‘Well, it weren’t much in my line, but I talked it over with Abel here, and we decided it wouldn’t do no ’arm, specially as Emma was going to join in and wanted us for company, like, so us went. Well, what should one of them there uzzies do but stick me in one of the rooms downstairs all by myself and plant me in front of a looking-glass. It were purty dark, and there was a deal o’ giggling outside, and then one on ’em comes in and starts reciting some jargon or other, and then, dang it, her slips between me and the glass and ’afore I knows what her’s up to, her gives I a smacking great kiss. I never saw her face, ’cos her back was to the glass and it were too dark, see? And a bloomin’ girt vool I must a-looked! Made me so mad, it did, I give her a cuff on the – well – and a purty good squawk her let out.’

‘I see,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Thank you very much, Mr Wootton. I am glad to have cleared the matter up. Girls, as you say, will do anything nowadays!’

Keeping a carefully grave countenance, she then put her next question, but neither brother could help her.

‘Groanin’ Spinney?’ said Abel. He shook his head. ‘Us have both been up over at the College since last Wednesday fortnight. Haven’t been this way except to sleep till today. Will North could tell ee, mam, better than anybody else.’

Mrs Bradley knew this. She also proposed to speak to Ed Brown, the carter. She tackled Will North first. His information was exactly as she expected, except for one interesting addition.

The only people who had been in the woods during the past week were Deborah and Sally, looking for catkins, Tiny Fullalove (rather rough walking for him, Mrs Bradley thought, but still, he had accompanied Jonathan up there on the day the packet had been found), Obury at his badgers’ sett, Mansell with a telescope and binoculars, and, the cuckoo in the nest, young Robert Emming.

‘What was he doing?’ Mrs Bradley enquired. Will did not know. He was muttering to himself and writing in a little book, and jumped a yard and a half when spoken to.

The carter, Ed Brown, could add nothing to this catalogue, but he also had seen Emming in the wood.

‘Writing po’try to his best girl, I reckon,’ said he, with his sly, shy grin. Neither man had seen any of the named persons drop anything, but Will could substantiate Mrs Bradley’s view that the empty packet had not been in the wood very long before she found it.