Marianne did catch Uncle Charles on his way home from Woods House, but he refused to believe that Gammer could do any wrong. He laughed and said, “You have to be older to understand, my chuck. None of us Pinhoes would do a thing like that. We work with the Farleighs.”

Though this seemed to show that no one was going to believe her, Marianne went on trying to make someone understand about Gammer. Almost everyone she spoke to over the next few days said, “Gammer wouldn’t do a thing like that!” and refused to talk about it anymore. Uncle Arthur gave Marianne a pat on the head and a bag of scrittlings for Nutcase. “She was a good mother to me and a good Gammer to all of us,” he said. “You never knew her in her prime.”

Marianne wondered about this. She supposed that a mother with seven sons had to be a good one, but she went and asked Mum about it all the same.

“Good mother!” Mum said. “What gave you that idea? When I was your age, my mother and her friends were always looking out cast-off clothes for your dad and his brothers, or they’d have been running round in rags. She said those boys were too scared of Gammer to tell her when they’d grown out of their things.”

“But didn’t Gammer notice their clothes?” Marianne said.

“Not that I ever saw,” Mum said. “She left the younger ones to Dad to look after.”

But Mum had never liked Gammer, Marianne thought, trying to be fair. Uncle Arthur truly believed what he had said. In many ways Uncle Arthur was very like Dad, though, always believing the best of everyone. Mum snorted whenever Dad said kind and respectful things about Gammer, and called it “rewriting history.” So where did the real truth lie? Somewhere in the middle? Marianne sighed. The facts seemed to be that no one, even Mum, was going to believe that Gammer had sent the Farleighs a plague of frogs or—Marianne stopped on her way upstairs to go on with her story of Princess Irene.

Oh, heavens! she thought. Suppose it wasn’t only frogs!

She turned and went downstairs again. “Just going down to the Dell!” she called to Mum, and went straight there to talk to Aunt Dinah.

As she passed the Post Office, she was glad to see that some of Uncle Simeon’s people were now working on the ruined wall. They were working in that deceptively slow way that witchcraftly workmen did such things, and the wall was nearly waist high already. That must mean that the alterations up at Woods House were almost finished, with the same deceptive, witchcraftly speed.

And here was an example of the way no one would believe any ill of Gammer, Marianne thought. Gammer had broken that Post Office wall. But everyone was treating it as an accident, or an act of God.

She had half a mind to go into the Post Office. Aunt Joy would believe her. But Aunt Joy always believed the worst of everyone. And, more importantly, no one believed Aunt Joy. Marianne went on down the lane toward the Dell. There were still a few of the charmed frogs jumping about in the hedges there. It had been impossible to catch every single one.

Aunt Dinah had surprise all over her square blond face, when Marianne said she wanted to talk to her and not Gammer. But she led the way into her little, dark kitchen, where there were fresh-cooked queen cakes on wire trays all over the table. Aunt Dinah pushed them aside, telling Marianne to eat as many as she wanted, and made them both a cup of coffee. “Now, dear. What is it?”

Marianne had decided to approach this very carefully. Sniffing the lovely smell of new cake, she said, “Does Gammer do any magic at all these days?”

Aunt Dinah looked perplexed, and a little worried. “Why do you want to know, dear?”

“Well,” Marianne said. “It looks as if I might have to be the next Gammer, doesn’t it? And I don’t really know enough.” This was perfectly true, but the next bit wasn’t. She said, in a bit of a rush, “I wondered if she was up to giving me some lessons, seeing her mind isn’t quite right these days. Does she do any workings? Does she get them wrong at all?”

“You have a point,” Aunt Dinah agreed. “But I don’t see how she can, dear. You’d be better off asking your dad to teach you. Gammer just sits these days. Of course she mutters a bit.”

“Don’t tell me,” Marianne said artificially, “that she’s still going on about the Farleighs!”

“Well, you’ve heard her,” said Aunt Dinah. “I admit she can sound quite abusive at times, but it doesn’t mean a thing, bless her!”

“Does she do anything else at all?” Marianne asked, trying to sound disappointed.

