Dressmaking was fun. I'd never have dreamed it in all my days, but the challenge of fine stitching and the reward of creating something both artistic and precise appealed to me. I'd managed to eat half the bowl of porridge Mother had given me, my appetite having left me part way through. Then, within moments of picking up a needle and thread, I’d found myself totally absorbed. The material was a light blue, shimmering satin, and was so soft and folded so well that it was a delight to work with compared to the dress of the previous night. I applied myself to the task I’d been set, and the morning melted away before the intensity of my focus.

Before I realised it, the hem and all the decoration on the skirt was completed, and it was lunchtime. Mother had left a couple of pasties, made from the remains of yesterday’s stew, warming in the oven. She made us a cup of tea each and set them on the table along with our lunch. I allowed myself a moment to admire my handiwork, and had to admit the dress looked quite lovely. Mother had been working on the bodice and had half-finished sewing on an intricate pattern of coloured beads that set off the work I'd done on the skirt to perfection.

“Your sewing's better than I remember,” she said, sipping at her tea.

“The old lady in the forest taught me a few things.” Some elements of truth in there. I bit into my pasty. It seemed right to take smaller mouthfuls. It fit in with who I was expected to be here and now. I'm not sure if it was the novelty value or what, but I was actually enjoying this.

“Well, if she's teaching you skills like that, I should probably reassess my opinion of her.”

“So I can go and see her later?”

“We'll see. We'll talk after you've visited with Lydia and Karen for a while.”

I looked at the dress again. It was hard to keep your eyes off it.

“Where's Lucy today?” I asked. There's usually some degree of noise or nuisance under foot announcing her presence. It was odd how I'd not noticed until now.

“She went into town with your father. It was the only way I could work on the dress without her knowing.”

I finished my pasty and picked at the crumbs left behind.

“Well you certainly have your appetite back, and your colour's better.”

I smiled. It's always nice when someone tells you you're looking well.

There was a knock on the door.

“That'll be your friends dear. Go and have some fun; you've certainly earned it. Thank you for your hard work. Lucy will be thrilled.”

I stood up and leaned down to give Mother a kiss on the cheek — again not something I'd usually do, but it seemed appropriate to the current circumstance — and ran off to find out what sort of friends I had.

---

“So what's this I hear about you and Aaron having a spat?”

We were sitting on a felled tree at the edge of the village green, Lydia and Karen perched comfortably on either side of me.

“It wasn't a spat,” I answered Lydia. “I just remembered all those times at school when he made my life miserable.”

“Oh come on!” Karen all but shouted. “All boys are stupid, you know that. But they grow up into men, and Aaron's turning into quite a dishy one, don't you think?”

“You take him then.”

“And in whose world do you think I, or anyone else for that matter, would have half a chance? He is, unfortunately, rather smitten right now, and only has eyes for one person.”

It took a moment. “You mean...? Oh no. No way, not in a million years.”

“Charlie, you're being unreasonable,” Lydia chipped in.

“Unreasonable? Me? It wasn't your inkwell he filled up with glue, and your desk he put that snake in.”

“It was only a grass snake.”

“You screamed just as loud as if it had been something nastier.”

“You're probably right, but it's just the way boys are. I should know. Try living with a younger brother for all your life.”

“Try living with a younger sister.”

“I thought you and Lucy got on,” Karen said.

I thought back to the number of times Lucy had played the 'helpless little victim by her bullying older brother' card to get me into trouble — remembered her evil little smirk when Mother and Father weren't looking.

“I wouldn't say that.”

“It doesn't matter,” Lydia took over the conversation again. “Little boys and little girls both grow up. You have to be prepared to let them off for the stupid things they did when they were younger. I think Aaron was only mean to you because he secretly liked you.”

I doubted that very much. I was the wimpy kid who basically got trodden on by the bigger stronger types. Maybe if I'd actually been a girl there might have been some truth in it. Maybe if I’d been a girl my whole childhood would have been better.

“Besides, we weren't always that nice to you and you forgave us,” Karen said.

Wrong thing to say. Memories sprang to mind of the day Karen had sneaked up behind me and pulled down my britches in full view of the rest of the school, of the day Lydia told everyone in our class that I liked to kiss boys. It had taken me the whole day to figure out why everyone was laughing. There were a hundred memories like that.

I wanted to get angry with them then, to shout and scream at them, but somehow that didn't seem the right thing to do. I'd have just come across as a petulant brat who was too spoilt to let go of some minor incidents from the past. They'd leave me to my tantrum and consider themselves well shot of me.

