Sixteen.

“No, thank you, Matron,” Geoffrey told her. “Pater will be waiting for me.”

“And have you made arrangements for the night, Geoff? We’ll happily find a place for you two. We haven’t much room, but it’s a roof, init?

“Pater’s taken care of all that, Matron. But thank you. Thank you all the same.”

Geoffrey nodded his head to take his leave. He asked, “With your license?”

“What’s that, Geoff?” Rian’s mother smiled, clearly perplexed by the expression but patient enough with the student’s high manners.

“With your leave, Matron?”

“Yes, yes. Don’t let grass grow through your toes.”

Geoffrey turned outdoors and soon enough he heard the banging of pots coming closer. What in the world? he wondered. He just reached the corner of the cottage and was mowed down by a beast of a man, not tall at all, but with a chest the breadth of a barrel. And squat legs that kept to their awkward running.

“Blast!” the man shouted. “And me so bowlegged!”

Could that have been an apology?

And now came a young women banging a metal spoon against a metal pot, laughing at the collision and the tumble of a boy.

Geoffrey looked up and saw her and thought, She's beautiful. Her light brown hair done up in braids and her figure so appealing to the boy’s imagination. Blue eyes that seemed to spark and white teeth that gleamed as the girl laughed.

“He is my uncle, young sir,” she expressed between her laughing and the banging of the pot. “He is quite bowlegged.” And off she raced. The sight of her joyful to Geoffrey’s eyes, and him not a bit mindful of his toppled pride.

Well, he thought, as he pulled himself up. I’ll be the bowlegged one.