The Tale of Oat Cake Crag - By Susan Wittig Albert Page 0,75

and past the lovely white cottages of Greenodd and into Morecambe Bay and finally out into the broad, blue Irish Sea, a journey that takes a great deal more time to make than for me to tell you about it. But if you think this lovely adventure has ended when Wilfin’s water is lost in the vastness of the salty ocean, you must think again, for the sun on the sea is warm and inviting and pulls the water up to itself, into the highest atmosphere, where each drop lives in the clouds until the perfect moment, when it falls once again onto the higher fells, onto Crinkles Crag and Bow Fell and High Raise, and onto the lower fells, too, onto Latterbarrow and Claife Heights and then into the myriad rivulets that hurry down to Wilfin Beck and its willows and the green grass of the Land Between the Lakes.

Beatrix was reflecting on this wonderful cycle of nature as she lifted her woolen skirt and stepped from rock to mossy rock across the beck, whilst the dippers and wagtails and water-ouzels, splashing and chirping in the shallows, cheered her on. It was comforting, somehow, to know that all the life around her was part of a larger pattern, in which even the smallest drop of water, the least lichen and liverwort, and the slightest water-ouzel had its great and important and even magnificent role to play. It helped her to believe and trust that her own life would turn out as it was meant to do, no matter how dark it might seem at the moment.

It was in this more optimistic frame of mind that Beatrix looked across the meadow and realized that she had reached a fork in the path. One way led north into the higher fells, in the direction of Latterbarrow, where there were no houses and no people, only a great stone cairn standing guard at its lonely post and a splendid western view of the Coniston mountains and the Kentmere fells beyond. Oh, and from Latterbarrow a path went on to Windermere and Wray Castle, that huge, ugly pile of rock where her family had stayed one holiday long ago, when she was sixteen. Should she go that way, and visit Wray, and spend the day poking around her past?

But the other, nearer path led to the vicarage. This, of course, was where Reverend Sackett lived—the same Reverend Sackett who was pledged to marry her friend Grace Lythecoe sometime next month, if nothing intervened. At the distant sight of its gray stone walls, its gables and steeply pitched slate roofs, Beatrix discovered that her question was answered. She had not consciously chosen to come this way, but now that she had, she knew why. She would have a sit-down chat with Mrs. Thompson, the vicar’s cook-housekeeper, who was destined to be replaced when the vicar and Mrs. Lythecoe were married. Mrs. Thompson was said to listen at doors. If she knew or suspected that she was facing imminent discharge, she would have a very good reason to wish that the marriage would not take place, and (although one did not like to think of it) the motivation to write those ugly letters.

But although Beatrix had met Mrs. Thompson on one or two occasions, she didn’t really know the woman and felt that she couldn’t just go barging in on such a slight acquaintance. She needed an excuse for her visit, like the tablecloth she had taken to Matilda Crook for mending. What could it be?

And then, as she asked herself this question, she realized that she was very thirsty, and thought that no excuse could be better than the truth. She looked down at the little dog. “Rascal, do you suppose you could occupy yourself for a while? I am going to drop in on Mrs. Thompson at the vicarage.”

“Of course,” Rascal agreed cheerily. “I’ll just pop out to the barn and see if Cyril is around.” Cyril was the shaggy old sheepdog who had lived at the vicarage for longer than Rascal could remember. “The dear fellow is really rather lonely. He doesn’t get out much these days, and I like to drop in and bring him up to date on the news whenever I’m in the neighborhood.”

A few minutes later, Beatrix was ringing the bell at the vicarage’s tradesman’s entrance, around the back of the large house, near the kitchen. The bell was answered by a meek-looking young girl in a white