Bess Mossock. before her marriage, had been nurse to the Children’s mother; and although it was all of twelve years since their last meeting they still wrote to each other from time to time and sent gifts at Christmas. So it was to Bess that their mother had turned when she had been called to join her husband abroad for six months, and Bess, ever the nurse, had been happy to offer what help she could. “And it’ll do this owd farmhouse a world of good to have a couple of childer brighten it up for a few months.”

She greeted the children warmly, and after asking how their parents were, she took them upstairs and showed them their rooms.

When Gowther came in they all sat round the table in the broad, low-ceilinged kitchen where Bess served up a monstrous Cheshire pie. The heavy meal, on top of the strain of travelling, could have only one effect, and before long Colin and Susan were falling asleep on their chairs. So they said good night and went upstairs to bed, each carrying a candle, for there was no electricity at Highmost Redmanhey.

“Gosh,I’m tired!”

“Oh, me too!”

“This looks all right. doesn’t it?”

“Mm.”

“Glad we came now, aren’t you?”

“Ye-es…”

CHAPTER 2

The Edge

“If you like.” said Gowther at breakfast, “We’ve time for a stroll round before Sam comes, then we’ll have to get in that last load of hay while the weather holds, for we could have thunder today as easy as not.”

Sam Harlbutt. a lean young man of twenty-four, was Gowther’s labourer, and a craftsman with a pitchfork. That morning he lifted three times as much as Colin and Susan combined, and with a quarter of the effort. By eleven o’clock the stack was complete, and they lay in its shade and drank rough cider out of an earthenware jar.