Aunt Dinah smiled and shook her head. “Nothing. She just sits and plays with things like a child. The other day she’d got hold of a rose hip and a bit of sneezewort, and she was taking them apart and twiddling them for hours.” (Oh dear! That’s itches and rashes and colds in the head! Marianne thought.) “Lately,” Aunt Dinah said, “she’s been asking for water all the time. I’ve watched her pour it from one glass to another and smile—” (What’s that for? Marianne wondered. It has to be another spell, if she smiled!) “And she mixed soot with some of it,” Aunt Dinah went on, “and made it so dirty I had to take it away from her.” (So some of it’s a filth spell, Marianne thought.) “Oh, and the other day,” Aunt Dinah admitted, lowering her voice because this was disgraceful, “she caught a flea. I was so ashamed. I don’t mind her catching ants, the way she does, but a flea! I try to keep her clean as clean, but there she was, holding it and saying, ‘Look, Dinah, here’s a flea!’ I offered to kill it for her, but she did it herself.”

So now she’s done a plague of ants and a plague of fleas! Marianne thought. Right under Aunt Dinah’s nose, too! Those poor Farleighs! No wonder they ill-chanced us! Nerving herself up to say such a thing to a grown-up aunt, Marianne asked, “But don’t all those things seem to be spells of some kind, Aunt Dinah?” Particularly the water, Marianne thought. If she’s poisoned their water, that’s wicked!

“Oh, no, dear,” Aunt Dinah said kindly. “She’s just amusing herself, bless her. She’s left the craft behind her now.”

Marianne drew in a deep, cake-scented breath and said boldly, “I don’t think she has.”

Aunt Dinah laughed. “And I know she has. Don’t worry your head, Marianne, and get your dad to teach you. You can trust Isaac and I to look after Gammer for you.”

So here was another person who would only believe the best of Gammer, Marianne thought sadly as she got up to go. It was almost as if they were under a spell. “I’ll let myself out. Thanks for the coffee,” she told Aunt Dinah.

She strode straight through the hall and ignored Gammer’s voice, raised from behind the door of the front room. “Is that you, Marianne?” Gammer always seemed to know when Marianne was in the Dell.

“No, it isn’t!” she muttered with her teeth clenched.

As she marched off down the lane between the rustling, croaking hedges, Marianne considered Gammer’s spells and wished she knew how to cancel them. They would be strong. If she had any doubts about how strong, she only had to remember the blast of magic Gammer had sent at the Farleighs. That wasn’t just a plain blast, either. It was meant to send the Farleighs away, certainly, but it was also intended to make them believe that Gammer was upright and innocent and in her right mind. Gammer was an expert at interwoven spells.

“Oh!” Marianne said out loud, and almost stopped walking.

Of course Gammer had laid a spell on everyone. She didn’t want anyone to stop her getting her revenge on the Farleighs and she didn’t want to be blamed when the Farleighs fought back. So she had bespelled every single Pinhoe in the village to think only the best of her. The thing that had confused Marianne was the way she herself seemed to be immune to the spell.

Or not quite immune. Marianne walked slowly on, remembering the day they had moved Gammer out of Woods House. It had been perfectly reasonable to her then—if annoying—that Gammer should have rooted herself to her bed, and not at all unreasonable that Gammer should have chased Dolly with the kitchen table and knocked the Post Office wall down. Now she looked back on it, she saw that it was dreadful behavior. Gammer must have been pouring on the ensorcellment that day.

But she had probably started setting the spell before that, probably while she was poltergeisting those poor nurses. None of the aunts and uncles had blamed Gammer for that—but then they almost never did blame Gammer for anything she did—

Marianne’s eyes went wide as she realized that Gammer might have been setting this spell all of Marianne’s own life. No one ever blamed Gammer. She had only to look at the Farleighs to realize how unlikely that was. The Farleighs certainly obeyed old Mr. Farleigh, because he was their Gaffer, but they grumbled that he was set in his ways and very few of them liked him. But the Pinhoes treated Gammer as if she was something natural and precious, like rain in April that was good for the crops—and people grumbled about rain, but never about Gammer.

