Glenys laughed. ‘I’ve always thought your father’s beard looks very soft, but soft or bristly you can’t be frightened of a beard. I mean, it’s like saying you’re frightened of a finger, or a toe.’ She laughed and Mo laughed with her but, Glenys thought, a trifle uneasily.

‘I’m not frightened of anything,’ Mo said defiantly. ‘It’s just that horrible Cyril has a beard and – and sometimes when my daddy’s worried or cross he looks a bit like Cyril.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Glenys said, vastly relieved. So that was why Mo avoided her father’s company! But she would have to talk seriously to the child, because although he had said nothing on the subject she knew Sam was both hurt and puzzled by his daughter’s attitude. Glenys remembered that in the early days of their acquaintance she herself had tended to treat him with kid gloves: he was so big, so dark and, she supposed, so frightening to a small child, though she herself now knew him for what he was: a gentle giant. Indeed, she realised that when the snow cleared and the time came for her to leave it would be Sam that she missed the most. He had been everything that was good and kind to her, showing her how to carry out every task she undertook in a way which saved her strength. She had stood by and watched him learning to milk the cows and he had been delighted when she proved to be a better milker than he was, congratulating her and saying, with a twinkle, that she would make some lucky farmer an excellent wife.

So now, in the warm kitchen, Glenys considered how best to tackle Mo’s lingering fear of her father. It was no use saying that Sam was nothing like the hateful Cyril Huxtable, because irrational fears can rarely be talked away. Instead, Glenys probed a little deeper. ‘But Mo darling, Cyril Huxtable is far away and you’re very unlikely to meet him again. It’s very hurtful to your daddy when you turn your face away when he gives you a goodnight kiss, or . . .’ her eyes settled on the manikins the child was making, ‘or when you make everyone else a scone boy and don’t make one for Daddy. What’s the reason, sweetheart? It can’t just be because Daddy and Cyril both have beards.’

Mo heaved a deep sigh and began to put her family of little men on to the baking tray which Glenys had greased for her. ‘The night you and Daddy were lost in the snowstorm I had a terrible dream,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I dreamed that Daddy had strangled you and he carried you back and threw you down on the kitchen floor. He said you had kidnapped his children and he hated you, only then you weren’t dead and you sat up and your face was all purple and horrible and when you started to scream I looked at Daddy and he was laughing. I could see big black teeth in his black beard, and he said he would eat you up, and then I realised it wasn’t my daddy at all but horrible Cyril. And then I woked up and started to wail, so Jimmy woke too and I got in his bed and he cuddled me until I fell asleep.’