The first spinning of wool, a single strand, or one ply, must be wound tightly and firmly on a bobbin or spool as it is made. If it is not held in this tension, it twists back on itself in a spiral fashion making itself into bits of two ply. This is what had happened to the wool as Alice had cheerfully unwound it from the spool. Then it had got round one of her feet, then she had trotted down the garden, unwinding yet more as she went, then the twisting threads had caught in the pea sticks, then Alice, trotting to and fro, had muddled up more and more of it round her legs, round thistles, round more pea sticks until she had found herself bound to some prickly sticks and had roared to her mother for help.

Marion sat on the log with the almost empty spool in her hands, and the tangled mess going from her feet down the garden to where Alice was still standing roaring. In her fury and despair Marion strode down to her and picked her up roughly, shouting abuse at her and pulling at the wasted wool round her legs. Alice roared loudly in fear and bewilderment. She had no idea what her crime was, she only knew her mother was furiously angry. Having extricated Alice’s struggling legs, Marion tried to salvage what bits of wool she could. There were several short lengths which, having twisted themselves together, would lie inert and be strong, and these could be used for tying things up, for lacing clothes together, or tying bits of fabric on to one’s legs in winter. A lifetime of training to waste nothing made her start collecting what short lengths of this she could, pulling them from pea sticks, gathering them up from grassy tufts and unwinding what she could from the thistle stalks. Engrossing herself in this fiddly work somewhat calmed her anger. She left Alice to wail and moan by herself.

Suddenly, from the village came a ringing tang-tang-tang-tang-tang. The old cooking pot hanging by the church door was being banged with the signal that induced a sense of urgency into everyone who heard it. It meant something in the village was dangerously on fire, and Marion must present herself, with a bucket, at the scene of the fire as soon as possible. All thoughts of tangled wool pushed aside, she ran round the cottage and up the hill, from where she could see, above the Big Oak on the Green, a pillar of ascending smoke.

One of the stream cottages, she thought. Not the church, not the Hall, which she could see to the left of the oak was safe, and, though the smoke was in the direction of the Millers’, not the Mill, her precious birthplace. Molly appeared at her garden gate, bucket in one hand, the other hand trying to stuff her loose hair under her cap. She looked elated.

‘Bring your little girl to my mother,’ she said, and started off running down to the Common.