I piped up and asked why we had to move there.

"Dost know nowt, Betsy Allgood?" asked Elsie Coe, who was nearly eleven and liked the boys. "What do you think they're building down the dale? A shopping center?"

"Nay fair do's," said one of her kinder friends. "She's nobbut a babbie still. They're going to flood all of Dendale, Betsy, so as the smelly townies can have a bath!"

Then Miss Lavery called us in from play. But I went to the drinking fountain first and watched the spurt of water turn rainbow in the sun.

After that I started having nightmares. I'd dream I were woken by Bonnie sitting on my pillow and howling, and all the blankets would be wet, and the bed would be almost floating on the water which were pouring through the window. I'd know it were just a dream but it didn't stop me being frightened. Dad told me not to be so mardy and Mam said if I knew a dream were just a dream I should try and wake myself up, and sometimes I would, only I wouldn't really have woken up at all and the water would still be there, lapping over my face now, and then I really would wake up screaming.

When Mam realized what were troubling me, she tried to explain it all. She were good at explaining things when she wasn't having one of her bad turns. Nerves, I heard Mrs. Telford call it one day when I was playing under the window of the joiner's shop at Stang with Madge. It was Mrs. Telford I heard say, too, that it were a pity Jack Allgood (that's my dad) hadn't got a son, but it didn't help anyone Lizzie (that's my mam) cutting the girl's hair short like a boy's and dressing her in trousers. That was me. I looked in the mirror after that and wondered if mebbe I couldn't grow up to be a boy.

I was saying about my mam explaining things. She told me about the reservoir and how we were all going to be moved over to Danby, and it wouldn't make all that much difference 'cos Dad were such a good tenant, Mr. Pontifex had promised him the first farm to come vacant on the rest of his estate over there.