Hand holding botanical sprigs on upper arm

The road has been shut since Tuesday, so the carrier who was meant to bring the flour and the salt cod has not come, and Mrs Abbott has made us eat barley broth three nights running. Mr Pell, who has the room above the stables, says the drifts on the moor road stand higher than the gatepost. I believe him. The snow has come level with the parlour sill.

Yesterday I went out to the rowan by the well to cut what sprigs I could reach for the mantel, because Mrs Abbott says a house with no green in it in midwinter invites the cold to stay. The berries were still hard and bright, and the bracken under the snow had gone the colour of old pennies. When I straightened with my arms full, I found a hand lying in the drift beside the wall, fingers open, its wrist frilled in a lace cuff like a christening gown. Nothing else of it showed above the white. I stood there a long while feeling foolish, then laid a fern frond across its palm, and the fingers closed around it as neatly as a lady taking a glove from a shop girl.

I did not tell Mrs Abbott at first. This morning the drift was smooth and the hand was gone, but on the windowsill sat a bundle of rowan and bracken tied with a strip of that same lace, the knot pulled tight the way Father used to tie the hay. I have put it in the window where the lamp can reach it. Write soon, and tell me whether the Carlisle road has opened yet.

Your loving sister, Nell