Her face clouded with pain, but cleared again.

“If you see them going past say goodbye to them for me,” she said. “ I’ll get up soon and have breakfast ready for you, when you come back.”

She lay back in bed until she heard the front door bang and she knew he was outside.

In the post office Kenneth Dance was angry. If he did not have the mail ready when the lorry stopped outside, Alec Stennet was banging on his door and yelling at him. He had been waiting now for half an hour and there was no sign of the lorry. It would be just like the Stennets to cancel the extra sailing without telling him.

There was a tap at the door. Will stood outside. Dance glared at him.

“Yes?” he said aggressively.

“The lorry’s broken down. Alec has gone to fetch his car and he’ll collect the mail in that.”

“Will he then? Well he can load the sacks himself. I’m back to my bed.”

Kenneth Dance shut the door on the boy and went upstairs. He noticed that Elspeth’s bedroom door was open, but thought nothing of it. He went into the bedroom, where his wife was still asleep, but he did not undress.

Robert heard the lorry starting, from the two-roomed house where he had lived alone since his mother had died twenty years before. He had never lived anywhere else, had never been on the mainland. Then he heard the lorry stall and listened to the choking splutter as Alec tried to start it again. He was already half dressed, and he pulled on warm outdoor clothes and his heavy black boots. He had to bend his back uncomfortably to lace the boot on his bad leg, but it never occurred to him to wonder what might happen to him when he could no longer bend like that. He wanted to know what had happened to the lorry, and what the Stennet family might do about it. He called to his dog and went outside. He could hear the men talking in the road and the footsteps as they walked away. He was disappointed. Nothing exciting had happened after all. There was nothing to see.

He wondered if he should go to the harbour to watch the Ruth Isabella out, but decided that he would not go. It would be different if a fishing boat had put in there for shelter. Then there was talk of having the Hill Dipping Gather and the Lamb Share out soon, and he wanted to get some idea of how many of the lambs would come to him. It was just starting to get light.