It puzzled Marianne why she herself seemed to be mostly immune to Gammer’s spell. She thought it must be that Mum was always saying sour things about Gammer—even though Mum was not immune to the spell herself. Mum was not going to help Marianne deal with Gammer. Marianne wondered, rather desperately, if anyone could. Then it occurred to her that the spell almost certainly only applied to people who actually lived in Ulverscote. There were Pinhoes who lived in other places, outside the village. Who could she ask?

The nearest and most obvious person was Great-Uncle Edgar. He and his wife, Great-Aunt Sue, lived a couple of miles out, along the Helm St. Mary road. It was no good expecting Great-Uncle Edgar to believe anything bad about Gammer. He was her brother, after all. But, when she thought about it, Marianne had hopes of Great-Aunt Sue. Aunt Sue had come from a wealthy family on the other side of Hopton, according to Mum, and might be expected to take a more outside view of things—and she surely couldn’t see Gammer as blameless after nearly getting squashed to death between Gammer’s bed and the doorpost. Mum had been taking Aunt Sue jars of her special balm for her bruises ever since.

“Shall I take Aunt Sue another jar of your balm?” Marianne asked Mum as soon as she got back to Furze Cottage.

“Oh, would you!” Mum said. “I’m so busy making up tinctures to help whooping cough, you wouldn’t believe! They say little Nicola’s really poorly with it. She could hardly fetch her breath last night, poor little mite!”

Marianne took off her pinafore and went to fetch her bike from the shed. The first thing she saw there was Mum’s new broomstick. Marianne eyed it, wondering whether to borrow that instead. The stick was white and fresh and the bristles thick and stiff and pinkish. She could see it would fly splendidly. But Mum might object, and Aunt Sue was more likely to look kindly on Marianne if she arrived on an ordinary bicycle. She sighed and wheeled out her bike instead.

It felt strange to be doing this. Last time Marianne had ridden her bike, she had been on her way to school, with Joe pedaling beside her. Joe always made sure Marianne got safely to the girls’ school, although Marianne was not sure that he always went on to the boys’ school after that. Joe was not fond of school.

Joe would have believed me about Gammer! Marianne thought. He said worse things about Gammer than Mum did. And he was surely outside the spell, ten miles away at the Castle. Now there was a thought! But try Aunt Sue first.

As Mum came to the front door with the jar of balm, the bicycle obviously put her in mind of school too. “Remind me to beg us a lift to Hopton from your uncle Lester,” she said, putting the jar of balm into Marianne’s bike basket. “We have to get there for your school uniform sometime this week. School starts again the week after this, doesn’t it? Goodness knows how I’m to get Joe his new uniform, with him away working. He’ll have grown a foot, I know.”

This gave Marianne a sad feeling of urgency as she rode away up the hill. There would be no time for anything once she went back to school. She would have to get someone to believe her about Gammer soon, she thought, standing on her pedals to get up the steep part of the road by the church.

She saw the Reverend Pinhoe out of the corner of her eye as she puffed upward. He was in the churchyard by one of the graves, talking to someone very tall and gentlemanly. A stranger, which was odd. Pinhoes didn’t exactly welcome strangers in the village. But Marianne was distracted then, by two furniture vans up ahead of her, each labeled PICKFORD & PALLEBRAS. Each van was pulled by two dray horses, and both drivers were cracking whips and shouting as they made the difficult turn in through the gates of Woods House. It looked as if the Yeldhams were moving in already.

Marianne put one foot on the ground when she came level with the gates—saying to herself it was not curiosity: she had to stop to get her breath—and watched men in green baize aprons spring down and unlatch the backs of the vans. The van she could see into best had some very nice Londonish furniture stacked inside it. She saw chairs with round backs and buttons, covered in moss green velvet, and a sideboard that Dad would have put his head on one side to admire greatly. Good old work—she could almost hear Dad saying it—beautiful marquetry.

She inherited that from Luke Pinhoe, Marianne thought. It somehow brought home to her that Irene really was a Pinhoe. And she’s coming back home to live! Marianne thought, getting back on her bike. That’s good.

