Ornate heart flash sheet

The frost has got into the top pane again, so I am writing this at the kitchen table with my coat on and the stove door open for the light. Dad says the beck will hold until March if we are lucky, and the ewes are all in the low field under the hay ricks. I have been drawing hearts all week instead of the accounts. Mrs Pryce at the chapel bazaar wants six for her Christmas cards, and she says she will pay in eggs if I am not too clever about it.

I have enclosed the best of them. The rose came first, copied from the hedge roses we cut back in October and kept in a jug in the dairy until the petals went brown at the edges. The moth came in under the lamp on Tuesday and sat on the sugar bowl until morning, so I drew it quickly before it could change its mind. The small heart in the middle is for you, with a star in the centre, because you always said the star over the top field was the only thing you could find to steer by when you came home late from the market.

The eye one I am less sure of. Mam used to say that eye kept watch over the lambing pens so nothing got into the straw that should not, and I scratched it in before I could decide whether it was a kindness. The bird on the bottom left is wrong, I know. Its wing has come out like a spoon. Keep the sheet anyway and choose whichever one you like best for the locket you are paying off in Leeds.

Send the money for the train when you can. Dad will fetch you from the station if you tell him the day, though he will pretend he came only for the post. Your loving sister, Nell.

P.S. The beck held.