As her eyes wandered round her gloomy cottage, she recalled the shocking interior of Cecily’s burnt home. With the thatch burnt or pulled off, the interior was displayed in an unusual light and with unfamiliar clarity, the half-burnt straw on the bed, the two charred bacon joints on the ground – the thongs that had tied them to the beam above had burnt through – and by them, bits of an earthenware basin, which might have been full of milk, broken by the falling bacon. Spilt from somewhere, spreading over the edge of the bed, was a great pool of white cheese, melted by the heat, burnt all along one side by the flames, spattered with ash and burnt straw – a patch of stinking wastage. But most of all Marion remembered the smell, the awful terrifying smell of burnt bacon, burnt cheese, burnt thatch and burnt, wet wool.

Marion felt a sudden flood of gratitude to the chance that had preserved her cottage while destroying another’s. She managed to express this thankfulness by saying to Peter, as she pressed her hand on the cradle’s hood and stood up, ‘Poor Cecily. It must be terrible for her, all that work for nothing,’ and then she busied herself with getting them some supper. As she did so she saw the near-empty spool and she remembered Alice and her tangled wool and repeated to herself, ‘All that work for nothing.’

They had finished eating when a sound of dragging preceded the appearance of Peterkin round the corner of the cottage. The rope that he had left with now bound a large bundle of dead branches, some almost small trees which he had dragged along.

‘Look at all that,’ he said proudly, pulling up the bundle in front of his parents. ‘We got lots. We found an oak that had lots of dead branches, some on the ground broken off and some at the top we couldn’t get, but lots in the middle, and I put a stone into my bread bag – that was after we’d eaten our food – and tied it with one end of the rope and I threw it over the dead branch and when it fell down the other side we all pulled on the ends, swung on them, and the branch cracked off and Kit fell down on his back … ’ Much laughter here interrupted the triumphant tale. ‘Then we found another tree with dead on it and did the same – and a yew tree, but we couldn’t break off any of those branches, not with all three of us pulling. Can I have something to eat?’

‘Did you divide the wood up properly?’ Peter asked, handing him some bread.

‘Yes, when we got down to the Common we spread it all out and we each took it in turns to pull out the best bits for ourselves like you told me before.’ Peterkin was munching away smiling at his achievement and his virtue.