“It’ll take them donkey’s years to fix it up. Not to mention the cost. They’re not very practical. Here, let’s go this way.” Eloise opened a gate that said BEWARE OF BULL. “Come on.”

Sadie pointed at the sign and said, “Bull?”

Eloise’s hat was large and tweed. It had fallen over her eyes; she knocked the brim up with her fist and scanned the field. “Look,” she said. “He’s over there. Come on! Don’t be wet.”

“I’m—they move fast, don’t they?”

“He won’t bother us. Come on, Shithead,” she called in a sweet, threatening voice. “Shitty! Shitty.”

The dog crossed first and they followed, and then climbed through some barbed wire, which caught in Sadie’s hair. She could feel the wet shoes tugging at her tights, the waistband of which had fallen below the equator of her bottom. She slid in the mud. At the moment she thought Eloise was purposefully testing or torturing her, but eventually she would learn that this was simply every walk in the country with every English person she ever met: mud and injury and a disregard for safety or private property.

“What do you do?” she asked Eloise.

The hat was down again; she punched it up again. “Really? I’m a doctor. Len didn’t tell you.”

“Of course!” she said, though he hadn’t. “I meant what kind of doctor.”

“Nephrologist.”

Sadie looked at her watch. “What time is the wedding?”

“Five.”

“It’s one.”

“’Tis,” said Eloise.

“Does Fiona need help? Getting ready? If your mother’s not here.”

“The Dutch will do that. They’re very good, the Dutch. Why, are you tired? We can go back. Lenny’s told me all about you.”

“Oh,” said Sadie. “Sorry your mother’s not here.”

“She’s got gout.”

“Really?”

“You think she’d lie?”

“No. I just—I guess I didn’t realize women get gout.”

“Runs in families,” said Eloise, and Sadie realized there was nearly nothing Eloise did not deliver as a threat. “This way.”

They seemed to be angling back down the hill. She thought it was a hill; it might have been a mountain. “Lucky it stopped raining.”

“Ground’ll be wet for the wedding.”

“Are there roofs over the stables?”

“Yes,” Eloise said. “But for the dancing there’s not.”

“There’s dancing?”

“The Dutch will want to dance, surely,” said Eloise. “And you. Americans are always dancing, aren’t they? Shitty!” called Eloise, in a headmistress voice. “Shithead! Get over here.” Then, carelessly, “I hope you weren’t bothered.”

“Oh, gosh, no,” said Sadie. “By what?”

“My father. He has a childish sense of humor.”

At the house they went in a door at the back, yet another one. Eloise bundled the dog in a dirty pink towel the color of a tongue, then tucked him under her arm. “Do you want a tour?”

“Sure.”

“We’ll take the back stairs.”