Now that the closet door was thrown back it revealed a deep, whitewashed den going back to the eaves of the cottage. It was crammed with the hoarding of years, with old clothes and shoes, legless chairs, empty picture frames, handle less cups and spotless teapots. The best things had gone downstairs already; the lace-pillow on a stand, the huge green gig umbrella with whale-bone ribs, and the nest of copper preserving pans that Laura’s mother said afterwards were worth a mint of money. From the window, Mr. Herring could be seen arranging them in the spring cart, his thin legs straddling in drab gaiters. There would not be room in the cart for everything, and the hire of it for the day was too costly to make another journey possible. The time had come for Mrs. Herring to decide what was best worth taking.

“I wonder what I’d better do,” she kept saying to the children’s mother, but she got no helpful suggestions from one who detested what she called “a lot of old clutter laid up in dark corners”.

“She’s an old hoarder: A regular old hoarder!” she whispered to Laura when Mrs. Herring had gone downstairs to consult her husband. “And don’t let me see you mess with that old rubbish she’s given you. Put it down, and when she’s gone it can be cleaned or burnt.” They put down their presents reluctantly. Edmund had been pleased with his broken corkscrew and coil of short lengths of string, and Laura had admired her flannel-leaved needlebook with “Be Diligent” worked in cross-stitch on its canvas cover. The needles inside were all rusty, but that did not matter; it was as a work of art she valued it. But before they had time to protest, Mrs. Herring’s head appeared round the banisters, her bonnet more than ever askew by that time and her face smutted by cobwebs. “Would these be any good to you, my dear?” she asked, handing down a coil of light steel hoops from a nail in the wall of the closet.

“It’s very kind of you, I’m sure,” was the guarded response, “but, somehow, I don’t see myself wearing a crinoline again.”

“No. Right out of fashion,” Mrs. Herring admitted. “Pity, too, for it was a handy fashion for young married women. I’ve known some, wearing a good-sized crinoline, go right up to the day of their confinement without so much as their next-door neighbour suspecting. Now look at the brazen trollops! And here’s a lovely picture of the Prince Consort, and that’s somebody you’ve never heard of, I’ll lay,” turning to the children.