About this story
Giles drives you back through the coppice with careful formality, unsure which parts of your old friendship survived your education, while your father's pride in your new polish is visible to everyone, including him. Before the evening ends, a doctor arrives for a sick neighbor and stays merely by being charming, and your father admits the old promise may not survive your homecoming after all.
How it opens
The coach left you where the turnpike narrowed into a tunnel of hazel and oak.
Rain shone on stacked hurdles, cider ruts, and the mossed roofs of Little Hintock.
George MelburySchool has kept you so long that the trees nearly claimed you back.
Choose
I would have known this road with my eyes closed.
The village looks smaller, but the woods do not.