To be honest, I found that I liked their attention and interest, so how could I get my payback without jeopardising their friendship?

It came to me that, since they all saw me as a girl, a girl's response might well be the answer. I let go of the anger that had built from years of unkindness, and focused on the misery I'd felt instead. It was surprising how easily the tears came. I bowed my head and tried to hide them in my hair, as though I didn't want them to see, but of course they did. They noticed my silence and then the drooping shoulders and then the wetness on my cheeks.

“Charlie, what's wrong?” Karen asked all care and concern.

“I don't... It's nothing,” I sniffed.

“It doesn't look like nothing.” Lydia placed a gentle hand on my shoulder.

“I... It's just I never felt like I had a friend in the world back then. It was always so hard being the one who got picked on. I looked up to you Karen. You were always so pretty and so confident, I just wanted you to be a friend, and then the first thing you did to me was...”

“Spill ink down your front.” She finished for me, tears flowing in her own eyes now.

“They were new clothes too. I mean not new new, but new to me. Mother was so angry with me when I got home.”

“Oh Charlie!” Karen threw her arms around me and started to sob.

“I suppose I wasn't much better,” Lydia said, finding her fingernails worthy of her exclusive attention.

“Do you remember that wet winter's day when I had a cold and you shouted 'slime' at me because I had a runny nose, then everyone started throwing mud at me? I do. I remember the smile on your face as I stood there dripping and miserable.”

“We were so horrible to you.” Her hair was tied back so I had the satisfaction of seeing the tears run down her face. “I'm just glad we're friends now. We are friends, aren't we?”

Suddenly this wasn't so fun anymore. Whatever the past, these two were my friends now. They cared for me now, and that mattered more than anything they'd done to me in the past.

“Of course we're friends.” I put one arm round Karen and let my free hand settle on Lydia's thigh. “I couldn't ask for better.”

“But we were so mean to you.” Karen had stopped crying, but there was still a catch to her voice.

“Not recently. Not today. It's just great to have people around who care.”

We sat in silence for a while, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Me regretting having brought up the past, them regretting all the things they had done. A cloud covered the sun bringing a chill with it.

“I'm sorry I brought up the past,” I said, genuinely meaning it. “I've ruined today, which was so great until I reminded you of stuff I've pretty much forgotten.”

“Not so much,” Lydia said. “I mean we could see how remembering it all upset you, and we remember doing it all to you too, and regret it.”

“I know. Which is why I ought to have left it alone. The past is the past. What we have right now is pretty special.”

A mischievous twinkle appeared in Karen's eye. “You know you could try thinking of Aaron like that.”

It broke the spell. I laughed. Lydia joined in, then Karen, and suddenly it was alright again.

“I'd better be getting back,” I said. “I still have some things to do around the house and I was hoping to go into the forest later.”

“Yeah, what is it about that place that fascinates you so much?” Karen asked. “You're always going in there.”

It was my refuge — a place where I escaped from people like you. Not exactly the thing to say at that precise moment.

“You've got to be kidding,” I managed to manufacture some enthusiasm. “Nature is so wonderful, and there's always something new and exciting to see.”

“Whatever,” Lydia wasn't going to be persuaded that easily. Neither was Karen. Nature was wild and uncomfortable and full of stinging nettles and beetles and spiders and worse. They both preferred things to be tamer. “I guess we'll see you later then, at the village meeting to plan the May dance?”

“I'll be there. Thanks, you two. You really are the best.”

My parting shot felt genuine enough to me, but there may have been a sardonic note hidden in there somewhere, prompted by the resentment that still bubbled underneath. I thought I noticed something haunting the looks they gave me, as though they noticed and cared that they had hurt me. I’d never been so aware of subtle nuance before, not in people’s emotions. I knew it was supposed to be a woman’s thing, but I wasn’t a woman, was I? So how come I was picking up on such things? I ruminated on it on the short walk home.

---

“Charlie!” A madly exuberant bundle of kid sister careened into me from the other side of the kitchen. Fortunately the full skirts of my dress afforded me some protection, or I might have suffered a quite painful crushing injury. “Thank you, Charlie. Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you. It's perfect. I know I shall be the May Queen now, and even if I'm not, I shan't mind because it's so beautiful.”

I looked up at Mother. “You finished it? All that bead-work?”

“I wouldn't have been able to without your help, Charlotte. So thank you, from both of us.”

“May I see it?” Not something I would ordinarily have asked, but I found I really wanted to.

