Although village and school may look as they did 100 years ago, there have been changes for the better electricity and mains water make life more comfortable, families are smaller, there is less acute poverty and many now own a car On the down side, cottages are bought by outsiders and numbers at the school are so low that closure is threatened Dolly Clare is now in her final illness, but life is stimulated by the energetic children and the bristling indignation of Mrs Pringle