Weed smiles. “All I meant was, mad to spend so much time just lying on the ground, listening.”

“Oh!” I blush with embarrassment at the way I misunderstood his meaning. “I like resting here, too. It feels peaceful.”

“And the music,” he murmurs, settling back to face the sky. “The grass—the wind—makes such a beautiful song.”

“I will sing to you,” I say impulsively. If there were anyone present other than Weed I would never make such an offer, for I hardly know any songs. But there is an old ballad that Mama used to sing to me, and I can remember most of the tune, I think.

“Please do,” Weed encourages, closing his eyes.

Propping myself up on an elbow, I take a breath and begin. It is a sad, strange song about a shepherd boy who lies sleeping in a meadow and is kissed by a passing girl to wake him, so his flock does not wander off. But she cannot rouse him, for the shepherd boy is not sleeping at all—he is dead.

I let the last note fade away. The moment is unexpectedly tender; the feeling both excites and frightens me. Without lifting himself from the ground, Weed turns his head until his gaze meets mine. His eyes are luminous, the same vivid green as the grass we now lie in.

I reach toward him, not because I choose to but because my limbs seem to have developed a will of their own. I long to touch his cheek, but I dare not. Instead, I pluck a yellow-headed dandelion from the tall grass next to his shoulder and offer it to him with mock gravity.

“Tell me, shepherd boy: How did you like my song?”

At the sight of the flower he jumps up, as if in a fury. He clenches his fists in front of his face and turns away.

“Enough,” he says, in a voice full of bitterness and pain. “Let us go home.”

Weed’s mysterious grief hangs on us like a fog. As we walk home I ask more than once if he is angry about the song, or the flower, or Tobias Pratt. He says he is fine. I beg him to tell me if I have done something wrong. Again he assures me I have not. But he cannot smile, either, and will not look at me—oh, it is like a knife in my heart!

When we arrive at the cottage, Father is hurriedly packing his medical bag.

“A messenger just came, with an urgent summons. I must leave at once.” He sounds deeply displeased.

“Are you going to London again?” I blurt.