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jealously. She pushed the bun and note at me and dusted off her hands. “Let’s get on.”
    “She can’t just
take
it,” said Ann Jelly. “She can’t just
eat
it.”
    “Why not?” Billy hovered, unable to take his eyes off the bun.
    “What’s on out there? Not seals again, is it?” And Dad was there in the doorway.
    “Here, Dad, whose writing is this?” Bee snatched the note from Tatty and held it up.
    “ ‘For the little one.’ ” He lowered the note, eyed me and the sparkling bun, took up the note again. “Someone very old, from that curling writing. And the shakiness. Someone very old and frail.”
    “So someone very old and frail is soft for our Missk?” said Billy in tones of hilarity, and the others prepared to laugh along.
    “Or wants to
poison
her,” said Tatty.
    “Give me that,” said Dad.
    I handed him the bun, and licked my fingers of the sticky sweetness they’d picked up from it. He broke the bun apart—silence fell around me at the sight of its soft yellow insides. He sniffed both pieces.
    “I will eat it, to test,” said Billy. “If you want.”
    Tatty pushed him off the step. “As if he’d rather risk his only
son
, when he has all these
daughters
spare.”
    “Here, eat it, Misskaella.” Dad handed the bun back.
    “Now?” cried Billy.
    “She’s full to the brim of porridge!” said Ann Jelly.
    “Where I can see you,” said Dad. “And all the rest of you. Otherwise you’ll have nagged and badgered it out of her before you reach the end of the street. And it is for her.” He flapped the note at them. Billy turned away and kicked a cobble.
    “Shouldn’t she be made to share?” said Lorel longingly.
    “I don’t see why,” said Dad. “Is there anything in the note about sharing?” He pretended to read it again. “Why, I don’t believe there is.”
    “He doesn’t mind losing
you
, Missk,” said Tatty. “As long as the rest of us aren’t poisoned.”
    It was a waste to cram the bun, so light and sweet, into my mouth so fast, to gulp it down under all those envious gazes without properly enjoying it. Dad shooed us off as soon as I’d secured the last mouthful. We went silently, me still chewing.
    “Who can it be,” murmured Billy at my elbow, “so old and frail and in love? For the
little
one,” he added sentimentally. “For the
little
one, that I would bounce upon my knee. For the
little
one, who I’d like to put my hand up the skirts of—”
    “Stop it, Billy,” said Ann Jelly. “It is not Misskaella’s fault some old grandpa’s taken to her.”
    “Or a grand
mam
,” I said indistinctly, poking stuck bun scrapsfrom my teeth with a finger. “A grandmam could have
made
that bun.”
    “Never,” said Billy. “That’s a mainland bun, that sort. That’s a Cordlin-baker bun, that Fisher gets in sometimes.”
    I tried to enjoy the last tastes of exotic Cordlin.
Was
it some old man acting fond? Was that better than the bun’s being something to do with the seals, and my attraction for them?
    When we came home that afternoon I went straight in to Mam. “Can I see that paper,” I said, “that came with the bun this morning? Did Dad show you?”
    “Whatever do you want that for?” Mam looked up from scrubbing the table.
    “To examine the writing. I never saw it properly. Only Dad and Tat got to see it.”
    “Too late; I have burnt it in the stove. You will have to wait until he favors you again, whoever it was.” And she went back to scrubbing, hard.

    On my birthday, a pair of thin socks, shop-bought socks with roses embroidered on the cuffs, was left on the little snowdrift at the door.
    “Your lover man has left you a present, Missk!” Billy carried the socks in high over his head, and deposited them by my porridge bowl, from where Tatty immediately snatched them up.
    “Oh, stop, Billy,” said Ann Jelly. “It’s Ambler’s granny has put them there.”
    “She would have had Ambler bring them,” said Grassy, “as she did