There were three days of steady rain, when mist, rolling down from the moor, blotted out the fields and farm buildings, so that Vicky, reading in the barn, seemed to be on a little island of her own. Fog, like thunder, frightened her, and Luke made a habit on such days of fetching her back to the house when it was time, so that she need not make the short journey alone. Often it was too dark in the barn to read, and he would find her lying in the hay, sometimes asleep, sometimes just staring up at the rafters while she waited for him. “What do you think about when you lie in the hay for so long?” he asked her once.“Oh, many things,” she answered. “Things that used to happen to us in France, Lou’s future, what becomes of us when we die, like Bibi and your poor sow, what the men were like who built this barn hundreds of years ago—and you.”He laughed and said that should be enough to be going on with.“And what do you think when you think about me?” he asked idly.She wrinkled her nose.“Oh, what you were like when you knew Maman and were a shy young man, how you and Cousin Hester started the farm, and why—”
