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And Granny had gently picked her up, a little awkwardly, and sat her on her lap and shushed her and called her ‘my little jiggit’, while on the floor her sheepdogs, Thunder and Lightning, watched her in doggish amazement. Granny wasn’t particularly at home around children, because they didn’t baa.
When Tiffany had stopped crying out of sheer lack of breath, Granny had put her down on the rug and opened the oven, and Tiffany had watched the lamb come alive again.
When Tiffany got a little older, she found out that ‘jiggit’ meant twenty in the Yan Tan Tethera, the ancient counting language of the shepherds. The older people still used it when they were counting things they thought of as special. She was Granny Aching’s twentieth grandchild.