She pedaled past the last few houses and came between the hedges, where the road bent. And there, coming toward her, were six other cyclists, all girls. As soon as they saw Marianne, they stopped and swung their cycles sideways in a herring-bone pattern, blocking the road. Marianne recognized the one in front as Margot Farleigh and the next one as Margot’s cousin Norma. She didn’t know the names of the others, but she knew they were all Farleighs too, and probably best friends with one another because they all had the same hairstyle, very smooth and scraped back, with one little thin dangling plait down one cheek. Oh dear! she thought. She could smell, or feel—or whatever—that each girl had a spell of some kind in the basket on the front of her bike.

“Well, look who’s here!” Margot Farleigh said jeeringly. “It’s Gammer Pinhoe’s little servant!”

“Off to Helm to put another ill-chancing on us, are you?” Norma asked.

“No, I’m not,” Marianne said. “I never put a single ill-chance on anyone.”

This caused a chorus of jeering laughs from all six girls. “Oh, didn’t you?” Margot said, pretending to be surprised. “My mistake. You didn’t bring us frogs, then, or fleas, or nits?”

“Or the rashes, or the flu and the whooping cough, I suppose?” Norma added.

At this, the rest began calling out, “Nor you didn’t put ants in our cupboards, did you?” and “What about all the mud in our washing?” and “What made Gammer Norah swell up, then?” and “So you didn’t make Dorothea fall in the pond—like hell you didn’t!”

Marianne sagged against her bicycle, thinking, Oh lord! Gammer has been busy! “No, honestly,” she said. “You see, Gammer’s not right in her head, and—”

“Oh? Really?” Margot drawled.

“Excuses, excuses,” said Norma.

“She’s right enough in her head to flood all Farleigh houses knee deep in water!” Margot said. “All our houses, from Uphelm to Bowbridge. Not anyone else’s, mark you. Our Gammer Norah’s in a raving rage about it, let me tell you.”

“She’s not sent us the stomachache so far,” Norma said. “Is that what you’re bringing us now?”

Marianne knew they had a right to be angry. She began to say, “Look, I’m sorry—”

That was a mistake. But then anything she said would have been, Marianne knew. Margot said, “Get her, everyone!” and all the girls threw down their bicycles and went for Marianne.

She was kicked and punched and had her hair pulled, agonizingly. She tried to defend herself by making a bull-like rush at Margot, and went floundering among bicycles, tripping, crashing and being hit and pinched and scratched by any girl who could lay hands on her. Spell bags fell out of bicycle baskets and got trodden on. The air from hedge to hedge filled with strong white powder. Everyone was sneezing in it, but too angry to notice. Marianne threw punches in all directions, some of them magical, some with her fists, but this only made the Farleigh girls angrier than ever. She ended up crouching half underneath her own bicycle, while Margot jumped on it.

“That’s right!” screamed the others. “Squash her! Kill her!”

“Here, here, here!” Joss Callow said loudly, riding up behind the fight. “Stop that at once, you girls! You hear me?”

Everyone turned round guiltily and stared at Joss Callow parking his bike meaningly against the hedge. Marianne stood up from under her bent bike. Her hair was all over her face and she could feel her lips swelling.

“Now what was this all about?” Joss said. “Eh?”

“She started it!” Margot said, pointing at Marianne. “The hateful little slime!”

“Yes, look what she did to me!” Norma said, holding out a torn sleeve.

“And she’s ruined my bike!” said another girl. “She’s disgusting!”

They all knew Joss because his mother lived in Helm St. Mary. He knew them too. He was not impressed. “Funny thing,” he said. “I never see you girls except you’re making trouble. Six to one is cowards’ work in my book. Ride away home now.”

“But we’ve got an errand to run—” Norma began, and stopped in dismay, looking at the burst spell bag under her feet. “Just look what she did to this!”

“I don’t care what you think you’re doing here,” Joss said. “Go home.”

“Who are you to tell us that?” Margot asked rudely.

“I mean what I say,” Joss said. He nodded to each girl in turn and, as he nodded, each girl’s hairstyle writhed on her head and stood itself straight up in the air. Hairgrips and rubber bands pinged off into the road. In instants, the hairstyles had become long, upright bundles on the top of heads, with the little pigtails waving off to one side like feelers.

