Wally was in the cowshed, pitching hay into the haycatches for the last set of Darcy’s forty Holsteins to be milked that afternoon, when Sally came running back into the shed from a break she had taken. The youngest milkmaid was crying, sobbing into the apron she pulled to her eyes, and running towards Wally. Then she stopped ten feet in front of him before looking away and dashing out the open end of the shed. She nearly collided with Jim, who was returning from the field with one of the last cows for milking, and then disappeared into the gloom gathering beyond.

Jim just looked after her without expression, then resumed his swatting of his captive’s behind to steer her towards her stall. Wally looked for Sally long after she had departed from his sight, and before his eyes turned to his side when he felt a rough, firm hand on his left shoulder.

“My boy died in France last week,” Frank Darcy said while staring straight ahead, as if to no one in particular. He looked much older than he had exactly a week before. Wally looked down from the drawn face to the page of newspaper carrying the last casualty list of the war. “The paper told us all about it: they didn’t get the word in time, and kept on fightin’ after the Armistice went into effect. You ever heard of a place called ‘Pouilly’?”

Wally just shook his head, unable to laugh at the dairy farmer’s slaughter of the French name.

“‘Killed in action,’ that’s what the paper says. ‘Killed in action.’” Darcy sighed and allowed his hand to drop from Wally’s shoulder as Jim, unaware of what was transpiring at the opposite end of the shed, departed with a milked cow. The farmer’s other milkmaid shyly peeked her head out of the most distant stall of the row of forty, then disappeared from sight once she caught Wally’s cold stare. “I don’t know how you like the dairy business, and I don’t know how long you were plannin’ to stay, but I’d like you to stay on for a good while, at least ‘til we get things settled down ‘round here.”

Now it was Wally’s turn to lay a hand on a shoulder. “I’ll stay, Mister Darcy. I’ll stay for however long you need me.”

Darcy looked his hand in the eye for the first time that encounter, and raised a shaking fist to wipe away a tear that threatened to run away. “Thank you. If you’d like, you can have David’s room. After a decent wait, of course—”

“Mister Darcy?”