She had a great Dane and she went about alone with him for choice, her arm round his neck. One day he was sick and started groaning, and his stomach swelled and he went into the thickest part of the laurel bushes and died of poison in half an hour. Mariella came from a French lesson in time to receive his dying look. She thought he reproached her, and her head, fainting in anguish, fell over his, and she said to him: ‘It wasn’t my fault.’ She lay beside him and would not move. The gardener buried him in the evening and she lay on the grave, pale, extinguished and silent. When Judith went home to supper she was still lying there. Nobody saw her cry, and no one ever heard her speak of him again. She was the one who always picked up naked baby-birds, and worms and frogs and caterpillars. She had a toad which she loved, and she wanted to keep a pet snake. One day she brought one home from the long-grass meadow; but Miss Pim had a faint turn and the grandmother instructed Julian to kill it in the back yard. Charlie dared her to go three times running through the field with the bull in it, and she did. Charlie wouldn’t. She could walk without a tremor on the bit of the roof that made everyone else feel watery inside; and she delighted in thunderstorms. Her hair crackled with electricity, and if she put her fingers on you you felt a tiny tingling of shock. She was elated and terrifying, standing at the window and smiling among all the flashes and thunder-cracks. Julian was the one she seemed to like best; but you never knew. She moved among them all with detached undemanding good-humour. Sometimes Judith thought Mariella despised her. But she was kind too: she made funny jokes to cheer you up after tears. Once Judith heard them whisper: ‘Let’s all run away from Judy’--and they all did. They climbed up the poplar tree at the bottom of the garden and made noises out of it at her, when she came by, pretending not to be looking for them. She went away and cried under the nursery sofa, hoping to die there before discovery. The darkness had a thick dusty acrid smell, and breathing was difficult. After hours, there were steps in the room; and then Mariella lifted the sofa frill and looked in. ‘Judy, come out. There’s chocolate biscuits for tea.’ With a fresh burst of tears, Judith came. ‘Oo! You do look cry-ey.’ She was dismayed. ‘Shall I try to make you laugh?’ Mariella unbuttoned her frock, stepped out of it and danced grotesquely in her holland knickers. Judith began to giggle and sob at the same time. ‘I’m the fat man,’ said Mariella. She blew out her cheeks, stuffed a cushion in her knickers and strutted coarsely. That was irresistible. You had to squeal with laughter. After that the others came in rather quietly and were very polite, not looking till her face had stopped being blotched and covering her hiccups with cheerful conversation. And after tea they asked her to choose the game. So everything was all right.