‘It’s honeysuckle,’ she said to Marion, ‘because you’re going to make honey-bread and buttercups because we are going to have butter,’ and she ran off back to the Hall before her father could rebuke her for her forgetfulness.

Marion pulled a thread out from the bottom of her skirt, wound it round the flowers’ stalks and tied the ends round a pinch of her cap. It flopped and the buttercups were already wilting, but she would not disappoint Magda.

She started making the scones, scooping up flour from the sack with a big wooden scoop, made by Peter, and mixing it with sour milk in a big basin, patting out the dough on the floury table and then cutting it into fat rounds with the holly-wood cutter that she had brought in her pocket. It had been made specially for her by Peter years ago, and his skill and years of usage had polished it very smooth.

The villagers were slowly arriving from across the Green, standing around the fencing hurdles that Peter had put up in recent days, talking and laughing, giving sudden shouts to their dogs and their children and all feeling the air of festivity and the sweet summer morning. Peter was pushing the crowd away from the hurdles and shouting, ‘Leave it alone,’ to the boys who were investigating how firmly they had been attached to the ground.

Marion went on with the scones. She cut them out and arranged them on a large iron grid beside her. Hilda appeared with her two little girls, Meg and Mary. Both children had small caps on and their carroty curls swelled out under them, decorated with daisy chains. Peterkin was approaching too, with Alice in his arms. Magda had hung a daisy and buttercup chain round Alice’s neck.

‘What you doing?’ Meg asked.

‘Making scones for the feast,’ said Marion, looking down.

‘Wanta see,’ squeaked Mary, whose head was below the table top. Meg picked her up round the stomach and gave her a brief glimpse of scone-making. Hilda shooed them both aside and, taking the other bowl, started scone-making herself. Peterkin slid Alice down at Marion’s feet, then skipped off in his lop-sided fashion to join the other boys round the hurdles. Ed-me-boy came to see if the grid was full, and carried it away with a message to enquire about honey, almost tripping over Magda’s dog Trover, who was nosing about round Joan’s table for scraps.

Marion and Hilda went on with their scone-making. A lovely smell of hot bread spread to the crowd on the Green. Joan’s first batch of small loaves was cooling along the edge of the table and she was kneading the third batch with muscular fingers. Now and then a breath from the waving grass on the Common, mixed with the smell of fresh leaves on the oak, cooled Joan’s red face and refreshed Marion. A pigeon high in the oak complained, the dogs snapped occasionally, a cuckoo called, sometimes stammering its usual call, the sparrows round the yard cheeped incessantly and over all these sounds the slow voices and laughter of the villagers came in waves as they stood around the hurdles in unusual idleness and expectation.