“Mother, can I?” Lucy started jumping up and down. “Can I please? Can I, can I, can I, please, please, please?”

Mother was finding it hard not to laugh, and I wasn't surprised; Lucy's enthusiasm was so infectious.

“Oh alright,” she said with a chuckle, “but be careful with it.”

“Oh I will Mother, thank you.” Lucy dashed halfway across the kitchen, jammed on the anchors and spun on the spot. “Stay right there,” she said with a solemnity that she then spoiled by breaking into the widest grin her face could manage and running off towards our bedroom.

The silence that followed was deafening in its depth.

“So,” Mother said after a while, “how did it go with your friends?”

“It was good, I suppose. Most of it.”

Eyebrows were arched. “There's a comment with a story behind it.” That was as much of a request for more details as I was given, but the silence that followed needed filling.

“I said something I shouldn't have. I upset them both I think.”

“Well, if they're your friends, they'll forgive you. If they don't, then you're well rid of them.”

“But that's the thing, Mother. It's not me they're going to have to forgive.”

“Oh? Now you really do have me intrigued.”

I sighed and dropped onto a chair. “We were talking about Aaron and I remembered all the mean things he did to me when I was younger. Then I remembered some of the things Karen and Lydia did as well.”

“And you told them?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. I suppose I still feel angry at them for what they did. I think I wanted to hurt them. I'm not sure I even really believed they were my friends.”

“And?”

“Well I did. Hurt them I mean. Karen sobbed on my shoulder and Lydia wouldn't look me in the eye for the longest time. I felt terrible.”

“Why?”

“It was a stupid thing to do. The only way they would be hurt by it was if they really were my friends. If they weren't, they'd have just walked off laughing and I'd have looked foolish. As it was they proved that they cared by their reactions, and now I feel rotten for hurting two people I know care about me.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

“I'm going to have to figure out a way of making things up to them, aren't I?”

“They're your friends, dear, not mine, but yes, I think that would be the thing I’d do.”

“Thanks Mother.”

“Any time sweetheart.”

Funny the way timing works sometimes. We'd barely finished speaking when the most stunning vision I'd ever laid eyes on swept into the kitchen. It took me a long moment to realise it was my sister.

It took me another, longer moment to remember to breath.

“Wow!” I managed at last. “Lucy, you look more beautiful than anyone I've ever seen.”

Lucy twirled and preened, as delighted with her appearance as I was stunned by it.

“It's missing something,” Mother murmured in my ear.

I'd been thinking something along the same lines. She'd have to have her hair done up, and... “Primroses,” I replied just as quietly. “There's a bush not too far into the forest that's in full bloom. I'll pick some up tomorrow when I go.”

I stood up, trying to break the enchantment my beautiful sister in her beautiful dress had cast. “Well, I came back to see if there was anything you needed help with, Mother.”

“That's kind of you, dear. I still have to clean the house, and it doesn't look as though Princess Lucy is dressed to help.”

“I imagine she's rather tired after her long journey into town as well,” I added, looking down at her over folded arms. “I imagine her royal highness will want to lie down and rest for a while.”

“Oh, no,” she said, still bubbling fit to burst. “I'll get changed and help, Mother. I'm not tired, and I'm so thankful.”

“Well,” Mother gave me a look, “I suppose that lets you off the hook, sweetheart. Can you try and be back before the sun sets tonight. I worry when you're out there in the dark.”

“Yes, Mother.” I gave her a suitably contrite look, even though she’d never worried about me as a boy. “Come on Cinderella, let's get you out of your fine ball gown before the clock strikes twelve and all your mice turn into spiders or something.”

Lucy giggled. Usually she'd complain that I was telling it wrong, but she was obviously in too good a mood this afternoon. I helped her out of her dress and hung it up for her while she pulled on her every day clothes.

“You know,” she said, smiling across at me, “I'm glad I have a sister. Jessica Miller has an older brother, and she says he's nice enough, but I don't think having a brother could be any nicer than having you.”

I sat down on the bed beside her and pulled her into a hug. I couldn't think of anything to say, so I just held her for a moment, then helped her lace up her bodice before sending her off to do her chores.

---

The primrose bush was just where I remembered it. I mentally marked the branches I planned to cut off tomorrow and headed on deeper among the trees. It wasn't far to the witch's cottage, but somehow the last half mile always seemed to take as long as the rest of the journey.

It was located in a gloomy part of the forest where the path wound back and forth between densely packed trees, but the cottage and its garden stood in bright sunshine, almost as though the trees had withdrawn from fear and respect.

