Fine line script reading this too shall pass

The pass is closed again. Mr Ashdown at the Fell Stile says the road over Hollin Gap won't be cleared before Thursday, so the coach from Kendal has gone back down and we are stuck with each other, the four of us and the cook, in a house built for sheep drovers and not for guests. I have counted the rooms twice. There are eleven, and the one above the kitchen is the only warm one, so I have given it to the widow Sayer, who coughs all night and has not once thanked me, which is fair enough.

You will want to know about the carved board over the hearth. Ashdown's grandfather put it up after the flood of 'eighty-three, when the beck took the bridge and two of the Harker boys with it. It says this too shall pass in letters a child could have cut with a penknife, and everyone who comes through here stops to read it and says nothing. I thought it was a sour sort of comfort until last night, when the lamp smoked and Sayer's boy began to cry, and Ashdown simply reached up, took the board down, and set it on the table in front of the lad as if it were a slate for sums.

The boy asked what it meant. Ashdown said it meant the snow would stop. The boy said the snow had been falling since Michaelmas. Ashdown said then it was overdue, and the whole kitchen laughed, even Sayer, and I saw the boy's shoulders come down from around his ears.

This morning the sky is a clean blue and the drifts are up to the sills. Ashdown has already been out with the shovel. I am writing this by the window, watching the far ridge go pink, and I think I will walk out to the gap myself once the men have cleared it. I want to see the road come back.

Your loving sister, Eleanor