O Lord, how manifold are thy works!

Later, in bed, I turned out the light and listened for a while to the distant sounds of people moving about, making last-minute preparations for the morning. Somewhere in the west wing they would still be adjusting their spotlights; somewhere Phyllis Wyvern would be boning up on her script.

But at last, after what seemed like a very long time, the day’s work was done and, with a last few reluctant creaks and groans, Buckshaw slept in the silence of the falling snow.

• SIX •

I AWAKENED TO THE sound of shoveling. Crikers! I must have overslept!

Leaping out from under the eiderdown, I struggled into my clothing before my flesh could freeze.

The world outside my bedroom windows was the sickly shade of an underdeveloped snapshot: a bruised black and white, under which lay an ever so slightly menacing tinge of purple, as if the sky were muttering “Just you wait!”

A few taunting flakes were still sifting down slowly like little white warning notes from the gods, shaking their tiny frozen fists as they fell past the window.

Half the film crew, it seemed, were at work clearing a maze of pathways between the vans and lorries.

I dug quickly through a pile of gramophone records (Daffy told me I had pronounced it “grampaphone” when I was younger) and, picking out the one I was looking for, dusted it on my skirt.

It was “Morning,” by Edvard Grieg, from his Peer Gynt suite: the same piece of music that Rupert Porson (deceased) had used at the parish hall last September to open his puppet performance of Jack and the Beanstalk.

It wasn’t my favorite piece of morning music, but it was infinitely better than “Let’s All Sing Like the Birdies Sing.” Besides, the disk had that lovely picture of the dog, his head tilted quizzically as he listens to his master’s voice coming out of a horn, not realizing that his master is behind him painting his picture.