Two dragonflies in bold black silhouette

The pump at Coldham Sluice finally gave out on Tuesday, so I have been sitting on the bank since dawn with nothing to do but watch the water come up brown over the sill. Mr Pask says the men from the Board will bring a new engine by Michaelmas, which is what he said last year too. Don't tell Mother I wrote on the back of the drainage schedule. There was nothing else in the hut but ink that won't stop blotting.

Yesterday two dragonflies came down the dyke and settled on the cut reed beside the gauge board, one slanted across the other as if they were arguing about the wind. Their wings are so dark they look cut from tar paper, and when the sun slid behind the church tower they seemed to go out altogether, like a pair of lamps somebody had turned down. The farm boy watched them with his mouth open. He wanted to catch them for his jar. I told him they were better off where they were, and he looked at me as though I had made up a rule.

I have thought about them since. Pask says the old fen men called them sewing needles and believed they could stitch a child's lips shut if one got into the cradle. Nonsense, I told him, but I measured the gauge twice this morning all the same, and the level is holding. Perhaps that is all the superstition was ever for, a way of making a person pay attention.

Come at Easter if the roads are dry. I will show you the pair, if they return, and you can tell me which one is the bigger.

Love, Ada