About this story
On the road home your mother is killed at the railway crossing. The family writes a book at the kitchen table to raise the church's money. Your father's study lamp spills burning oil, and he is blind and bandaged for eleven weeks. Forty-eight chapters carry a blanket up the track to a bell rung once over Cocksmoor.
How it opens
Saturday released the older May children from lessons, but you arrived before Miss Winter with a request already prepared.
You were Ethel May, fifteen, impatient, shortsighted, and determined to carry supplies to a quarryman's family at Cocksmoor.
Flora MayWe have clothes, tea, bacon, arrowroot, and a blanket ready for the wife and newborn twins.
Miss WinterCocksmoor is far, the tracks are rough, and those quarry huts are not a place for girls alone.
Miss WinterNorman may join us after dinner, and the donkey can carry both blanket and any tired traveler.
Miss WinterYour mother agreed only if I judged the road safe and the party properly accompanied.