Pink ribbon, rose and wing tattoo

The lane past the mill has been shut since Tuesday, so the carrier's cart has not come, and I am writing this at the kitchen table with the stove ticking and snow piled to the sill. Mr Pell left a rose in a jam jar on the windowsill yesterday, a deep red one he carried up from the glasshouse at Hollin Farm, though the petals have gone the colour of old brick now. He tied a length of pink ribbon round the jar's neck because he said it was the only thing in his coat pocket that wasn't a pencil stub. I have never known a man so fond of ribbons.

The house is full of waiting people. There is a clockmaker from Leeds who keeps winding his pocket watch and frowning at it, a widow with a basket of unfinished socks, and two boys who have worn a path down the bank on a tea tray. Mr Pell says the rose wants its stem in clean water and the ribbon wants a good wind to show off in. Then he went out to the barn with a ladder and came back with the copper weathervane that snapped in the October gale, one wing bent and dark with soot, the other still green where the rain got under it.

He has been hammering it straight by lamplight every evening since. Last night he showed me the ribbon once more, looped twice round his finger, and said he meant to tie it to that wing when the thaw comes, so the bird on the barn roof can point wherever it likes and still be wearing something pretty. I told him the bird was only ever going to point north. He said north was a fine place to start.

The pass should open by Easter. Come home then, and bring the good scissors. I want you to see the wing before he does anything foolish with the ladder.

Your loving sister, Mary