The door swung open as I approached, revealing the old woman sitting hunched close to her fire, knitting.

“You're not ready,” she said as I raised my hand to knock at the door.

I took it for an invitation, despite the dismissive nature of the words, and stepped inside.

“I'm sorry?” I closed the door, looking around for any sign of the mechanism I felt sure she must use to open it from her seat. What was the phrase Father had used when that carnival had passed near to the village? Smoke and mirrors. That was it. So much of the old woman's witchcraft seemed to be smoke and mirrors. Still if they were simple tricks, they were well hidden.

“I said you're not ready. I told you to come back when you were ready, and you're not yet. Unless you've come to tell me this was all a big mistake and you want me to undo it.” She looked up with a warning glint in her eye. “If that's the case, I suggest you think very carefully before opening your mouth next. I put a great deal of time and effort into giving you what you asked for, and I don't like to see it wasted.”

That was, of course, the reason I had decided to come, but even before I took my first step on the forest path, my second thoughts had already been superseded by third ones. Wearing a dress in public was nerve wracking to the point of being terror inducing. I'd become used to my family and my friends — as much as it seemed I now had some — treating everything as normal, but every moment I spent outside in the company of others, was a moment in which I expected some stranger or simple acquaintance to start pointing and laughing. Up until now, though, I'd escaped such unwanted attention. Arriving at the door, I found my original intention of asking her to undo everything had been crowded out by a head full of different questions.

“What do you mean I'm not ready?” I approached the small area of warmth close to her equally small fire.

She sighed and looked up from her knitting. “If you're going to stay, you can at least make yourself useful and put the kettle on.”

The kettle was blackened with use and near empty. I filled it from a bucket of well water sitting in the kitchen, hooked it onto its chain and swung it over the fire. I sat down and waited.

“What I mean is you're still thinking like a man, at least some of the time. Being asked to put the kettle on, you quite pedantically, and to some degree correctly, do just that. A woman would know that there's more to making tea, and would set out cups, teapot, tea, sugar, milk and the like — get everything ready while the water was boiling.”

I took the hint and stood up again. The kitchen was small and there weren't many places things could hide. Within a minute I had gathered everything she'd listed.

“There's some fruitcake in the pantry,” she added as an afterthought when I was all but done.

I sought out the fruitcake, a knife, a couple of forks and plates and added them to the tray.

She nodded as I carried the things through and placed them on the low table.

I sat again and waited patiently for her to continue. It was a trick my parents used at times, though I doubted it would have any effect here unless she chose to let it.

She put the knitting aside and turned the full intensity of her gimlet gaze in my direction. “There are them as would disagree with me and with a right mind in some cases, but to me a man thinks of himself, at least in mundane matters, and often in bigger ones as well. His response to a request is to do, if he has a mind, just what he has been asked and no more. A woman will act with a thought to the meaning and consequence of her actions to everyone present. She thinks more outside herself, interprets words in their wider context. You get my meaning?”

I nodded uncertainly.

“You're getting there. What you did for your sister today shows that, and the way you feel about what you said to Karen and Lydia.”

“How did you know about...?” She cut me off with a glare.

“But the way you spoke to Aaron this morning, and the fact that you would bring up such painful memories with your friends purely out of spite tells me you still have a ways to go.”

“I've known women who acted out of spite. Karen and Lydia for instance.”

“You've known girls. We're all of us selfish and at least a little bit cruel when we're young. When we grow up, we're supposed to become more caring towards one another. Men, perhaps because of their greater strength, perhaps because they tend to focus on bigger matters, tend to leave the everyday things to us women-folk, without realising that those every day matters are probably the biggest of them all.

“For sure, women can be spiteful, and hateful and selfish, just as men can be, but those of us as have grown up know to invest in the friendships they have, know that a whispered hint is as close to a cry for help that some can give. A good woman don't look out for herself so much as for everyone she knows. Being a wife and mother helps in that respect, because she becomes someone who lives as much for those she loves as she does for herself. Once you've taken that step, it's easier to extend it to the other people in your life.”

“I'm hardly likely to know any of that though, am I?”

“You never know. Keep on as you are, the future may surprise you yet.”

“It already has. Why did you send me away from here as a boy in a dress? How is it that everyone sees me as a girl even though I'm obviously not, and why didn't you tell me that was going to happen?”

She sighed again. “First, I didn't send you away. You could have come upstairs and collected your clothes, but you didn't.”

