At last, because he could think of nothing else, he said, "I only hope you'll always feel this way."

Either she wasn't aware of his awkwardness, or intuitively understood it all too well. But she smiled and drew him into the tall grass.

Summer came and went as in a dream of pretty print-patterned peasant dresses, fleet bare feet, and thistledown-bearing breezes that half-obscured Lily's face with her own long blonde tresses, as though she were Summer's living embodiment. At Summer's end, though the Black Wood did not change with the onset of Autumn, the shallow valley cut by Stony Brook as it wound its way through Belloc's lands had along its banks deciduous trees that coloured the landscape with a

swath of Fall blazonry.

Belloc awaited some sign that would tell him when they were to set out on the journey to Lund, but he wouldn't share what it was he waited for. Anest wondered at this, for Belloc had never, in all the years he had known the old wizard, been secretive about anything. And he could sense some reluctance on Belloc's part, perhaps about leaving, or taking his young charges into danger.

Unknown to Anest, Belloc was secretly delighted with Lily, and not only because her presence dispelled Anest's black moods, or because she brought with her a lighthearted cheerfulness that the house had never possessed before.




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