Above the goat’s byre a broad shelf ran along the wall at Marion’s shoulder height. Peter had put it up many years ago. It was divided into many small boxes, in which on a little straw the hens came to lay their eggs and where all the poultry lived, fox-free at night. There was a little door in the outside wall at the end of the shelf, and every morning Marion prised it open, its leather hinges often stiff with frost, and propped up the ‘hen post’ outside. This was a stout pole with small branches off each side, and when the top was at the open door and the base on the ground the hens could hop and flutter up and down to their nests and shelter without troubling anyone. Hens with little chickens were kept in coops on the floor below, which was not very safe as sometimes the little chickens strayed too far and got trodden under by the goat. Just now Marion had two hens in coops with large broods of chickens and there was much cooing and cheeping. Most of the other hens had come down the post and were pecking about and squawking in the garden. Marion heard two or three times the triumphant chk chk chk chk chk chk cha – a – a – ark announcing egg-laying so she slid her hand into the nests along the shelf and collected six warm eggs. Two hens, still anticipating laying, sat on their straw and glared at her with round golden eyes.

Marion calculated. She knew she was due that week to take a dozen fresh eggs to the Hall, and she knew that no promise of a nanny kid in June was going to free her completely of her obligations over eggs now. This was the moment of the year she knew, and every one else knew, that hens laid most eggs. But she was loathe to give up these new warm eggs. She had in the basket in the cottage eight eggs collected yesterday. She would take these to the Hall, and perhaps one more, not yet laid, but she and her family would eat these fresh ones now.

She carried them to the cottage. Using her forefinger, she scraped a little bacon fat from a tub into her shallow earthenware bowl, broke six eggs into it and stood it on the flat stone by the fire’s edge. She then prised open some flat, rather hard, rolls, smeared some bacon fat into each and put them down by the bowl to warm through. She glanced at Alice who was sitting in the sunlight on the cottage floor, still patting dust into little heaps and talking some nonsense to herself. She was sufficiently far from the fire for Marion not to worry.