“So that was a sort of a test?”

“If you like. It's as good a word as any, but it's also a process. You can't be made to walk this path. You have to choose it. Second, I'm not going to tell you. Feel free to tell me if you can work it out. Third, you have to make your own discoveries. If I'd sent you out anticipating what you found, you'd never have learnt as much as you have.”

“Is there magic in this? Or are people behaving as they are because you told them to? How is it that Aaron seems to be so smitten by me? Is he... you know?”

Her smile contained a considerable amount of satisfaction — like a dog she'd been training had just learnt a new trick. I didn't care for it much. “Magic is what people believe it to be. It also has a price and shouldn't be used too freely. Aaron isn't interested in boys, at least not in that way. What he, and the others, sees in you is genuine. They sees it because it's there to be seen.”

The kettle started steaming. I swung it away from the fire and picked it up with the thick cloth kept there for the purpose. I used a small amount of water to heat the pot, then added a few leaves and poured a generous two and a bit cupfuls over them. The kettle went back to its place by the fire.

“How did all the clothes in my wardrobe change to dresses? And how come my sister was already sharing my room when I woke? My parents aren't reacting to a change. It's as though they knew it was going to happen, or as if I’d been a girl all my life.

“And my father. If yesterday, if he'd seen his son, Charles, walking around in a dress, he'd have taken a birch to me. How is it that he sees me as his daughter now and not his son?”

“Well you have to give me some credit in this, surely, and no, I'm not going to tell you how it works. I told you, I'll not train a warlock, and you're still too much of a man.”

“Can't you at least...?”

“I took what's in you and put it where everyone can see it. If they think they've always seen it, it's because that's easier to believe than that a boy can turn into a girl overnight. Of course there's more to it than that, but that's what I ‘can at least...’, as you so eloquently put it.”

“How is it you talk country sometimes and at others you sound far better educated?”

“I speak so as to be understood by the mind that's listening. Sometimes you’re quite bright, other times your quite the village idiot. Now enough of your questions and on to some of mine. To start with, are you ever going to pour out that tea?”

---

For the next hour, she grilled me on my behaviour towards Aaron and Karen and Lydia. How she knew about it, she never let on, but she knew so many details, it was as though she had actually been there. Mother's questions had been gentle, but had probed deeply, like a surgeon's knife. The old woman's dug away at me like an axe hollowing out a tree. They were brutal and relentless, and left me drained. Many of them I couldn't answer, most especially those about Aaron. After I'd talked through all the deep seated resentment over the way he'd treated me when I was younger and reached a point where I'd been able to let it go, there was still a fairly major hurdle in the way.

“But I can't respond to his advances, can I?” I'd protested. “He's a man, and so am I. It wouldn't be right.”

“Is that how you see yourself still?” she asked quietly. “You asked me to make you a woman. That's going to be impossible as long as you insist on thinking of yourself as a man.”

That was pretty much where the afternoon ended. She interrupted my silent consideration of her words to remind me that the sun was an hour from setting, and that I should be on my way if I were to return home before dark as I'd promised.

I took my time on the way home. The late April weather was clement for once, and I had a great deal to think on. It was true what the old lady had said. If I could bring myself to allow Aaron's advances, I'd show to my friends that I was both willing and able to forgive the past. If I would allow myself to be seen on his arm, after all he and his friends had done to me over the years, then surely such small and infrequent indiscretions as had been their contribution to my misery could be far more easily overlooked.

The thing was I did still consider myself to be a man. Despite everyone else's refusal to acknowledge it, I was minus some decidedly noticeable female attributes, just as I was plus some equally noticeable male ones. Would it be even remotely possible for me to see myself as Aaron saw me?

I found I rather liked that idea in the same way that I had taken to wearing a dress and stockings. The clothes felt different, and initially the unusual sensation had off balanced my mind, but once I started to grow used to the strangeness, and perhaps more importantly, once it seemed that no-one was pointing at me and laughing, I started to enjoy it. I liked the feel of the skirt swirling around my knees. I liked the stretch and give of the tights against my legs as I walked, even if they did itch. More than anything, I liked the way the clothes made me feel about myself. Perhaps I wasn't a girl — not in a real sense — but wearing the clothes made me feel more girly, and that seemed to match far better with my personality.

I thought about Aaron as possible boyfriend material, and was astonished to discover that I wasn't utterly repulsed by the idea. I wasn't one to condone what had once been described to me as 'the practices of the city'. I wasn't sure if I condemned it either. I mean the thought of two boys together made my toes curl, but I don't think I would condemn two people who chose to live like that. I mean love is hard enough to find in this world, so why not take a firm grasp on it where-ever you come across it. I just knew that it wouldn't work for me.

