Brush cross with LOVE lettering

The sign came down in Tuesday's gale, the one Mr Pell painted for Mrs Tully the spring she bought the house. You remember it, the board above the front door with the cross on it and the word underneath she insisted on, because she said guests came for the rooms but stayed for the feeling of being wanted. Mr Pell hauled it into the scullery and leant it against the copper like a sleeping dog, and there it has stood all week, dripping onto the flags.

Yesterday I took the brush to it. I am no painter, but the black was still good in the tin and the wood was dry enough. I did the cross first, one long downstroke and then the arm, pressing hard so the bristles split and left streaks down the stem the way Mr Pell's always did. The letters were harder. My hand kept wanting to make them neat, and I scrubbed them off with a rag twice until Mrs Tully came in and said a neat word was no use to anybody who had walked three miles in the rain. So I left them loose.

Mrs Tully is nearly ninety and has decided the board goes back up on Saturday, crooked or not. She says a sign ought to look like someone meant it. I have hung my coat on the hook beside the scullery door, and I think I will stay until she tells me otherwise.

Write back, and tell me if the gulls are still fighting over the bins behind the Grand.

Yours, Nell