It took him half an hour of cajoling to make her look at Agnes, and half an hour more elapsed before he could persuade her to peer into the scalped hole. He showed her how the eyes worked, how very carefully they had been aligned to fit snugly yet swing easily opened or closed.

“Come on now, it’s time you went inside,” he told her, swinging her up into his arms and tucking the doll between his chest and hers. “We’ll get Mum to fix her up, eh? We’ll wash and iron her clothes, and glue on her hair again. I’ll make you some proper hairpins out of those pearls, too, so they can’t fall out and you can do her hair in all sorts of ways.”

Fiona Cleary was in the kitchen, peeling potatoes. She was a very handsome, very fair woman a little under medium height, but rather hard-faced and stern; she had an excellent figure with a tiny waist which had not thickened, in spite of the six babies she had carried beneath it. Her dress was grey calico, its skirts brushing the spotless floor, its front protected by an enormous starched white apron that looped around her neck and tied in the small of her spine with a crisp, perfect bow. From waking to sleeping she lived in the kitchen and back garden, her stout black boots beating a circular path from stove to laundry to vegetable patch to clotheslines and thence to the stove again.

She put her knife on the table and stared at Frank and Meggie, the corners of her beautiful mouth turning down.

“Meggie, I let you put on your Sunday-best dress this morning on one condition, that you didn’t get it dirty. And look at you! What a little grub you are!”

“Mum, it wasn’t her fault,” Frank protested. “Jack and Hughie took her doll away to try and find out how the arms and legs worked. I promised we’d fix it up as good as new. We can, can’t we?”

“Let me see.” Fee held out her hand for the doll.