Then suddenly, with the swiftness of an arrow, the notion came to her that she was pregnant. The sickness of recent mornings may not have been caused by the rancid bacon, but by a baby in her womb. After all, Peter and the two children had eaten the bacon and they had not been affected by it.

Her mind ran on, still staggered at the thought. Another baby – well why not? She was not all that old. It would be born around harvest time, the time of the greatest and heaviest amount of work for everyone. But then during the autumn, when she might be suckling the child if all went well, that was the time of greatest plenty. Then despondency took over from surprise, despondency at the months of increasing effort that would be needed to do all she had to do for her family, despondency over the prospect of more years of watching, suckling, wiping, hushing, rocking, feeding, dressing, minding – it seemed to drag out before her eyes into an endless future. She groaned privately.

Then again her despondency changed, this time to fear: fear of a long and ghastly labour, perhaps in the dark; fear that, as often happened, a few days after a birth, the mother became feverish and died. If this happened would her baby die too? It probably would unless some other woman in the village was newly delivered of a dead child and could, and would, be wet nurse to her baby. But what would happen then to Alice, poor little Alice, barely three years old, such a promising child. Peter was a kind father she knew, but what really could a father do to nurture a little girl?

Alice snuffled a little and was quiet again. Peterkin stirred his feet about and then was still again. Peter’s sonorous breathing continued its slow rhythm. None of them was concerned with her problem. She was utterly alone with it. She would not mention the possibility of another baby to Peter until she was much more sure. She would keep her counsel, as indeed she usually did over many matters.

Her mind was now wholly on the possibility of another child, and though she was full of foreboding, she knew that the whole village would approve, and that the unquestioning approval of all her acquaintances was the only strength, the only sustenance that she would have to overlay her fears. She briefly imagined the future of her new child, living and grown tall, hearing the rustling of the ash trees, seeing a mist of bluebells in the forest – season following season, year following year. She could imagine no other life.

It never occurred to her that she should drill her mind to accept her destiny. She had never considered that she had any power or any choice over anything that might happen to her.

In this quiet acceptance of her ordinary impotence, she fell asleep.