‘Aye, well, that’s not a man’s concern,’ agreed Titus.

‘It’s a pity then as women don’t have more of a say.’

‘Tha sounds like that Mrs Kitchen now.’

‘But she’s right, isn’t she?’

‘I suppose so,’ conceded Titus. ‘But politics is men’s work.’ He lit his pipe and the smoke drifted up to the ceiling and gradually filled the parlour as he puffed. Jennet took the laundry into the back so it wouldn’t be returned smelling worse than when it had come.

‘Well, we’ll soon know,’ she said, sitting down and picking up a stocking from the overflowing pile of her own mending. ‘Though I bet it won’t make a difference.’ She sewed in silence for a few minutes. ‘Dost tha think our Hannah will go to London with the Feildens?’ she asked. ‘I can’t imagine her going all that way.’

‘James Hindle would be put out about it,’ he replied.

‘So tha’s noticed then? I thought he were taken with her, but I didn’t like to say owt. It would be a step up for her if she wed him.’

‘Aye, it would. And he’s a good man.’

‘It’d be nice to see her settled with a schoolmaster for a husband.’

‘So tha thinks a weaver like me wouldn’t be good enough for her?’ he asked.

Jennet paused and studied him for a moment. ‘I thought tha were good enough to wait for thee,’ she reminded him.

He said nothing. They never discussed George Anderton and rarely alluded to him, although Jennet knew that he was always there, between them. There had been an unspoken agreement that nothing would ever be said to Bessie either. The child would always believe that Titus was her real father. It was better that way.

‘Aye,’ he said at last. ‘And I’m grateful.’

They sat in silence for a while, Titus smoking and Jennet sewing as a brisk wind got up and rattled at the ill-fitting windows and blew under the front door, making the rug rise up from the floor. There was a sound of shouting in the distance and Jennet thought Titus was right about Mr Turner rolling out the barrels again.

‘Mary said a funny thing,’ said Jennet after a while. ‘She said that she couldn’t get a job as a maid without a character reference and that Mr Sudell had never written one for her or Hannah.’

‘That right?’

‘But Hannah got a job.’

‘Aye.’ He seemed engrossed in the pamphlet he’d picked up, but she knew that he wasn’t reading because his eyes never moved across the page.

‘Mary seemed to think that I’d asked Mrs Whittaker to speak for her.’

‘Did she now?’

‘Titus!’ Jennet waited until he looked up at her. ‘Tha knows summat, doesn’t thee? It were thee that told our Hannah about the job.’

‘Mr Feilden mentioned they were looking for a new maid and I said I knew someone. That must have been good enough.’

‘Aye.’ Jennet still wasn’t convinced, but Titus had gone back to his reading and she needed to make sure the girls’ clothes were mended ready for church in the morning.