Then she heard a sound from the cart track which led up to her hut, and understood why Musty had been acting out. It was singing she heard. It was the girl she heard. The girl was early.

Grimacing horribly—she loathed being caught by surprise, and the little miss down there would pay for doing it—she bent and put the glass back in its box. The inside was lined with padded silk, and the ball fit as neatly as the breakfast egg in His Lordship’s cup. And still from down the hill (the cursed wind was wrong or she would have heard it sooner), the sound of the girl singing, now closer than ever:

“Love, o love, o careless love,

Can’t you see what careless love has done?”

“I’ll give’ee careless love, ye virgin bitch,” the old woman said. She could smell the sour reek of sweat from under her arms, but that other moisture had dried up again. “I’ll give ye payday for walking in early on old Rhea, so I will!”

She passed her fingers over the lock on the front of the box, but it wouldn’t fasten. She supposed she had been overeager to have it open, and had broken something inside it when she used the touch. The eye and the motto seemed to mock her: I SEE WHO OPENS ME. It could be put right, and in a jiffy, but right now even a jiffy was more than she had.

“Pestering cunt!” she whined, lifting her head briefly toward the approaching voice (almost here now, by the gods, and forty-five minutes before her time!). Then she closed the lid of the box. It gave her a pang to do it, because the glass was coming to life again, filling with that rosy glow, but there was no time for looking or dreaming now. Later, perhaps, after the object of Thorin’s unseemly late-life prickishness had gone.

And you must restrain yourself from doing anything too awful to the girl, she cautioned herself. Remember she’s here because of him, and at least ain’t one of those green girls with a bun in the oven and a boyfriend acting reluctant about the cries o’ marriage. It’s Thorin’s doing, this one’s what he thinks about after his ugly old crow of a wife is asleep and he takes himself in his hand and commences the evening milking; it’s Thorin’s doing, he has the old law on his side, and he has power. Furthermore, what’s in that box is his man’s business, and if Jonas found out ye looked at it... that ye used it...

Aye, but no fear of that. And in the meantime, possession were nine-tenths of the law, were it not?