All the girls clutched their heads. Several of them screamed. “I can’t go home like this!” Norma wailed.

“People’ll laugh!” Margot screeched. She took a double handful of her bushy Farleigh hair and tried to pull it down. It sprang upright again through her fingers.

“Yes,” Joss said. “Everyone who sees you will laugh like a drain. And serve you right. It’ll go down when you go into your own house, and not before. Now get going.”

Sullenly, the girls picked up their bicycles and mounted them, snarling and complaining to one another when most of the mudguards proved to be loose. Norma said, among the clanking and clattering, “Why has he left her hair alone?”

As they rode off, looking long headed and decidedly peculiar, Margot answered loudly, “He’s a mongrel half-Pinhoe, that’s why.”

She meant Joss to hear, and he did. He was not pleased. When Marianne said, “Joss, they were angry because Gammer’s been putting spells on the Farleighs,” he simply scowled at her.

“I’m not standing here to listen to accusations, Marianne,” he said. “I don’t care what it was about. I’ll straighten your bike for you, but that’s your lot.”

He picked up Marianne’s bicycle and, with a few expert twists and bangs and the same number of well-directed stabs of witchcraft, he straightened the bent frame and twisted pedals and made the wheels round again. Tears in Marianne’s eyes distorted the sight of him putting the chain back on. Gammer has been so thorough! she thought. No one believes a word I say!

“There,” Joss said, handing her the restored bike. “Now get wherever you were going, get your face seen to, and don’t try insulting any Farleighs again.” He picked up his own bike, swung his leg swiftly across the saddle, and rode away into the village before Marianne could think of what to say.

She stood in the road for a moment, softly weeping in a way she thoroughly despised. Then she pulled herself together and took a look at the little burst bags and the white powder from them lying in a trail across the road and dusting the hedges on either side. Those girls had been bringing some fierce stuff to wish on the Pinhoes. From the sore feeling down her back, Marianne was sure it was another illness of some kind. Luckily, it was so fierce that whoever sent it had made it so that it did not work until someone said the right word, but, even so, Marianne knew she ought not to leave it here. Someone could say the right word accidentally at any time.

Sighing, she laid her bike down and wondered how to deal with it. This was something Mum would have been better at than she was.

There was one thing she could do that might work. Marianne had not tried it very often because Mum had been so alarmed when she discovered Marianne could do it.

Marianne took a deep breath and, very carefully and gently, summoned fire. She summoned it to just the surface of the road and very tops of the leaves in the hedges. And in case that was not enough, she instructed it to burn every scrap of the powder wherever it was.

Little blue flames answered her, flickering an inch high over road, grassy banks, and hedges. Almost at once, the flames filled with tiny white sparks, hissing and fizzing. Then the powder underneath caught fire and burned with a most satisfactory snarling sound, like a bad-tempered dog. The six little bags went up with six soft powdery whoomps and made clumps of flame that were more green than blue and sent up showers of the white sparks. Like a fireworks display, Marianne thought, except for the strong smell of dragon’s blood. When she called the flames back, every scrap of the powder was gone and there was no sign of the bags.

“Good,” Marianne said, and rode onward.

She must have been an alarming sight when she arrived at Great-Uncle Edgar’s house, what with her swollen mouth, scratched face, and wild, pulled hair. Her knees were scraped too, and one of her arms. Great-Aunt Sue exclaimed when she opened the door.

“Good gracious, dear! Did you fall off your bicycle?”

Aunt Sue was so crisp and starched and orderly and looked so sympathetic that Marianne found she was crying again. She held out the jar of balm and gulped, “I’m afraid it got cracked.”

“Never mind, never mind. I haven’t finished the last one yet,” Aunt Sue said. “Come on in and let me see to your scrapes.” She led Marianne through to her neat and orderly kitchen, surrounded by Great-Uncle Edgar’s five assorted dogs, all of them noisily glad to see Marianne, where she made Marianne sit on a stool and bathed her face and knees with some of Mum’s herbal antiseptic. “What a mess!” she said. “Surely a big girl like you knows enough charms by now not to fall off a bike!”

