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Our pa looks toward the sound of the horses and shakes his head. "No time, boy. No time." He jumps up and goes away and I yell again.
    Our pa comes back with Mr. Jackson, who stares down at me with a terrible look on his face. He don't say nothing, but goes away while our pa just stands there looking after him. Then Mr. Jackson is back again and throws down the rope we use to measure how deep we've dug. There's a knot in it every foot. I grab a knot and hold on and he and our pa pull me up out the hole so I land on the green carpet that's like grass. I jump up, though I hurt all over, and there I am, standing in front of the undertakers in their top hats and the boy mutes in their tiny black coats and the horses nodding so the black feathers strapped to their heads move. Behind the carriage holding the coffin are the mourners in black, all staring at me. I want to laugh at the looks they give me, but I see Mr. Jackson's awful face and I run away.
    Later, after our pa's got rum down me and sat me by the fire with a blanket, he knocks me round the ears. "Don't ever do that again, boy," he says--like I planned to stay down the hole all night. "I'll lose me job and then where'll we be?" Then Mr. Jackson comes and whips me to make sure I've learned my lesson. I don't care, though, I hardly feel the whip. Nothing can ever hurt so bad as the cold down that grave.

DECEMBER 1901

Richard Coleman
    I told Kitty we've been invited for New Year's by the same people as last year. She was quiet, looking at me with those dark brown eyes that seduced me years ago but now simply judge me. If she hadn't looked at me like that I might not have added what I did.
    "I've already told them we've accepted," I said, although I hadn't yet. "With pleasure."
    We shall go on accepting their invitations every year until Kitty becomes my wife again.

MARCH 1903

Lavinia Waterhouse
    It was nothing short of a miracle. My best friend at the bottom of our garden! Can anything be more perfect than that?
    I was feeling decidedly melancholy this morning as I brushed my hair, looking out of the window into our new garden. Although it is a sweet little patch, and Ivy May and I have a lovely bedroom looking out onto it, I couldn't help feeling a pang for our old house. It was smaller, and on a busy street, and not on the doorstep of a place as lovely as Hampstead Heath. But it was where I was born, and full of memories of my childhood. I wanted to take the bit of wallpaper in the hallway where Papa marked how tall Ivy May and I had grown every year, but he said I mustn't because it would damage the wall. I did cry as we left.
    Then out of the corner of my eye I saw a fluttering, and when I looked over at the house backing onto ours, there was a girl hanging out of a window and waving! Well. I squinted and after a moment recognized her--it was Maude, the girl from the cemetery. I knew we had moved close to the cemetery but did not know she was here as well. I picked up my handkerchief and waved until my arm ached. Even Ivy May, who never pays attention unless I pinch her (and not even then sometimes), got up from her bed to see what the fuss was about.
    Maude called out something to me, but she was too far away and I couldn't hear. Then she pointed down at the fence separating our gardens and held up ten fingers. We are such kindred spirits that I understood immediately she meant we should meet there in ten minutes. I blew her a kiss and ducked inside to get dressed as quick as I could.
    "Mama! Mama!" I shouted all the way down the stairs. Mama came running from the kitchen, thinking I was ill or had hurt myself. But when I told her about Maude she seemed not the least interested. She has not wanted me to see the Colemans, though she would never say why. Perhaps she has forgot them by now, but I have never forgot Maude, even after all this time. I knew we were destined to be together.
    I ran outside and to the garden fence, which was too high to see over. I called to