‘Who sent them?’

‘Well, Ay did. They was very dirty. Ay says to mayself, “May! they are dirty, Ay says.” So Ay slipped them into the basket just as it was leavin’ with the man.’

‘I should think you might have washed them out at home, or boiled them. It wouldn’t have taken you five minutes.’

‘Ay was not engaged to do washin’,’ said Miss Tessitt, going a bright brick-red.

‘You can hardly call that “washing”, surely – a couple of kitchen cloths.’

‘It all means puttin’ the ’ands in water,’ said Miss Tessitt with dignity, ‘May ’ands easily get chapped. Ay ’ave a very sensitive skin, and the Enbury water is very ’ard. When Ay was with Mrs Wertheimer of West End Lane, the kitchen cloths was all sent to the laundry every week. Ten of them. Regular. Ay ’ardly ever ’ad may ’ands in water while Ay was there, except to wash before a meal. But then Mrs Wertheimer ’ad a regular establishment, as you might say. Two in family and faive kep’.’

‘Then I think you’d better go back there,’ said Sophia, losing her temper.

‘Pardon?’

‘Make some other arrangement, I mean. I think I’d better get someone who isn’t afraid of washing a couple of teacloths.’

‘Just as you wish, of course,’ said Miss Tessitt, going an even brighter shade of red. ‘Ay take it you would wish may to come in next week?’

‘I don’t think you need bother, thanks. I’ll manage.’

‘Then Ay will wish you good evening,’ said Miss Tessitt, with increasing dignity. ‘There was nothin said, Ay think, about givin’ a month’s notice on either side?’

‘Nothing, so far as I remember.’

‘Then Ay will wish you good evenin’,’ said Miss Tessitt again, breathing very fast by now and very red in the face indeed. Sophia loftily inclined her own head, and Miss Tessitt made a slow and dignified exit, punctuated by heavy breathing and semi-bows.

There would be no question of the dogs in the Vale missing the three. Wodge, in his dim mind, might possibly miss Sophia a little, but Jimmy Barrell and Dan and Taffy would not miss the children at all; Celia was coming to the cottage, and all the dogs, especially Taffy, liked Celia better than they did Sophia, and so long as the cottage door stood open sometimes, and so long as they could bundle in and be patted and admired, it would be all right. Like heartless, witless nature in Professor Housman’s poem, they would neither care nor know.

So the end of September drew near, and the autumn deepened with misty moonlight and falling leaves; it came to the day before they were to leave the cottage.

Sophia came home by bus that evening and got out at the stop by the Dominican Priory because she had to buy some bread for breakfast, and she was late, and all the shops by the tram terminus would be shut except this little dairy which she knew, hidden in a dimly lit side street.