Singapore? Before I can say anything, Penny hurries out into the yard where, I can see from the window, Ellen is parking her bike. After a brief exchange Penny goes into the barn. Ellen’s dressed for cycling, in jeans and a jersey the color of her eyes. Roses in her cheeks: it was a long pull up the hill out of Barrow End, and her jacket is tied by the sleeves around her waist. Her hair is drawn up in a bun, but the wind has half destroyed it. She lifts up her hands and pulls it loose, the tresses swirl around her face, and her lips move, Oh, bother. She turns into the wind, side-on to me, and corrals it into a heavy plait which she pins up behind her head. I can tell by the way she rams in the hairpins that she wants to make her bun again, but it’s impossible in this wind.

Tall, springy as a beech bough, and just now fairly annoyed. I watch her avidly.

—

“Penny’s fetching some hay for Harvey’s sheep,” she tells me as I let her in. “He’s kept a dozen of his favorites. She’s to spend a long time checking them over, to see if any are limping. Foot rot is a pest. How are you?”

She steps over the threshold—no she doesn’t step, she makes a small leap, all whipped up as she is by the wind and the sunlight.

“Free of foot rot, at least,” I manage to say, through the dazzlement.

“I’m glad to hear it.” She gives me a long, penetrating gaze, one I don’t feel remotely ready for. “You look very well, considering. Very . . . I don’t know. Very upright.”

“It’s the bandage round my chest.”

“Oh, James.” Her eyes start to glisten. “When Althea told me what had happened, goodness me. I could kiss your archdeacon Frobisher. Give him a great smacker on the cheek!”

“Please,” I implore her, “don’t make me laugh.”

“Forgive me. I didn’t mean to!”

The pain is enormous, not that I care in the least.

“Would you like some coffee? Or water?” I indicate the filled containers on the countertop. “As you can see, I’ve got plenty. Your splendid young friend doesn’t do things by halves, does she.”

“No, and I heard all about it in the yard. I’d love a cup of coffee, thank you.” Ellen unwraps her jacket from her waist, hangs it on the back of a chair. “We’ve been up since the crack of dawn.”

“Penny said you rescued her during the flood.”

“She was stuck in the middle of a drowned field. Without a friend in the world. Her mother’s been having a breakdown, one involving an awful lot of gin.”

“Ah. The Laurels.”

“She’s doing better now, I think, and so is Penny.”

“Thanks to you, no doubt.”