I held my peace. I tried to share her excitement, but as we stood in that shadowy barn and I looked up at the yawning roof and the slim swing and the slender rope I could feel my mouth fill with bile and my head grow dizzy.

I put my hands over my ears. There was a rushing noise, I could not bear to hear it. Dandy took hold of my wrists. She was shaking them. From a long way away I could hear her saying: ‘Merry, are you all right? Are you all right, Merry?’

I shook my head, pulling away from her grip, fighting in a panic for my breath, waiting for the vomit to curdle up into my mouth. Then the next thing I knew was a sharp slapping on my cheek. I opened my eyes and put up my hand to ward off a blow. It was Jack. I was held in his arms, Dandy hovering beside him.

‘You with us now?’ he asked tersely.

I shrugged off his hold and sat up. My head still swam.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m all right.’

‘Was it just looking at the swing?’ he asked glancing upward, incredulous that anyone could faint for fear at such a petty object.

I hesitated. ‘Yes,’ I said uncertainly. ‘I suppose it was.’ Jack pulled me to my feet before I could think more clearly. ‘Well, don’t look at it then,’ he said unsympathetically, ‘and don’t go setting Dandy off neither. Da is set on having her up there, and you promised you’d try it.’

I nodded. Dandy’s face was bright, untroubled.

‘She’s set on going,’ I said. My voice was croaky, I coughed and spat some foul-tasting spittle. ‘An’ I’ll keep my word and try it.’

‘You won’t be up there for a while,’ Jack said. ‘Look there, that’s the practice one.’

He gestured over to the other side of the barn near the door where a swing hung so low that I could have jumped up to reach it. Someone hanging would be only ten inches from the floor, just enough to dangle.

‘On that!’ I exclaimed. Jack and Dandy laughed at my face. ‘I could face that!’ I said. Relief made me giggly and I joined in their laughing. ‘Even I could swing on that,’ I said.

‘Well, good,’ said Jack agreeably. ‘It would please my da very much if you would swing on the practice swing. You need never go high unless you want to, Merry. But he’s paying a big fee for the man from Bristol to come and teach us. He’d like to see him in full work for the two months.’

‘I’d wager on that,’ Dandy said nastily. ‘But he agreed that Merry needn’t learn if she was afeared. She’s doing enough for the two of you falling off horses all day, as it is.’