Pink iced doughnut tattoo on a leg

The road over Hollin Pass has been shut since Tuesday, so no post has come up to the inn, and I am writing this by the kitchen range with my feet on the fender and the window gone white with frost. You will not believe what the snow has done to our larder. Mr Pritchard, who came in off the moor on Wednesday with a face like wet paper, left a brown paper parcel with me and asked that it be kept until the thaw. It was a box of doughnuts from the bakery in Stainforth, and it had sat on the back step since morning, so you can imagine.

Here is the trouble. By the time the box reached the fire, one of them had already been bitten, a proper crescent taken out of the pink icing, and the jam had run down the side in a bright red tongue. Mr Pritchard swore he had not touched it. The dog, who is an honest creature, looked guilty enough to hang.

We ate the rest between us that night, Mabel and I, sitting up with the lamp turned low while the wind worked at the shutters. The sprinkles had gone soft in the warmth and stuck to our fingers. Mabel said the bitten one was a sign of something, though she would not say what, only that it looked like a little moon going down behind a hill.

When the road opened on Friday, Mr Pritchard came back for his parcel and found it empty except for one doughnut, unbitten, wrapped in a clean napkin with a note in my hand: keep the bite for the next one. He laughed until he had to sit down on the stairs. I still don't know whether he understood it. I think he did.