‘But that was dividing it into three,’ said Peter. ‘You were collecting for two families, us and the Nick’s, not for yourselves.’

Peterkin stopped smiling and looked blank.

‘But, Father, you said that people must divide everything out fairly and we did. We took proper turns each of us to pull out the best bits till there were only some twiggy bits left and we didn’t bother about them.’

‘What I said was about dividing things between people. You ought to have divided it between fires, one in this cottage, ours, and one in Nick and Martha’s. Don’t you understand?’

Peterkin was much downcast; his father’s view had not occurred to him.

Peter went on, hammering his point: ‘What it means is that Nick’s family have twice as much wood as our family. It should have been evenly divided. When you come back tomorrow, you see you divide it evenly.’

Peterkin agreed nervously, but he already knew he would not be able to explain to Steve and Kit this new division of their spoils, specially as it would be disadvantageous to them. Marion thought what a strict steward Peter would have been had he been born different, just as strict as Rollo was, and remembering all the details just as Rollo did.

‘Well, it can’t be helped now,’ she said. ‘Pull it round to the side and untie the rope. You’ll all have to go out for more tomorrow while the dry weather lasts.’ But she realized that explaining the new division of their spoils to the other boys was going to be difficult and she would not know what to say when Peterkin questioned her – all that, of course, after Peter was out of the house.

Oh dear, she thought. There’s a trouble which we need not have had. Well, it is tomorrow’s trouble, not today’s.

She was very tired. But Peter had not finished his day.

‘I must be up at Rockwell at dawn tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Put me up some food in my bag. That stupid fire interfered with our proper work. There’s another wall and a half to do still.’ So before Marion could drop down on the bed she had to find enough bread and some cheese to fill Peter’s leather bag.

It’ll be Michaelmas soon, she thought, to comfort herself, and a great roast deer in the Hall, and everyone having to eat as much hot meat as they can. Ah, that’ll be a change.

OCTOBER

The flying clouds urged on in swiftest pace

Like living things as if they runned a race

The winds that oer each coming tempest broods

Waking like spirits in their startling moods

Fluttering the sear leaves on the blasting lea

That litters under every fading tree

And pausing oft as falls the pattering rain

Then gathering strength and twirling them again

It had rained. It had rained day and night for three days, steady, windless rain, now heavier, now lighter, falling from an evenly dark grey sky. Their clothes were wet. Their boots, stuck upside down on the boot-rack, remained sodden. The blanket on the bed was heavy and stiff with moisture. The two rather bent rafters in the roof above the door had bent even more with the weight of the sodden thatch over them, sodden because in the depression in the roof the rain did not run off at that point. In the summer Peter had put on more thatch to level off this depression, but it had not really worked and there was now the additional weight of extra thatch, as wet as the old. There was a puddle on the floor just inside the door and all day and night Marion had listened to the regular pit pat pitty pit – pit pat patty pit as the drops fell into the puddle.