Elephant with flower crown and camera

The snow has shut the pass since Tuesday, and the Crown at Hollin Fell has become a sort of parlour for lost travellers. Mr Ardle has run out of candles twice and the cook has started measuring the broth in teacups. Among us is Mrs Ottoline Greave, who arrived on the carrier's sledge with a wicker trunk, a hatbox of silk flowers and a brass camera the size of a coal scuttle. She is an elephant, as you will have guessed from the trunk she tucks neatly into her collar, and she is the most punctual person I have ever met.

Every morning at eight she sets up her tripod by the staircase window and photographs the household in turn. She has made the scullery girl stand on a stool, the landlord hold a ladder like a sceptre, and me pose with a cup of cocoa I did not want. Before each sitting she buttons her shirt to the throat and pins fresh blossoms into her crown, paper roses and tiny violets, which she says keep the light honest.

Last night she asked me to hold the lens cap while she developed the plates in the cellar. I went down with a lantern, and she showed me the frames one by one, each face set in its own small weather. Then she held up the last plate, which was of the empty chair by the fire where nobody has sat since the flood. It was blurred and bright, as if someone had only just stood up from it.

She said, "I always leave one chair for the weather to be honest in." I have been thinking about that all morning, and the snow is still falling.

Your loving sister, Margaret