It’s a good pin. Do you know how long I’ve had it- forty-five years. And when in doubt I’ve always shut my eyes and pricked, and it’s never let me down once. Never lost it but once, and I thought I’d have gone off my head. Dropped it in my own office, and they said they couldn’t find it-slipped out of my hand as I was sticking it back into my coat, and they said they couldn’t find it. I had every man jack of ’em up, and I said, ‘Man, woman, or boy, who finds that pin gets ten pounds, and if it isn’t found, everyone gets the sack.’ A matter of two hours afterwards a smart boy comes along and says he’s found it. I took a look at the pin he brought and I said, ‘I’ve no room for fools in my office. You can get out and you can stay out.’ ”

“Why was he a fool, and how did you know it was not your pin?”

Jacob cracked his fingers.

“How do you know your children from anyone else’s? When you’ve lived with anything for forty-odd years, nobody’s going to take you in. And he was a fool because he brought me a brand-new pin out of a packet. Thought himself smart, and all he got was the sack.”

“But you did get it back?”

Jacob put the pin carefully into his lapel.

“I paid a blackmailing young woman five hundred pounds for it. I’d have paid double. She thought she’d scored me off, but I got back on her. Nobody’s ever scored me off and got away with it-nobody. It’s too long a story to tell you now. We’ve done the descendants of Matthew, Mark, Mary, and Luke, and now we come to the twins, Joanna and John. We’ll take Joanna first. Her lot is interesting. She married a man called Higgins, and a daughter of hers married a man called Castell-Fogarty Castell-Portuguese father, Irish mother. And I’ve picked a Higgins grandson, John Higgins-carpenter by trade-bit of a local preacher in his off time. Well, I’ve picked him, and I’ve picked the Castells. I said I wasn’t going to have anyone in my own generation, but they are the exception that proves the rule.