But then I thought about what the old witch had said to me — that until I started to believe I was a woman, I'd never really become one. I tried believing myself to be a woman, and oddly it worked. The more I was able to accept myself as a girl, the more I saw other girls as just friends, and the more I saw the possibilities of romance and even love with the likes of Aaron. The thought of Charles and Aaron together was enough to set my stomach churning, but Charlotte and Aaron, that was different. The sense of wrongness that we feel regarding such things as romantic relationships between people of the same gender seems to come largely from the attitudes of the people we live with. While everyone saw me as a girl, it seemed I was free to investigate romance with boys, if only because my friends and family seemed to condone it and even expect it.

There was still half an hour or more of daylight when I arrived back at the village. I had paused on the way to pick wild flowers and make posies for both Lucy and Mother, but I hadn't been much delayed for all that. I rounded the bend into the village, only to see Aaron sitting on the wall across the street from my parent's house. On sight of me, he tried to act nonchalant, but he was quite evidently filled with an overwhelming awkwardness that only managed to make obvious his intentions.

I bit on the smile which fought for control of the corners of my mouth. This wasn't a time to risk bruising an already delicate ego.

“Er, ah, er Miss Charlotte, er, Charlie,” he began in none too promising form. I paused to give him time to gather his wits. He really was sweet, and it was quite exciting to think that I was having this effect on him, even if I was a... No! Don't go there, I told myself sternly. I was a woman as surely as I saw the proof mirrored in Aaron's eyes just now.

“I think I owe you an apology for this morning, Master Aaron,” I said meekly, throwing the dog a bone. “I have had cause to consider your words, and you're right. If any of us were to be judged on our behaviour as a child, we'd be in a great deal of trouble indeed.”

“Er, yes! What? Really? I mean, yes, really. That's what I was trying to say all along, and I'm so glad you see things... see things, er, differently.” I'm not sure if he noticed the brewing storm in my eyes — I mean no-one likes an 'I told you so' just after they've conceded a point, as I had — but he did notice his imminent ship wreck and scrabbled desperately to save himself. “Er, that is to say, what I did to you back then was thoughtless and unkind, and I'd very much like the opportunity to make it up to you. In some small way that is; I know I hurt you, and I am so very sorry, er...”

“Is there something you wish to ask me, Master Aaron?” The verbal blundering was becoming painful to listen to.

“I was wondering, Miss Charlotte, that is to say, I would be extremely honoured, no, er, delighted if you would, er, agree, to, erm, allow me to take you to the Mayday dance this Saturday.” Towards the end his oration dropped into a mumble that might have been impossible to discern fully had I not already suspected what he meant to ask.

“Alright.”

“I mean, I know I'm not the most handsome man in the village, and I'm not strong like Jack, the smith's son, but… what?”

“I said alright. I'll have to ask my father for permission of course, but if he is agreeable, I would be glad to have you take me.”

Honestly, he was lost in his own private world of fireworks and violin music. I felt my heart melting as I saw how much this meant to him. How much I meant to him. I'd never felt much use in my life. From the incessant bullying at school to the disappointment in Father's eyes at my inability to put my hand to any craft worthy of a man. Now to have this indication that my good opinion mattered so very much to someone opened me up like a flower. It was a very precious feeling.

“I should be getting indoors. Mother asked that I be back before sunset, and I don't want to worry her.”

“Sure, sure. I, er, I, if I were to pass by tomorrow morning about the same time as I came today, I don't know if you...”

“I'm always awake and tending the animals soon after the cock crows, so I imagine you would find me here again.”

“Would it be, er, you know, er, alright to, er...”

“I should think so. I shall try not to be as shrewish as I was this morning. I shan't be able to dally long; Mother needs the milk for breakfast.”

“Then I shall be waiting, and quite possibly pinching myself black and blue in the hopes that all this has been more than the quite delightful dream it seems.”

On impulse I plucked a flower from one of the posies I carried and gave it to him. “A token then, to make the memory more tangible and less like a dream.”

It would have been forward to lean in share a kiss at this stage, besides, it's better to leave them wanting. I'm not sure where that nugget of wisdom came from, but it seemed appropriate. I gave him a little wave and turned towards the door. I did turn to smile at him before going in, but then that's just one of those things you do, isn't it?

---