Chapter 24: The Heron

The Heron lay at the Blomqvist Landing exactly where Bram had tied her.

Her old green hull knocked softly against the dock.

Linnea stepped aboard at dusk and put her palm flat on the rail.

It was warm from the day.

Behind her on the dock, half the river had come to see the boat she had lived on for a year.

"It's a good boat," the ferryman said, loudly.

He was thinking, It leaks like a sieve.

"She's a fine little craft," said the miller's wife.

She was thinking, I would never sleep in that.

Linnea smiled at both of them.

She had been hearing the small lies of the river for a month now.

Most were kind, or vain, or harmless, and she had stopped flinching.

A few were not, and she knew exactly which.

The people who told those had begun to cross the street when she came.

The Quiet Corps was gone.

Nineteen of the twenty listeners had chosen to stay in the Watch, and the twentieth had gone home to her daughter.

Nobody was kept in a house with green shutters any more.

Bram cast off the stern line and stood back.

"Mind the weir," he said.

"I know the weir."

"Mind it anyway."

He grinned, the same grin as when she was six and had capsized the skiff.

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