At the beginning of June the river floods, ducks swim through the drawing-room windows and Ebin Willoweed rows his daughters round the submerged garden. The grandmother dresses in magenta for her seventy-first-birthday whist drive and looks forward to the first prize of pate de foie gras. Later Ives the gardener leads a morose procession up river, dragging her to a funeral in a black-draped punt. the miller goes mad and drowns himself and a cottage is set alight. Villagers keep dying and at the ...