Ned was a donkey, and Ned did not hurry, and everyone in the field had made their peace with this except the goat.

The goat’s name was Gordon. He was a small brown goat with a beard and opinions, and on the evening this story happened he was standing on the water trough, looking at the sky.

“Rain,” he said.

The two geese were asleep by the gate with their heads on their backs. The old pony was asleep on her feet. Ned was standing in the middle of the field with one ear forward and one ear back, looking at a thistle, and had been for some time.

“Rain,” said Gordon, louder. “Coming over the hill. Big lot of it. Everybody to the shelter.”

The shelter was a three-sided shed at the top of the field with a tin roof and a floor of old straw, and it was about a hundred steps away, or, for a goat, about nine seconds. Gordon got down off the trough and did it in eight, and stood in the door, and looked back, and nobody had moved.

“Rain,” he said, from the shelter.

The geese woke up, made a remark about it, and went, the long way round, because that was the way geese went. The old pony opened one eye and ambled after them, taking a mouthful of grass on the way to show she was not being told. That left Ned.

Ned had finished with the thistle. He turned, slowly, in the direction of the shelter, the way you might turn a boat, and he looked at it, and he took a step.

“Come on,” said Gordon. “It’s coming. I can smell it.”

Ned took another step.

Gordon came out of the shelter, ran down the field, ran round Ned twice, and ran back. “You’ll get wet,” he said.

“Might,” said Ned.

“You’ll get very wet.”

“Might.”

“You could trot. I’ve seen you trot. You trotted when the bucket fell over.”

“That was a bucket,” said Ned, and took a step.

The first drops came, big and slow and warm, and made dark spots in the dust. Gordon ran to the shelter, and stood in the doorway, and ran halfway back to Ned, and stopped, and ran to the shelter again, and in this way he covered the distance between them, in total, about eleven times. Ned covered it once. Step, and the ear that was forward went back, and step, and the ear that was back came forward, and the rain came on, and Ned took a step.

It was properly raining now. It was drumming on the tin roof so that Gordon had to shout, and what he shouted was “Ned,” and Ned said, “Mm,” from about halfway, and did not alter.

Something should be said for Ned’s point of view. He had been out in rain before. Rain, in his experience, went on for a bit and then stopped, and you were wet, and then you were dry, and the amount of running about you had done in the meantime made no difference, except that you were also tired. He had explained this to Gordon once. Gordon had run off in the middle.

The rain eased, as it happened, at about the moment Ned’s front feet came onto the straw, so that he walked in with the last of it dripping off his ears and stood in the door, wet all over, steaming very slightly, and looked round at everybody.

“Made it,” he said.

Gordon looked at him. Gordon was dry. Gordon was also, from all the running, breathing rather hard, and he found he had nothing to say, which for a goat is unusual.

The geese were already asleep again. Ned went to the back of the shelter, and turned round, once, with the slowness of a ship coming in, and lay down, and let out a long breath, and the rain came back, softer, on the tin.

Gordon stood in the doorway a while longer, watching the field go silver.

Then he came in, and lay down by the donkey, because the donkey was warm, and the roof drummed, and the night went on at exactly the pace it wanted, which was Ned’s.