looked after â carefully pointing out, of course, that permission wasn't really theirs to give. Miss Wellington was delighted. Tim and Liz were her two ewe lambs. The rest of the village was equally happy that somebody else had taken on the job â for nothing, moreover â which only went to show how stupid people could be. Until it suddenly dawned on them that Tim had got some land for nothing.
  He hadn't really. He wasn't laying claim to the graveyard. He was only going to use it as an allotment in return for keeping it in order. But he'd got the use of it and they hadn't. They'd let land slip through their fingers. From under their very noses â and to a comparative newcomer, too. Half the village promptly said 'twas sacrilege and he shouldn't be allowed to use it. The other half claimed that by rights it ought to be theirs. Their forefathers had lived next door, or had owned land opposite or adjoining. Fred Ferry said his granddad used to graze sheep in there.
  How that made it his by rights, or was more respectful than growing vegetables in it, derived from logic clear only to Fred. On one thing he and the rest of the village were united, however. They wouldn't, they told each other at every opportunity, fancy eating anything grown in there .
  Tim, presumably with thoughts in that direction himself, ordered several loads of topsoil. To keep everybody happy he decided also to avoid the corner where there were mounds. In fact there were only two, the rest of the ground had obviously never been turned, but in a village you never can win.
  He did everything he could. Rather than have the topsoil tipped in soullessly from a lorry he had it piled in his driveway and wheeled it reverently across by wheelbarrow. When he was over there working he always took off his hat. In order that people could see where the mounds were and appreciate that he was respecting them he heaped them even higher and planted daffodils on top. All he got for his trouble was that when strangers spotted the unmistakable outlines and stopped to consider the matter over the wall, there was always somebody on hand, strategically placed so the Bannetts could hear them, to expound the ethics of the affair. That young folk nowadays had no sense of what was decent and proper; that if the truth were known the plot really belonged to them; that they wouldn't fancy eatin' any of they cabbages... and to speculate what, by current values, the graveyard was worth as land.
  The other thing that occupied the village that winter was working out why we'd bought a caravan. That we were going to sell the cottage and travel abroad was one of the rumours that came back to us. That we were going to start a caravan park was another. Even the closest of our local acquaintances â Tim, Father Adams and Fred Ferry, who knew we'd bought it so we could get away in it when the fancy took us and, we hoped, take the cats â had their own opinion as to how the venture would work out. The caravan might have come down the hill all right, they informed us regularly. They'd bet us anything we liked we'd never get it up .
  That, however, was a problem for the future. Meantime we had a more immediate one with Sass. Following an unfortunate oversight on my part he'd reverted to his neurosis about wool. Not just chewing holes in it, as many Siamese do (cat psychologists say it's because they're lonely), but treating it with hostility; not in any circumstances to be slept on; and if he got the chance he used it as a lavatory.
  It stemmed from the evening we brought him home as a kitten and introduced him to Shebalu. We put him in a cage-fronted basket, thinking he'd feel safer speaking to her from in there. Unfortunately instead of approaching him with caution, as Seeley had done to her when she was a kitten (adult cats are normally more afraid of strange kittens than the kittens are of them) Shebalu had put her nose
  He hadn't really. He wasn't laying claim to the graveyard. He was only going to use it as an allotment in return for keeping it in order. But he'd got the use of it and they hadn't. They'd let land slip through their fingers. From under their very noses â and to a comparative newcomer, too. Half the village promptly said 'twas sacrilege and he shouldn't be allowed to use it. The other half claimed that by rights it ought to be theirs. Their forefathers had lived next door, or had owned land opposite or adjoining. Fred Ferry said his granddad used to graze sheep in there.
  How that made it his by rights, or was more respectful than growing vegetables in it, derived from logic clear only to Fred. On one thing he and the rest of the village were united, however. They wouldn't, they told each other at every opportunity, fancy eating anything grown in there .
  Tim, presumably with thoughts in that direction himself, ordered several loads of topsoil. To keep everybody happy he decided also to avoid the corner where there were mounds. In fact there were only two, the rest of the ground had obviously never been turned, but in a village you never can win.
  He did everything he could. Rather than have the topsoil tipped in soullessly from a lorry he had it piled in his driveway and wheeled it reverently across by wheelbarrow. When he was over there working he always took off his hat. In order that people could see where the mounds were and appreciate that he was respecting them he heaped them even higher and planted daffodils on top. All he got for his trouble was that when strangers spotted the unmistakable outlines and stopped to consider the matter over the wall, there was always somebody on hand, strategically placed so the Bannetts could hear them, to expound the ethics of the affair. That young folk nowadays had no sense of what was decent and proper; that if the truth were known the plot really belonged to them; that they wouldn't fancy eatin' any of they cabbages... and to speculate what, by current values, the graveyard was worth as land.
  The other thing that occupied the village that winter was working out why we'd bought a caravan. That we were going to sell the cottage and travel abroad was one of the rumours that came back to us. That we were going to start a caravan park was another. Even the closest of our local acquaintances â Tim, Father Adams and Fred Ferry, who knew we'd bought it so we could get away in it when the fancy took us and, we hoped, take the cats â had their own opinion as to how the venture would work out. The caravan might have come down the hill all right, they informed us regularly. They'd bet us anything we liked we'd never get it up .
  That, however, was a problem for the future. Meantime we had a more immediate one with Sass. Following an unfortunate oversight on my part he'd reverted to his neurosis about wool. Not just chewing holes in it, as many Siamese do (cat psychologists say it's because they're lonely), but treating it with hostility; not in any circumstances to be slept on; and if he got the chance he used it as a lavatory.
  It stemmed from the evening we brought him home as a kitten and introduced him to Shebalu. We put him in a cage-fronted basket, thinking he'd feel safer speaking to her from in there. Unfortunately instead of approaching him with caution, as Seeley had done to her when she was a kitten (adult cats are normally more afraid of strange kittens than the kittens are of them) Shebalu had put her nose
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