“I didn’t fall off.” Marianne gulped. “There were some Farleigh girls—”

“Oh, come now, dear. You just told me you fell off,” Aunt Sue said. And before Marianne could explain, Aunt Sue hurried to fetch her a glass of milk and a plate of macaroons.

Aunt Sue’s macaroons were always lovely, pale brown and crusty outside and softly white and luscious inside. Biting into the first one, Marianne discovered that one of her teeth was loose. She had to concentrate hard for nearly a minute to get it fixed back in again. By then she had completely lost her chance to point out to Aunt Sue that she had not said she had fallen off her bike, and that Aunt Sue had just assumed she had.

Nothing could make it clearer that Aunt Sue was not going to listen to her properly. But Marianne tried. “I met six Farleigh girls,” she said carefully, when the tooth was firm again. “And they told me that Gammer has been sending them ill-chance spells. They’ve had frogs and nits and ants in their cupboards, and now they’ve got whooping cough too.”

Great-Aunt Sue looked disgusted. She passed both hands down her crisply flounced skirt and said, “There’s no believing how superstitious some of these country girls can be! It’s amazed me ever since I came to live in Ulverscote. Anything that’s caused by their own dirty habits—and the Farleighs are not a clean clan, dear—they try to blame on somebody’s use of the craft. As if anyone would stoop—and certainly not your poor grandmother! She can barely walk these days, so Dinah tells me.”

Marianne knew it was no good then, but she said, “Gammer sits there and does spells, Aunt Sue. Little cunning things that Aunt Dinah doesn’t notice. The latest one was water.”

“And what does she do with that? Cause a flood?” Aunt Sue asked, brightly and disbelievingly.

“Yes,” Marianne said. “In all their houses. And mud in their washing.”

Aunt Sue laughed. “Really, dear, you’re as credulous as the Farleighs. Anyway, this whooping cough is simply a natural epidemic. It’s all over the county now. Edgar tells me they have cases from Bowbridge to Hopton.”

Spread by the widening rings of an ill-chance spell, before someone put a stop to the spell, Marianne thought. But she did not say so. There was no point, and she felt tired and sore and shaken. She sat quietly and politely on the stool and listened to Aunt Sue talking about all the things Aunt Sue always talked about.

Aunt Sue’s two sons first, Damion and Raphael. Aunt Sue was very proud of them. They were both in Bowbridge, doing very well. Damion was an accountant and Raphael was an auctioneer. It was a pity they were both going bald so young, but baldness was in Aunt Sue’s family and it always came from the female, didn’t it?

Then the dogs. Mr. Vastion said they were all too fat and needed more exercise. But, said Aunt Sue, how were they to get walked properly with Edgar so busy and the boys not at home anymore? Aunt Sue had enough to do in the house.

Then the house. Aunt Sue wanted new wallpaper. It was a lovely house, and Aunt Sue had never stopped being grateful to Gammer for giving it to them when Gaffer died. Gammer was so generous. She had given Uncle Arthur the Pinhoe Arms, Uncle Cedric the farm, and let Isaac have the smallholding. But truly, Marianne, this place was almost as run-down as Woods House.

Marianne looked round the bright, empty, efficient kitchen and wondered how Aunt Sue could think that. And for the first time, she wondered if all this property had been Gammer’s to give away. If Dad was the one the property came to, shouldn’t it have been Dad who gave it away? She thought she must ask Mum.

Aunt Sue said that she had booked Uncle Charles, over and over, to redecorate the house, but Uncle Charles always seemed to have something more urgent to do. And Aunt Sue was not going to employ anyone else, because Uncle Charles used the craft in his work, which made him quicker and neater than anyone in the county. But now he had gone to redecorate Woods House. Why should a newcomer, even if she was a Pinhoe born, have the right to take up Uncle Charles’s time?

By this time, Marianne had had enough. She did not want to hear either Uncle Charles or the lovely Princess Irene being gently criticized by Aunt Sue. She stood up, thanked Aunt Sue politely, and said she had to be going now.

Meanwhile, Joss Callow arrived at the Pinhoe Arms, ready to report to Marianne’s father. As he was parking his bike in the yard, little blue flames broke out all over the front of him, hissing and fizzing and sending out small white sparks. They squirted from under his boots and even sizzled for a moment on the front wheel of his bicycle. Joss beat at them, but they were gone by then.

