the yard

"Has anybody actually thanked Blushy?"

I said that in the middle of the yard at five o'clock, loudly, and the yard turned round, and Blushy went the colour of a strawberry and wanted to go home. I knew that would happen. I did it anyway, and I have thought about it since, and I would do it again, because six hours on the bottom of a ladder is six hours and nobody had said one word.

Blushy stayed. Held the ladder through the whole of it, went red for eleven seconds in front of everybody, and did four more fluffs afterwards.

Some of them I had to get second-hand. I was not round the side of the barn for the knot; Fizzy told me about that at about three, considerably impressed and slightly cross about it. I was not at the wall at half past four when Neaty counted, but I had it inside ten minutes because the yard was full of it.

And then at five o'clock Beamy stopped in the middle of the yard and said, loudly, "Has anybody actually thanked Blushy?"

The yard turned round.

It came all at once, the way it always does — up from the feet, through the middle, out across the face, and both ears going, and the horrible bright certainty that every fluff present can see them going, which makes them go more.

"Six hours," Beamy was saying, delighted. "Six hours on that ladder. I've been up it three times."