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telephone booth beyond the gate, within sight of the church door, and Dougless used it to make a collect call to her parents’ home in the U.S. It was early in the morning in Maine, and a sleepy Elizabeth answered the phone.
    Anybody but her, Dougless thought, rolling her eyes skyward. She’d rather talk to anyone on earth than her perfect older sister.
    “Dougless, is that you?” Elizabeth asked, waking up. “Are you all right? You’re not in trouble again, are you?”
    Dougless grit her teeth. “Of course I’m not in trouble. Is Dad there? Or Mom?” Or a stranger off the street, she thought. Anybody but Elizabeth.
    Elizabeth yawned. “No, they went up to the mountains. I’m here house-sitting and working on a paper.”
    “Think it’ll win a Nobel prize?” Dougless asked, trying to make a joke and sound carefree.
    Elizabeth wasn’t fooled. “All right, Dougless, what’s wrong? Has that surgeon of yours stranded you somewhere?”
    Dougless gave a little laugh. “Elizabeth, you do say the funniest things. Robert and Gloria and I are having a wonderful time. There are so many fantastic things to see and do here. Why, just this morning we saw a medieval play. The actors were so good. And you wouldn’t believe how good the costumes are!”
    Elizabeth paused. “Dougless, you’re lying. I can hear it over the phone. What’s wrong? Do you need money?”
    Try as she might, Dougless could not make her lips form the word “yes.” Her family loved to tell what they called Dougless-stories. They loved the one about the time Dougless got locked out of her hotel room when she was wearing only a towel. Then there was the time Dougless went to the bank to deposit a check and walked into a bank robbery. What they especially loved about this story was that when the police arrived, they discovered that the robbers were carrying toy guns.
    Now she could imagine Elizabeth’s laughter when she told all the Montgomery cousins how funny little Dougless had gone to England and been left at a church with no money, no passport, nothing. “And, oh, yes,” Elizabeth would say over the howls of laughter, “she was attacked by a crazed Shakespearean actor.”
    “No, I don’t need money,” Dougless said at last. “I just wanted to say hello. I hope you get your paper done. See ya.” She heard Elizabeth say, “Dougless” as she dropped the receiver into the cradle.
    For a moment Dougless leaned back against the booth and closed her eyes. She could feel the tears starting again. She had the Montgomery pride, but she’d never done anything to be proud of. She had three older sisters who were paragons of success: Elizabeth was a research chemist, Catherine was a professor of physics, and Anne was a criminal attorney. Dougless, with her lowly elementary school teaching job and her disastrous history with men, was the family jester. She was an endless source of material for laughter among the relatives.
    As she was leaning against the telephone booth, her eyes blurred with tears, she saw the man in the armor leave the church and walk down the path. He glanced quickly at the ancient gravestones, but didn’t seem to have much interest in them as he headed past the gate.
    Coming down the lane was one of the little English buses, as usual doing about fifty miles an hour on the narrow street.
    Suddenly, Dougless stood up straight. The bus was coming, the man was walking very fast, and, somehow, she instinctively knew he was going to walk in front of the bus. Without another thought, Dougless started to run. Just as she took flight, the vicar walked from behind the church in time to see the man and the fast-moving vehicle. He too started running.
    Dougless reached the man first. She made her best flying tackle, the one she’d learned from playing football with her Colorado cousins, and landed on top of him. The two of them skidded across the graveled path on his armor as though it were a little rowboat as the bus flew past them. If