'''Well, let me tell you something, mister. They may not be proper houses, these boats, with proper doors, but they're homes - our homes. And we wouldn't thank you for any other, see. We're neighbours, and friends and family, all rolled into one, we are, on this river,'' she told him, and was surprised to discover that out of nowhere a couple of slow fat tears were sliding down her cheeks. She wiped them away impatatiently. ''Other people are welcome to what they've got, we don't want it. Because the way we see it, mister, is that if we don't have it then it's not worth having.'' Something else that surprised her, something else she'd never articulated before, had barely been aware she had thought it. Waking in summer to a mist on the water, the valley a pool of still green silence made deeper by birdsong, days when life is moved outdoors and there's the river to cool off in. And winters sung around the stove, with the sound of owls outside in the frosty dark or when a wind blows and there's rain on the roof.'