The top half of the door was open and Peter opened the lower half as well and a little more wintry dusk filtered in, and they all searched again in vain.

‘Nip round to Martin and ask if I left it there,’ he said to Peterkin, and Marion, standing outside under the eaves, watched Peterkin loping round under the ash tree with his lop-sided hopping gait.

More snow had melted during the day, and now only a few crusty remains were piled up against the fence and under the apple tree. The late afternoon dusk – a pale yellow glimmer from behind grey clouds – shone on the bare trunks of the beeches up in the forest beyond the garden, and lit spots of yellow lichen on them. The forest floor was a thick red-brown of sodden leaves with patches of blue-green ivy trailing across it, and the low undergrowth above the ditch was smeared with the dark brown lumps of old man’s beard, the grey fluff long since blown away. In the declivities of the ditch patches of speckled snow still remained. The air was cold and Marion shivered as it chilled her damp clothes, but she paused there, shifting from one aching foot to the other, to watch the pale fading light, so clear over this familiar, this astonishingly dear, familiar scene.

Peterkin came lolloping round the corner of the cottage, holding up Peter’s measuring stick.

‘Lisa’d found it on the new shelf, when she was arranging the pots and things,’ he said in triumph.

They went in together and closed the lower half of the door and heard Peter’s ‘Ah-h – my stick,’ as he stuck it back over his ear. Marion picked up her spindle again. She wondered if she had spun as much as one yard of wool all that day. Peter sank down on the log beside her.

‘Tired?’ she asked.

He grunted, assenting.

‘You don’t get any rest, not like the men working in the fields. They at least have the seasons.’

‘I know. They have days with nothing to do but watch the corn grow – or not grow.’ A slow smile twisted in his beard.

‘You were working all last Sunday too,’ she said, concerned.

It was somehow easier to remember what he did than to remember her own monotonous formless days.

‘Well, that’s how life goes. I try to put things off. Rollo’s often nagging me for this or that, and I have to do, or pretend to do, what he says – seems to think as soon as he’s told me to do a job it’s done. And other people need things – like Simon and his new applewood spathes – yes, I’m sorry I forgot to ask about honey – and like the Plowrights’ doorpost. Bet they’ve not bothered to weave in those withies I took.’ He sighed and rubbed his beard. She had forgotten he had been at the Plowrights’ last Sunday. He went on, ‘One could work day and night doing things for the Plowrights and I don’t think it’d make any difference to their lives. Sluts – the lot. All Small Sarah ever does is to get herself with child every year – and then neglects it when it’s born.’