Most Wednesdays Mother took care of the Rattigan children.

On her way back from the Dairy she would call at Granny Pocock's to collect them & they would come to play for a couple of hours.

Summer would find us up trees, making rickety dens from sticks & pieces of old fruit boxes, or down in ditches making elaborate traps for illusive (and never caught) rabbits. In Autumn there were chestnuts & muffins by the fire, tables scattered with paint brushes, scissors & glue.

But the best time of all was when Milly came.

All of a sudden one week instead of two visiting children there were three. Another, tiny, had appeared - as if from nowhere. Was it Granny Pocock's work? No, surely not.

Had she bought it?

Where did it come from?

What was its name?

We were told to hush and stop our prattling and for a while we were not allowed to do more than just watch little Milly.

'No touching', Mother would say as we marvelled over her tiny finger & toes.

But bye and bye she grew a little and if we were very careful and Mother was watching we were allowed to gently hold her for a minute or two.

Oh Milly, what a sweet & tiny thing you were. All we'd had to play with till then was our old rag dolls: Betsy with her button eyes and Dolly with the platted hair. But you Milly - you were real: and for hours and hours we would watch your sleeping face and flickering eyelids, your lips moving with some dreamful notion.

And sooner or later our giggling could not be contained and we would wake you with our laughter.

Mother would chide us and bustle us out the way, and we would go to our other playthings until, with her once again asleep we would steal close to her cot.