Betsy was chattering away as she sliced bread and spread it with butter from a little tub, and bits of meat from a trencher by her.

‘We’ve a real treat for you, Marion, for all we didn’t know you were coming – cold sucking pig. Not much of it, we roasted it yesterday, made a fire in the yard – ’

‘Was lovely,’ Kate broke in.

‘It was only a little one. It drowned. Roger found it by a deep bit of the stream between the alders and went to get it out, but it escaped and fell into a still deeper bit and by the time he got to it, it was dead – so now we’ve only five piglets left. There’s not much to eat on a piglet, but it’s juicy meat, so here are little scraps on your bread.’

Only five, Marion thought, taking her slice. I’ve not got one.

‘Could you make children’s shoes from the skin?’ Ellen asked.

‘Not tough enough. I made cuts in the skin as it was roasting and the fat ran out on to the bits of bread on the stones. That was what you ate last night.’

Ellen had poured water from her bucket into an earthenware pitcher, which being porous was sweating on the outside and cooling the water inside. She passed the pitcher round and they drank in turn, even Alice. The rich food eaten in cool leisure in these so familiar surroundings, in the easy company of her brother’s family – this was the blessing on her grieving heart that Marion had come looking for.

‘How’s your cherry crop doing?’ she asked, nodding towards the large cherry tree at the corner of the house yard, after a long silence while they all concentrated on such rare succulent food.

‘Not ripe yet, but there seem to be a lot of them, that is if we can keep the birds off,’ said Betsy. ‘Simon, have you seen Gib’s scarer? Get it, Gib. The sooner you can put it up the better. When Roger’s home tonight you and he’d better get the long ladder and tie it up in the tree.’

Gib went round to the yard and returned with a wide board with a bit of rope trailing behind.

‘See, Father,’ he said, ‘Roger and me’ll tie it up on the main branch, there, above the top fork, with this rope hanging down. Whenever you pull the rope, the arms go up and then fall with a bang.’ He demonstrated. ‘I drew Milly’s face at the top of the board. I reckoned that’d frighten the birds as much as the banging!’ The board which was roughly whitened with lime had at the top a caricature in broad charcoal lines of Milly’s face, the eyes two round blobs, too close together, two long vertical lines for her nose, a thin horizontal line dipping at each end for her surly mouth, a broad U-shaped line imitating her heavy jaw and black marks round the top imitating her dark wispy hair and low forehead. The likeness was marked. The family roared with laughter and amazement. Marion felt surprise and intense unease. So obvious a portrayal of Milly was, she felt, an invitation to some evil emanation of Milly’s spirit to revenge itself on Gib and all the family.