Reginald Bryce was a precocious boy who, at the age of ten, thought he saw a young girl disappear down a rabbit hole in Cheshire. He had been walking along a riverbank on Sunday after church when he was drawn to a voice calling “But wait, Mr. Rabbit.” Reg began to jog through the undergrowth, emerging into a clearing just as a pair of stockings disappeared into the roots of a sprawling willow. He shouted as he ran over, tripping on a clump of weeds and tearing his breeches at the knee. There were no stockings, no girl, and no Mr. Rabbit to be seen so Reg, shaken, limped home. His mother had been sitting at the drawing room window when he came in. He told her about the girl on the riverbank and she tightened her grip on her needlepoint. Thoughts raced through her head of the sanitarium in Oxford or sending Reg to Sumatra with the merchant marine. Instead she whipped him for tearing his trousers and there was no more talk of girls or rabbits. Reginald was apprenticed to a shopkeeper a few years later and married a girl from Aylesbury a few years after that. They had three daughters, Mary, Margaret, and Carol. Carol died of scarlet fever when she was three. Reg bought a share in a grain mill. Once, they took the train to Brighton on holiday. One day, while out walking, Reg fell into the River Higham and drowned. He was seventy-one.