Tom Wildgoose, smuggler or spy or no, was hers. She was happy to share him with Peter, as she shared most things. But it was rather different to have a third person, even Genty, there and not sharing him at all. But she had enough sense to keep all that to herself; and ran the Wise Woman’s errands, to fetch things from her cottage, and put down food for Grizelda without any protest. Peter seemed not to mind so much, and whenever he could get away from Latin with his father, there was always the busy lambing fold for him to turn to. (‘You did ought to be a shepherd: proper way wi’ the ewes ye’ve got,’ Sim Bundy told him, and Peter flushed with pleasure at the old shepherd’s praise.) But on the third morning, when Damaris arrived at Joyous Gard, the nanny-goat was no longer picketed in the little clearing, and when she slipped in through the half-open doorway there was no sign of the Wise Woman, and Tom Wildgoose was lying propped high on a thick roll of dry bracken, looking more like a real person and less like the flushed and restless shell of one.
