 We were both up early when the big day came. I wandered into the kitchen for a shave, but Claude got dressed right away and went outside to arrange about the straw. The kitchen was a front room, and through the window I could see the sun just coming up behind the line of trees on top of the ridge, the other side of the valley. Each time Claude came past the window with an arm-load of straw. I noticed over the rim of the mirror the intent, breathless expression on his face, the great round, bullet-head thrusting forward, and the forehead wrinkled into deep corrugations right up to the hairline. I'd only seen this look on him once before, and that was the evening he'd asked Clarris to marry him. Today was so excited, even walked funny, treading softly as though the concrete around the filling station were a shade too hot for the soles of his feet, and he kept packing more and more straw into the back of the van to make it comfortable for Jackie. Then he came into the kitchen to get breakfast, and I watched him put the pot of soup on the stove and begin stirring it. He had a long metal spoon, and he kept on stirring and stirring all the time it was coming to the boil, and about every half-minute he leaned forward and stuck his nose into that sickly sweet steam of cooking horse-flesh. Then he started putting extras into it. Three peeled onions, a few young carrots, a cupful of stinging nettle tops, a teaspoon of Valentine's meat juice, twelve drops of cod liver oil, and everything he touched was handled very gently with the ends of his big fat fingers, as though it might have been a little fragment of Phoenician glass. He took some minced horse-meat from the ice-box, measured one handful into Jackie's bowl, three into the other, and when the soup was ready he shared it out between the two, pouring it over the meat. It was the same ceremony I'd seen performed each morning for the past five months, but never with such intense and breathless concentration as this. There was no talk, not even a glance my way, and when he turned and went out again to fetch the dogs, even the back of his neck and the shoulders seemed to be whispering, Ah, Jesus, don't let anything go wrong, and especially don't let me do anything wrong today. I heard him talking softly to the dogs in the pen as he put the leashes on them, and when he brought them round into the kitchen, they came in, prancing and pulling to get the breakfast, treading up and down with their little front feet and waving their enormous tails from side to side like whips. All right, Claude said, speaking at last. Which is it? Most mornings he'd offered to bet me a pack of cigarettes, but the sample complete. Ready to continue?