‘I’m sorry, it’s just that I’m not feeling myself at the moment. The children have been a worry, and although I know we owe everything to your father, I don’t know if it will work with him living here. Anyway,’ Harriet pushed him back, ‘take your hands off me. We’ll have none of this, Danny Atkinson – you are showing me up. Look at Henry from Sowermire wondering what’s up; you’d swear he’d never seen a husband give his wife a hug before.’ Harriet pushed him away and wiped back the tear that had trickled down her cheek.

‘He probably hasn’t, and he definitely won’t have hugged his wife for a while. I doubt his arms would reach around her, she’s such a size.’ Danny tried to brighten Harriet’s mood.

‘Shush – he’ll hear you. Patsy might be big, but she’s a good woman; she’ll feed you well, when you go there clipping. Which is more than can be said of me, if I don’t stir my shanks and get that rhubarb pie in the oven and find a cheese from out of the pantry.’ She lifted up her skirts and made for the kitchen doorway. But Danny’s shout stopped her in her tracks.

‘You’ve one less worry – here comes our Ben with my father. They are just coming round the end of the wood.’ Danny leaned against the garden wall and wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his cap, as his father opened the farmyard gate with Ben by his side. ‘Where do you think you’ve been trailing? Did you not think to tell your mother where you were off to?’ he asked Ben, who was busy chatting to his grandfather.

‘I found him on the green lane going over to Wharfe; he was only making his way to play with the Knowles lad. It’s a good day for trailing and adventures, isn’t it, Ben?’ Archie rubbed his small grandson’s head of curly brown hair, before whispering that he had to say sorry to his mother for upsetting her.

‘Sorry, Mother. I just hadn’t seen John for so long, and I didn’t think you’d miss me.’ Ben bowed his head, knowing he was in a spot of bother as Harriet pulled him into the house by his shoulder.

‘Let him stop out with us, lass, we’ll keep an eye on him. He can help pick up the loose bits of wool and put them in a sack; it’ll keep him out of mischief.’ Archie looked at his son, wondering if he had done right.