He and Peterkin were, as she expected, kneeling on the ground half under the eaves with bundles of the smaller withies round them. Peter had announced earlier that as he could be at home that day too, and out of Rollo’s sight, he would teach Peterkin to make a basket. Marion was rather uneasy about it, for she doubted Peter’s patience lasting very long with a boy who had only a hand and a half to do anything with.

‘Remember,’ she had warned him while Peterkin was round at the midden, ‘that he’s no thumb on his left hand, or not one that can act as a thumb.’ Marion well knew the digital dexterity needed in basket-weaving.

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ Peter had said, but she believed he had forgotten. She had never thought he was any good at imagining what things were like for other people.

Father and son were engrossed. Peter was instructing.

‘Yes, now take the long one over – now under, yes, now the next. We’ll make a flattish base first about the size of a small cheese and then start curving upwards – not over that strut, over the next – there, you see how the pattern’s coming? Now, tap it down in place, hold it firm – no – I’d better tap it.’

‘Your hood,’ said Marion.

‘Put it on the log. Now, boy, push another withy in there. Line it up with the others – no, no, hold the others down with your thumb – well, try it with your knuckles – no, that’s too loose, try again, that would come undone with the slightest weight, press harder – let me come … ’ and so it went on.

Marion could see that Peterkin was subdued, for though he was trying he knew that he had not the fingers to imitate what his father was doing. A wobbly lopsided basket was emerging.

Marion left them to it and went in. She scooped up some flour from the chest on to the flat top of the log seat, skimmed off some fat from the iron pot in which yesterday’s cockerel had been cooked, and adding a little sour milk made a stiff dough. The old earthenware jar – it was cracked and had almost a third of its walls missing – had by this time got very hot in the embers. She put her lump of dough down on the flat ashy hearthstone and placed the hot jar upside down over it with the broken side towards the flames. This hot jar became a little oven and cooked the dough in a fairly even heat. She wiped her hands down her dress, an unconscious action indicating a job done. Alice stumped in and out of the cottage, talking to herself. Marion thought that really Alice was a good little girl.

The basket-making seemed to be going more smoothly because Marion heard Peter and Peterkin talking as they worked.

‘Father, are owls the Devil’s birds?’