Winky's front room

Later Rainbow did the counting-off, and there was a line about the sad ones being the only two quiet enough to hear a crack in the glass, and one about the worried one checking twice, and I thought: he has a line for everybody's feeling doing its job.

Mine is the one that stops feelings happening for a minute. That is a real job. It is genuinely needed and it got a yard through a hot afternoon.

It is just not the same job as the one Mopsy was doing on a wall at six o'clock.

Then Rainbow stood up and did the counting-off, and there was a line in it about the one who cannot hurry holding the ladder queue together for an hour and forty minutes, and Mello looked at the floor.

Then Rainbow stood up and said the cross one had said the thing nobody wanted to hear, and said it like an ordinary fact about a working day, not like a warning.

Jelly cheered at my name, incidentally. Loudly. Having been up that orchard since eight o'clock in the morning.

"I have been telling this land for years that every colour belongs," I said. "I would like you to notice what actually happened today. Because I have been walking since the spring, and I could not have done one single bit of it."

And I counted them off, and every one of them was a fluff doing the thing they have been quietly apologising for their whole life.

Then Winky, who had been unusually quiet for nearly four minutes, said: "Can we do the cloud now?"

Then Rainbow stood up and said the worried ones had checked twice and the frightened ones had gone anyway, and said it as though it were an ordinary fact about a working day.

I did not cry. I would like that written down too.

Then Rainbow stood up and started the counting-off, and the very first thing he said was the worried one checked twice.

First. Before the cross one, before the shy one, before any of it.

I went hot all over and looked at my paws and Shivvy, next to me, did not say anything, which was exactly right.