“I’ve dropped a stitch, dear. You see, that is why I have to get on-I’m always dropping stitches. I can’t think why they won’t stay on the needle. Other people seem to manage it, but I’ve never been able to. That is where I miss Carmona so much. She always used to pick them up for me. It’s lovely being here with her now.” She raised her voice a little. “Darling, if you wouldn’t mind-I’m afraid there’s another one gone.”

Carmona came over and knelt beside her. Pippa lifted her head from her folded arms to say lazily,

“Darling Esther, why not do a dropstitch pattern and have done with it?”

“Well, dear, I don’t suppose I should ever manage to drop the right stitch. It doesn’t do for it to be just any one, you know. You have to follow a pattern, and I do find patterns so difficult. This is one I learned when I was at school, and I don’t seem to be able to manage any other.”

Carmona put the shawl down again in her lap and went back to where the sun was glinting on the silver gilt of Pippa’s hair. Not a breath stirred. She thought Colonel Trevor must be having a very hot walk. She wondered why one sat in the sun and baked, and thought Maisie really had the best of it when she said it would be much cooler up at the house and she would go and look for an amusing book.

Carmona waited till she had gone, to say,

“She won’t find one.”

Pippa yawned.

“Uncle Octavius didn’t rise to light literature?”

Carmona shook her head.

“Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, in sets-handsome bindings and very small print. And all the works of Mrs. Henry Wood-East Lynne, you know. And frightful memoirs, like the ones Esther solemnly brings down here every day and never reads. Uncle Octavius had never read them himself-nobody has ever read them, because the pages have never been cut. But she thinks they will improve her mind if she can get it off her knitting long enough to give them a chance, so she brings out her pet paper-knife that Penderel gave her and waits for the moment to be improved.”