"I'm sorry, Princess Prudence. I beg your forgiveness. I shall die. Do you forgive me?"
"You're so silly," she says.
"Silly? Why, I do believe I feel a terrible fever coming on. I can't go on. You best fetch your father and a shovel."
"I forgive you. I forgive you!" Prudence says.
At once Bradley springs to life again. "I love you," he says. "Do you love me too?"
"Yes," she says. She hesitates a moment before asking, "Is it true what Daddy says? That you're going to the city to learn a trade after the harvest?"
"I'm afraid so," he says.
"Why?"
"I can't stay here forever with you and your parents. I have to go make some money of my own to start my own family."
"Why? Why can't you stay here with us?"
Bradley puts an arm around her shoulder. She's known him for as long as she can remember. He's like a brother to her. She can't imagine life on the farm without him. "I would like to, believe me, I would, but I can't. Your father and I have had a long talk and we think it's best for me now that I'm old enough to go out on my own to try different things and see different things. When you get older, you'll understand."
"No I won't," she says, tears coming to her eyes. "I don't want you to go."
"I know, Princess. I don't want to go either, but I must." He wipes the tears from her eyes and smiles. "There's something I want to show you before I go."
"What is it?"
"I can't tell you. You have to see it. Come on." Prudence climbs onto his broad shoulders, clasping handfuls of his sandy hair. When she was a baby, she remembered Bradley as skinny and pale, so weak he trembled when he picked her up. He'd grown much bigger and stronger over the last couple years.
He carries her away from the field into the forest. "I can't go in here," she says. "Daddy says I'm not to go into the forest."
"There's nothing to worry about. I'm here. You trust me, don't you?"
"Yes. What is it you want to show me?"
"We're almost there."
He takes her deep enough into the forest that she can no longer see the field or house. The trees are so thick that the forest is dark as night. "I don't like this place," she says. "I want to go home."
"It's not much farther," he says. "You don't want to miss this." She has to lean down now to keep branches from tangling in her hair. Mother keeps getting after Prudence about having her hair cut, but Prudence has refused, not wanting to lose her pretty hair. Now she wishes she'd let Mother cut it.