‘Ma-a-a-m,’ said Alice, suddenly bored. Marion twisted her head, pushed aside some loosestrife and looked up at her. ‘Ma-a-a-m,’ said Alice again, and stuck out an arm.

The gesture and perhaps some sibling likeness in shape of head reminded Marion poignantly of Nolly, and her breath stopped for a moment. She wondered why Nolly, now several years dead, had this quality of darlingness about him that none of her other children had. She remembered in sharp detail his round brown head, his round brown eyes, his wide smile of welcome. Was it his responsiveness to her that distinguished him among her babies? Perhaps. Peterkin had mostly seemed self-contained, Alice was lively, Margery had always been too wispily alive to make any impression. Marion did not know what quality Nolly had had, but she realized that no other child ever had or ever would so grip her heart, nor leave so large a scar when he or she died. ‘Ah, my poor Nolly,’ she said aloud, as if saying his name would make him real again.

Marion rose, picked a bit of loosestrife and gave it to Alice, scooped her up, carried her over the bridge and dumped her down in the short clover the other side.

‘Sit still, Alice,’ she said, ‘while I get the wheelbarrow.’ She found that she had to carry the corn sack across too as she could not pull the wheelbarrow up the steps without risking tipping its contents into the stream. These three trips up and down the harsh log steps were hard on her softened feet. On the far side, as she was reassembling Alice and the corn sack, Marion saw that in the open shed against the end wall of the Hall, Hilda stood alone kneading dough on the counter. Marion would have preferred to avoid her, but telling herself that that would be too unkind, she left the wheelbarrow half under the oak and went to ask Hilda how she was.

‘I’m here,’ said Hilda. ‘That is, I suppose I’m here, living in the Hall, with the children, an ordinary servant, making bread. I just feel I’m in a deep dream.’

‘I understand,’ said Marion, using the usual words of consolation. ‘You’ll come through that and feel more yourself. It’s the shock, you know.’

‘I’ll never feel better, I don’t want to,’ said Hilda, very calmly as though she spoke of someone else, and Marion noticed how very thin her fingers were that clutched the dough.

‘Oh yes, you will,’ said Marion, following the conventional hearty advice, though she had little confidence in it as she spoke. ‘You must look to the future, and your children. You’ll get used to being by yourself after a bit,’ though as she said it she wondered if ‘by yourself’ really described living in the Hall.

‘I’ll never get used to being parted from Dick,’ said Hilda in the same tone, almost speaking to the dough.

Marion hesitated. Hilda’s voice held full measure of hopelessness.

‘You were parted from him often before,’ Marion went on. ‘He was up in the hills for days – even weeks – at a time.’