What was she like?
What was her name?
Could she walk?
Where did she come from?
Did Father and Mother find her in Drymouth?
And so on.

Jeremy was silent.

At last he said: "We don't want any more girls here." "Better than having another boy," said Helen.
But he would not take up the challenge.

He sat on his favourite seat on the window-ledge, dragged up a reluctant Hamlet to sit with him, and gazed out down into the garden that was misty now in the evening golden light, the trees and the soil black beneath the gold, the rooks slowly swinging across the sty above the farther side of the road.

Hamlet wriggled.