She had seen a row of small tubs on this shelf and two tall earthenware jars, one of which had belonged to her mother at the mill once, and on the bed the straw was covered with one of those very large brown and white striped blankets which were often made at Rockwell. The high beams of the barn there enabled these extra large blankets to be woven.

It’s not as it was when Dick was alive. It’s the same place but it doesn’t look the same, Marion’s thoughts went on. It will never be the same again. Dick is dead. Things can change so much in a few weeks – how much more will they change as time goes on and on … and on …? Marion’s ideas hovered around Eternity and then backed away in fear. It now seems almost as if he were never here, she thought, that all the past years were a dream, a story, yet his presence is still here. He might come round the corner, under the ash tree, as he so often did, any moment, his deep voice enquiring for some post or tool of Peter’s to mend a hurdle.

‘He will never come again,’ said Marion aloud to herself, ‘never, never, and Hilda’ll stay at the Hall and I will never see them again of an evening, walking down their garden with their sunburnt arms round each other’s waists. What is a person that one can be rubbed away so quickly?’ Marion’s unseeing eyes were surveying the spears of pink willowherb by the fence, but her mind repeated, ‘Never, never,’ in a kind of incredulous despair.

Unnoticed by her, the weather was changing. The clouds had lifted and thinned and though no sun was apparent, a dazzling light pervaded the garden. It hurt her eyes and she was aware of a sharp headache. Endurance being by now second nature to her, she prepared to endure it, when she realized that she had eaten nothing all that day. She went in and found some rather hard bread, several days old, and almost the last bit of mature cheese. She crumbled some of each on to a scooped board, poured a bit of milk on it for Alice.

Alice, who had been sitting on the floor by the open door, pulled herself up by holding the doorpost and let out a piercing wail. She held up her small open palms to Marion. There were several little splinters of wood in them. The doorpost, low down, was rough from Tibtab scratching his claws there. Marion recalled, with sharp pain, the sight of Dick pulling the rake’s splinter from his hand, and in a surge of fear she bent down and took Alice on her knee and very carefully with her long rough fingernails pulled out every bit of wood from Alice’s palms.

‘There now, all better. Don’t touch the doorpost again, that’s Tibtab’s scratching post.’

‘Is Tibtab naughty?’ Alice asked, who had been watching the treatment of her hands with interest.