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one child, they could afford to give her a good deal. So she
    had pretty clothes and kind but clever governesses and as many dogs and cats and ponies and
    songbirds as she wanted. She grew up knowing that she was much loved, and so she had a happy
    childhood; but the self-consciousness of adolescence made her shy and solemn. And she found,
    as some adolescents do, that she was less and less interested in the kinds of things her old friends
    were now most interested in, and so they drifted apart. Now she preferred to go for long solitary
    walks with her dogs, or riding on the fine thoroughbred mare her parents had bought her when
    she outgrew the last of the ponies. Her mother had to forbid her to stay in the kitchen through the
    harvest feast, where she would have gone on bottling plums and cherries from their orchards
    with her mother and the two serving-women till all the dancing was over; and at the next fair her
    mother sent her on a series of errands to all the stalls where the young people would be working
    for their parents. But Jenny only spoke to them as much as she had to, and came away again.
    Her parents had hoped that she would outgrow her shyness, as she had grown into it, but by the
    time she was eighteen, they had begun to fear that this would not happen. They worried, because
    they “wanted her to find a husband, that she might be as happy with him as they had been with
    each other; and they hoped to leave their farm in their daughter’s hands, to be cared for by her
    and her husband as lovingly as they had cared for it, and given on to her children in the proper
    time. They worried that even a young man who would suit her well would not notice her, for she
    made herself un-noticeable; and they feared that it was only they who knew that, when she
    smiled, her face lit up with gentleness and humour and intelligence.
    They decided that they would take her to the city for a season, and that perhaps so drastic a
    change in her usual way of life might bring her to herself. They had relatives in the city, and this
    could be done without discomfort. They told her of their plan, and she would have protested, but
    they told her that they were her parents, and they knew best.
    But because of her knowledge that she was to go away, she carried herself with more of an air
    during the next weeks—it was an air of tension, but it made her eyes sparkle and her back
    straight. She looked around her at her familiar circumstances with more attention than she had
    done for years, as if this trip to the city were going to change her life forever. And she knew well
    enough that her parents hoped that it would, that they hoped to find her an acceptable suitor: and
    what could change her life more thoroughly than marriage?
    They were going to the city a little after the final harvest fair of the year, when the farm could be
    left to look after itself for a while, with none but the hired workers to keep an eye on it; and
    when, as well, the best parties in the city were held, after the heat of the summer was over. The
    letters were written, and the relatives had pronounced themselves delighted to have Jenny for a
    season and her parents for as much as they felt they could stay of it. Her parents permitted
    themselves to feel hopeful; even the possibility that Jenny would fall in love with some city boy
    who loathed the very idea of farming seemed worth the risk.
    But things did not turn out as Jenny’s parents had planned. For at the harvest fair she caught the
    eye of a young man.
    This young man lived in a neighbouring village, and was one of four sons, third from the eldest.
    His family too held a good farm, like hers, but they had four sons to think of. The first was a hard
    worker, and he would have the farm. The second was clever, and was to be apprenticed to his
    uncle, who was a clever businessman in the city. The fourth was grave and thoughtful, and
    would go into the priesthood. The third was beautiful. His name was