When Tom returned with the tea, Owen was in the middle of the sunny field, singing as he tossed the hay up into a cock. Tom went straight up to him and said, “Those letters of yours. Don’t leave them around.”

Owen said nothing. For a few moments he continued to toss the hay up in heavy forkfuls. Watching his face slowly redden, Tom wondered if his nose would begin to bleed as it used to in childhood tantrums. Sure enough, Owen stopped forking the hay. He wiped his nose, looked at the red smear on the back of his hand, and said, “She wouldn’t read them.”

“I don’t know. Maybe not.”

“I’d walk out tomorrow if she did.”

“All the same,” said Tom, “you’d better keep them in my suitcase.” He did not need to add that they would be safe there; both knew that she was wary of him, of some vengeful spirit in him which might be all too easily roused against her. So, all that summer, the girl’s letters grew into a bundle beneath the theology textbooks which he should have been reading, but which he would not spare time from the work of the farm to attend to. He brought them back to college with him, never thinking of taking them out. They were never to grow anymore; a few weeks later, he had a letter from Owen under an English postmark:

Dear Tom,

I took the big step at last. I got a job at the building, and there’s good money in it. Marie is well. She’s going to finish her exams at the hospital, and then we’ll be free as the air. Between us, we won’t be long setting aside the price of a good place back home and enough to stock it as well. She’s living in, this week, so we don’t see much of each other, only a few hours before she goes back on night duty. God help us, I’m doing the cooking. It gives Marie a good laugh.

I hope you won’t be annoyed that we went ahead. We couldn’t wait any longer, whatever they thought in Rosnagree. I would have liked to wait till you could say the words over us, but that would be a whole year, and we were thinking in weeks and days. We went to a cousin of Marie’s in the Birmingham diocese, and he didn’t keep us waiting long. Anyway, I know we did the right thing.

Write soon and let me know what you think.

Your affectionate brother,

OWEN

P.S. Any news from Rosnagree?