So Marion was left alone and the grief and anxiety came flooding back. She sat on the log seat under the cottage eaves looking down the garden, leant her head against the wattle wall of the cottage and wept.

It was some time later that Alice’s urgent, ‘Out, Mam, out,’ roused Marion, and as she attended to Alice, she resolved to go to see her brother, Simon, and his family. The strength, industry, contentment that seemed always to be the lot of the Millers, would restore her spirits. She had a real excuse to go. From last year’s harvest she still had one complete sack of wheat unground, and though she knew Simon could do no grinding while the water level was so low, if she took him this sack it could be ground as soon as rain permitted the Mill to work.

Her last corn sack was on a shelf above the goat’s stall. She could only just reach it. It was Peter’s job to inspect the corn stocks every so often to ensure that mice or rats had not been eating them. It was through mice-bitten holes in sacks that so much corn could be lost. That and a possible leaking roof, allowing sacks to get damp and the corn to moulder or sprout, were their constant anxieties.

It was very heavy and she could only just get it down, standing on the goat’s up-turned manger, but she managed it. It’s wonderful what one can do, she thought, when one has time and when there is no one around to say you are silly. She heaved the sack into the wheelbarrow, and found a late marguerite daisy and some camomile daisies and twisted them round the sack’s neck. ‘Alice,’ she called, ‘we’re going to the Mill to see Auntie Betsy. You ride in the wheelbarrow. Pee first.’

‘Don’t want pee.’

‘You must.’ Marion was not going to risk Alice peeing on the corn sack on the way. Marion picked her up, pulling up her dress and held her with her legs apart.

‘Don’t want pee,’ Alice repeated.

‘Come on now,’ said Marion giving her a little shake. Alice peed. ‘There now, into the wheelbarrow. Sit on the sack, yes, legs each side, now don’t wobble about.’

The wheelbarrow was heavy even when empty, and with Alice and the corn in it, it was almost as much as Marion could manage. The solid wheel, moving stiffly on its short iron axle, and the rough paths did not help, but down the slope they went, through the gate and out on to the Common, with Alice waving her arms about with pleasure.

It was a hot muggy day, the lavender-grey clouds were unmoving. There was a lassitude about the village, not uncommon at this time of year. Round the cottage the sparrows had cheaped and fluttered since dawn, but here in the middle of the Common there was little sound of life. The birds in the woods were quiet except for the moanings of pigeons, and the cows, now gathered under a big oak tree, made no sound except from the constant swishing of their tails.