Year in and year out she had spent the summer evenings like this on the dike. The first time she was seventeen and a bride, and her husband had shouted to her to come out of the house and up the dike, and she had come, blushing and twisting her hands together, to hide among the women while the men roared at her and made jokes about her.All the same, they had liked her. "A pretty piece of meat in your bowl," they had said to her husband."Feet a trifle big," he had answered deprecatingly. But she could see he was pleased, and so gradually her shyness went away.