Today was peaceful and Marion felt content. With the top and bottom halves of the door open, the cottage was light inside. Marion had busied herself with sorting and tidying, stacking up her spools of spun wool, getting in logs, sweeping the ground round the fire clear of bits of straw, grinding some dried beans in the stone quern, always with half an eye on Alice, who sat quietly on the floor sweeping up the dust into little ridges with her fat palms. The sun shone, but the wind, flickering over the new shiny grass, had a chilly edge. Marion went out, pulling up her clothes, and squatted at the edge of the dunghill. She concentrated on excreting for a while, then her attention went to a bluebottle, newly awakened by the warm sun, which had landed on a dead leaf near her foot. She looked at its brilliant iridescent blue body, watched it stroking its front legs together. Then it flew to something vividly green nearby. It was the remains of a mallard drake’s head, probably last year’s, that had been thrown to Tibtab and which the cat had eventually abandoned. Old though it was, the brilliant green feathers still blazed with that strange unearthly colour in the sunlight. Marion watched the bright blue jewel walking on the bright green feathers – a tiny area of each – but so strange, so unlike any colour in nature. If questioned, Marion would have said that both drakes’ heads and bluebottles were part of nature, yet the very strangeness of these colours made her wonder if they were not supernatural, some lost angel’s jewels or devil’s snares. Just for the moment she wondered at the sudden flood of delight that these rare and glistening colours illuminated in her mind. It was not a thought that she would ever have tried to express. Then, realizing she had finished, she pulled some new-sprouted dock leaves growing by and wiped her bottom, for she had been brought up to be cleanly.

Peter was down at the bottom of the garden digging, and Peterkin was toing and froing with small wheelbarrow-loads of midden muck for his father to dig into the earth. Peterkin was, like all village children, so used to the sight of people defecating that he paid no attention to Marion. He could not hold a wheelbarrow very straight and his lollopy walk did not allow him to wheel it very straight, but boys must help their fathers and Peter wanted to get that patch dug while the weather was dry.

The goat had had her kid recently, a nice little nanny, at present sucking at her mother’s teats. Marion filled up the goat shed water butt and pulled some more hay down to the goat’s mouth level. She stroked the old nanny but did not touch her baby. Marion had already planned that she would allow the kid all her mother’s milk for a few weeks, then when grass was more plentiful, wean her, so that come summer the kid would be a perfect gift to the Hall. A healthy nanny kid would be a valuable present and would free Marion from other obligations to the Hall for some time. As the kid was weaned so Marion would steadily milk the goat and there should be plenty of milk and cheese for many months. The grass before the cottage already looked plentiful – perhaps she would get the goat out of doors next day if Peter could help tether her. It was all very satisfactory.