together to see you come . You are quicker than Neil . He is almost always puzzled to understand my music , and I am puzzled to understand his . Sometimes it frightens me . It seems as if there were something in it trying to take hold of me -- something I do not like and want to run away from . '' Somehow Eric did not like her references to Neil . The idea of that handsome , low-born boy seeing Kilmeny every day , talking to her , sitting at the same table with her , dwelling under the same roof , meeting her in the hundred intimacies of daily life , was distasteful to him .
He put the thought away from him , and flung himself down on the long grass XXXXX her feet .
at in into like of on than that to under