“Have to do better than that, girls,” he said, naturally thinking it was a revenge from Margot Farleigh and her friends.

Then he forgot about it and went into the Snug, where Harry Pinhoe was waiting for him and Arthur Pinhoe leaning through the hatch. “Search me what the Big Man’s up to just now,” he said, when he was comfortably settled with beer and pickled eggs. “He’s very busy with something, but I don’t know what. They’ve got all the old maps and documents out in their library and you can feel the magic they’re using on them, but that’s all I can tell you.”

“Can’t Joe tell you?” asked Joe’s father, puffing at the pipe he allowed himself at these times.

“That Joe,” said Joss, “is bloody useless, excuse my French. He’s never there. I don’t know what he does with his time, but I’m not the only one to complain. Mr. Frazier was about ready to blow his top yesterday when Joe went missing. And Mr. Stubbs was fit to kill, because he wanted an order taken to the butcher and Joe had vanished off the face of the earth.”

Harry Pinhoe and Joe’s uncle Arthur exchanged sad shrugs. Joe was always going to be a disappointment.

“Oh, that reminds me,” Joss said. “Young Cat Chant—Eric, the nine-lifer, you know—has hatched an abomination somehow. Griffin, I think. I saw it this morning. I hardly knew what it was at first. It was all fluff and big feet, but it’s got wings and a beak, so that’s what it must be.”

Uncle Arthur shook his head. “Bad. That’s bad. We don’t want one of those out.”

“Not much we can do, if it’s living in the Castle,” Harry Pinhoe observed, puffing placidly. “We’d have to wait to catch it in the open.”

“And when I asked him, this young Eric said your Marianne gave him the egg,” Joss added.

“What?!” Harry Pinhoe was disturbed enough to let his pipe drop on the floor. Groping for it, red in the face, he said, “That egg was stored safe in the attic. It should have been safe there till Kingdom Come. I put the workings on it myself. I don’t know what’s got into Marianne lately. First she goes round telling everyone that poor Gammer’s setting spells on the Farleighs, and now she does this!”

“She said that about Gammer to me too,” said Joss. “She was in a hen fight with some Farleigh girls about it, out on the Helm road just now.”

“Let her just wait!” Harry said. His face was still bright red. “I’ll give her what for!”

All unknowing, Marianne free-wheeled down past the Pinhoe Arms, more or less at that moment. At the bottom of the hill, she braked, put one foot down, and stared. The expensive taxi from Uphelm was standing throbbing outside the house where Nicola lived. As Marianne stopped, Nicola’s dad, who ought to have been working on the Post Office wall, hurried out of the house carrying Nicola wrapped in a mass of blankets and got into the taxi with her. Marianne could hear the wretched, whooping, choking breathing of Nicola from where she stood.

“Taking her to the hospital in Hopton,” old Miss Callow said, standing watching. “Doctor says she’ll die if they don’t.”

Nicola’s mother, looking desperately anxious, hurried out of the house in her best hat, calling instructions over her shoulder to Nicola’s eldest sister as she left. She climbed into the taxi too, and it drove away at once, faster than Marianne had ever seen it go.

Marianne rode on to Furze Cottage, almost crying again. It might have been the Farleighs who sent the whooping cough, but it was Gammer who had provoked them. As she wheeled her bike into the shed, she decided she would have to have another talk with Mum.

But that all went out of her mind when Dad—red faced and furious—burst in through the front door as Marianne came through the back and began shouting at her at once. He began with, “What do you mean, giving away that egg?” and went on to say that Marianne was a worse disappointment than Joe was and, having torn her personality to shreds, accused her of spreading evil talk about Gammer. Finally he sent her to her room in disgrace.

Marianne sat there with Nutcase, doing her best to stop the tears trickling off her face onto Nutcase. “I was only trying to be brave and truthful,” she said to Nutcase. “Does this happen to everyone who tries to do the right thing? Why does no one believe me?” She knew she would have to talk to Joe. He seemed to be the only person in the world who might listen to her.