When the children saw the blood they were frightened no longer. They crowded round him and began to scream. Even Isabel leaped about crying: “The blood! The blood!” Pip forgot all about his duck. He simply threw it away from him and shouted, “I saw it. I saw it,” and jumped round the wood block. Rags, with cheeks as white as paper, ran up to the little head, put out a finger as if he wanted to touch it, shrank back again and then again put out a finger. He was shivering all over. Even Lottie, frightened little Lottie, began to laugh and pointed at the duck and shrieked: “Look, Kezia, look.” “Watch it!” shouted Pat. He put down the body and it began to waddle—with only a long spurt of blood where the head had been; it began to pad away without a sound towards the steep bank that led to the stream. . . . That was the crowning wonder. “Do you see that? Do you see that?” yelled Pip. He ran among the little girls tugging at their pinafores. “It’s like a little engine. It’s like a funny little railway engine,” squealed Isabel. But Kezia suddenly rushed at Pat and flung her arms round his legs and butted her head as hard as she could against his knees. “Put head back! Put head back!” she screamed. When he stooped to move her she would not let go or take her head away. She held on as hard as she could and sobbed: “Head back! Head back!” until it sounded like a loud strange hiccup. “It’s stopped. It’s tumbled over. It’s dead,” said Pip. Pat dragged Kezia up into his arms. Her sun-bonnet had fallen back, but she would not let him look at her face. No, she pressed her face into a bone in his shoulder and clasped her arms round his neck. The children stopped screaming as suddenly as they had begun. They stood round the dead duck. Rags was not frightened of the head any more. He knelt down and stroked it, now. “I don’t think the head is quite dead yet,” he said. “Do you think it would keep alive if I gave it something to drink?” But Pip got very cross: “Bah! You baby.” He whistled to Snooker and went off. When Isabel went up to Lottie, Lottie snatched away. “What are you always touching me for, Isabel?” “There now,” said Pat to Kezia. “There’s the grand little girl.” She put up her hands and touched his ears. She felt something. Slowly she raised her quivering face and looked. Pat wore little round gold ear-rings. She never knew that men wore ear-rings. She was very much surprised. “Do they come on and off?” she asked huskily. 10 Up in the house, in the warm tidy kitchen, Alice, the servant girl, was getting the afternoon tea. She was “dressed.” She had on a black stuff dress that smelt under the arms, a white apron like a large sheet of paper, and a lace bow pinned on to her hair with two jetty pins. Also her comfortable carpet slippers were changed for a pair of black leather ones that pinched her corn on her little toe something dreadful. . . .