And then the way they handled the little girls, the ease and competence of that. And the way the grandmothers were always available, making the four the six … but where were the mothers, children had mothers, and these two little girls had Hannah and Mary, both startlingly unlike the blonde family they had married into, being small and dark, and, while pretty enough, Theresa knew neither of them was good enough for the men. They worked. They owned a business. That is why the grandmothers were so often here. Didn’t the grandmothers work, then? Yes, they did but were free to say, ‘Let’s go to Baxter’s‘ - and up here to Baxter’s they came. The mothers too, sometimes, and there were eight.

Theresa was in love with them all. She had at last understood it. The men, yes, her heart ached for them, but not too severely. What made the tears come was seeing them all there, watching them, as she did now. Behind her, at a table near the bar, was Derek, a young farmer who had wished to marry her. She didn’t mind him, rather fancied him, but she knew that this, the family, was the real passion.

Over deep layers of tree shadow lanced with sunlight, sun enclosed the tree, the hot blue air, interfused with bliss, happiness, seemed about to exude great drops of something like a golden dew, which only she could see. It was at that moment she decided she would marry her farmer and stay here, on this continent. She could not leave it for the fitful charms of England, of Bradford, though the moors did well enough, when the sun did decide to shine. No, she would stay here, she had to. ‘I want it, I want it,’ she told herself, allowing the tears at last to run freely. She wanted this physical ease, the calm of it, expressing itself in lazy movements, in long brown

legs and arms, and the glint of gold on fair heads where the sun had been.

Just as she claimed her future, she saw one of the mothers coming up the path. Mary - yes, it was. A little dark fidget of a woman, with nothing in her of the poise and style of The Family