‘Wait a minute,’ he said curiously. ‘Is this river which you let run out our river up at the Estate?’
‘You own the river bank and the stream to midway across,’ said Minnie with the same unexpected authority. ‘If you want to keep it deep up there you can build your own sluices.’
‘Then you wouldn’t have any water here.’ He sounded rather pleased at the prospect.
‘If I didn’t have any, you’d have too much,’ she said promptly. ‘There’s quite enough for everybody. And if you contaminate it, you’re fined. Now, we eat over there in the barn.’
He nodded gravely, as if he were getting it off by heart, but the word had made him dubious.
‘It’s a real studio inside,’ she explained hastily. ‘My father, who was a well-known painter, had it properly converted.’
‘So it’s done rather well, is it?’
‘
