Chapter 16

For whatever reason. the New Year was not celebrated. The terrible weather forced the girls to work like fury to keep the yard free of snow. Each morning they would both be shoveling away to keep the passage to the stables, dairy and cowsheds free. Caroline wondered whether she ought not to ask Grace if they could not at least wear some form of covering for their feet, as she looked down at her frozen blue toes and feared that she might lose them to frostbite.

As if to forestall any such request, Grace herself raised the matter, one morning when both girls were shivering in the kitchen, warming themselves before the fire and drinking from two steaming mugs of cocoa.

“No, Caroline! You may not have covering for your feet, you wicked girl! I know what you’ve been thinking and you are to stop thinking it this instant. As a penalty for harboring such thoughts, you will get straight back outside and not come back in till I tell you. Go on! Get outside this instant, and when you are finally allowed to come in there is a house to be thoroughly cleaned!”

When, after two terrible hours, a penitent and freezing cold Caroline was finally allowed inside again it took all day before feeling returned to her feet and she would never again ask for any alleviation of Grace’s strict code of total nudity at all times and in all weathers. This was the first time she had attracted Grace’s displeasure since that terrible three weeks in late summer and she vowed thenceforth to endure any hardship rather than incur such wrath again.

It was not until early March that the daytime temperatures once again rose above freezing and the thaw set in. Engelbart enjoyed himself every day before the fire, but the two girls were constantly outdoors seeing to the work of the farm. Caroline quite forgot her fears for her bare feet and was out every morning shoveling the fallen snow away from the yard. She was amazed at her increasing hardihood and even Grace expressed her admiration, telling her that there was no longer anything to choose between the two of them when it came to physical toughness. “I’ve just about taught you everything I know. I really am so very proud of you!” she told her one evening after a particularly grueling day.

With the Spring, the tempo of work increased, what with sowing and getting the cattle out to pasture again. The bull was left alone with a selected few cows and Caroline had the awesome experience of helping them calve in due course. Gradually the crops grew and ripened and finally the fields lay golden and ready for harvesting. The morning of Caroline’s three hundred and sixty fifth day finally arrived.

On this fateful last morning, Caroline took her guest into the house and upstairs. Her clothes were where she had left them a year previously. She put them on reluctantly. They were very tight about the shoulders - she was a bigger and stronger girl by far, now and would need to completely fit herself out with a new wardrobe when she returned to normality.

“I don’t want to go, Grace! I want to live here with you and dear old Engelbart forever. Why must I go?”

“Because you must, my darling. When you see Janet Fortescue later today, I’m sure you’ll understand why you are going back to London and what work you must do for me.”

Grace kissed her for one last time - until when? she asked herself, and she picked up Engelbart and kissed his sweet furry face. Then she walked back to the road of whose existence she long since ceased to be aware - she had never heard even one vehicle pass along it all year.

The old car with its silent driver was waiting and soon she was on the little branch line on her way back to Derby. At Derby she barely had time to buy a morning paper before the London express left. When she asked if her year-old return ticket was still valid, the porter looked oddly at her and said, yes. of course, it was.

She sank into her First-Class seat and opened the paper. As luck would have it, she had opened it at the obituary page. There, staring out at her was a picture of her grandfather! She looked more closely at the paper, and what she saw caused such a shock to her system that she almost fainted.