‘We can manage for a day or two,’ said Deborah. ‘There’s stuff left over, and we’ve got some tins and plenty of vegetables. We shan’t starve. I hope it doesn’t get much worse, though.’ She looked rather anxiously out of the window at the misty and whirling snowflakes as they dropped softly upon ledges and steps and drifted ever more thickly in the lane and against the banks in the garden and park, and upon the side of the house. ‘There’s something horribly eerie about snow in the country. I’d never realized it before. It’s so silent. I’d rather have rain, and hear the sound of it.’

‘I miss the newspapers,’ said Jonathan. ‘The wireless is all right in its way, but—’

‘What did it say about the weather?’

‘Snow on high ground, spreading eastwards and south.’

‘Oh, dear! We may be cut off for days!’

‘Yes. I think I’d better dig us out tomorrow. It will be something to do. I need exercise.’

‘Yes, but not if it’s still snowing, and it sounds from that weather report as though it will be. I wonder how Miss Hughes is getting on? I’m glad she’s not alone up there. It’s such an awful great barrack of a place.’

‘I wish to goodness she’d stayed here. Still, one of her staff was coming back to keep her company for the day or two before the students arrived, wasn’t she? I’m glad of that. All the same, if I can get out tomorrow, I’ll go up there and see how she’s getting along. I wonder—’ He did not finish his sentence. His lips closed and his mouth tightened. That wretched anonymous letter, thought Deborah, had thoroughly upset him. For the hundredth time she wondered who could have sent it. That, and the snow and the lonely situation of the house, were enough to make people brood, and when people brooded trouble started. She put her hand on her husband’s arm.

‘That awful Amy Curtis has sent me an awful handbag,’ she announced. ‘Do you think I could send her that book token for a guinea which Myra Standish sent me and didn’t sign, and buy myself some stockings with the money? I’ve had dozens of book tokens this Christmas and no stockings at all.’ Jonathan laughed, forgot his cold anger against the oafish Mr Fullalove, and pulled Deborah on to his knee.

‘You’re an immoral little tyke,’ he said, holding her. ‘Do what you like, but it won’t be for a day or two yet. I wonder’ – he laughed again – ‘I wonder how our ghost likes the snow?’

‘Don’t!’ said Deborah. ‘Snow scares me, I tell you. I didn’t know it did, but it does. It’s horrid and soft-footed and it acts like a great, thick blanket, stifling everything. I loathe it.’