Broken crayons still color lettering

You will think I've gone soft, but I have finally got the paint tin open. The barge is called Patience Ellery, and the lock-keeper's girl, Mab, has been sitting on the gunwale every morning since you left, sorting a biscuit tin of crayons on her knees. Half of them are snapped. She says they are no good, and she flings the stubs into the cut as if they owe her money.

Yesterday I watched her try to colour a heron with a blue stub no longer than my thumb. It came out lilac and lopsided, and she held it up to me as if it were a crime. I told her the heron did not mind. Herons have seen worse than lilac. She looked at me for a long while, then pressed the stub so hard the wax squeaked, and filled the whole bird in.

Here is the part I cannot stop thinking about. Last night the top gate would not seat. Mab's father was off at the pub in Stoke, so I went down with the windlass in the dark. When I came back up she had the lamp lit and had painted the gate's name board in six colours, every snapped end she owned, all of it wonky and bright. Beneath it, in capitals like a shopfront sign, she had written BROKEN CRAYONS STILL COLOR. I asked what it meant. She said it was the rule of the lock.

I have kept the board on the cabin roof where the wind can have it. You should come and see it before the rain takes the paint.

Love, Margaret