She filled the kettle, set it on the hob and, taking a clean tablecloth from a drawer in the table, spread it and laid out the tea things.
‘‘If I’d known you were a-comin’,” she said, “I’d have bought some of those sugary biscuits you used to like when you were a child. I did get a loaf of new bread as I came from the Station and her Ladyship gave me some butter and eggs before I left The Castle.”
Iola was wiping her eyes.
Her conversation with Nanny did not seem to have got her very far. At the same time she felt better in herself.
The fear, which had been like a lump in her breast ever since yesterday, was not so heavy or so painful and it was almost as if Nanny, in her inimitable way, had given her hope, although what it might be, she could not yet formulate.
The kettle started to
