Chapter 63

‘Your poor A’nt Emily’s worse,’ he said. ‘She’s heard a cradle rocking for a week or more, and now she says there’s hundreds of little angels with no bodies, like on Christmas cards, filling the place so as she can’t breathe. And she wants a butterfly net. So your A’nt Fanteague she’s sent for me. Poor Emily! That’s what comes of being childless.’ He gave the young couple an admonitory look. Jonathan, from the trap just outside, said: ‘It minds me of the tale of Melchisedech Barrows, the silent man. If there was a …