She wasn’t sure whether or not he was teasing, or if he had her mixed up with one of her sisters. She had often been with Billy when he and Harry had hailed each other, or met at harvest time when the whole village turned out to bring it home, the girls and women wearing their bonnets to keep the sun off their heads, and the men with their shirt sleeves rolled up to their elbows.

She fingered the end of the thick brown braid which hung over one shoulder, and told him, ‘I’m not a bairn any more. I was fifteen in May. I finished school in July and work at ’Hodges’ farm.’

He continued to gaze at her and then suddenly blinked. ‘Fifteen, eh? Well, good luck with your life, Ellen. The Hodges’re good folk. So, are you planning on staying wi’ them? Not spreading your wings and going to fly from ’village, are you?’

Ellen looked back at him and moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. Not now I’m not, she reflected thoughtfully, although I might have done before. She shook her head, and as she walked towards the door she heard him begin to whistle a tune that was vaguely familiar. She’d heard it on a penny whistle; Irish, she thought it was, though she couldn’t put a name to it.

Harry had seen her soft brown eyes, her chestnut-coloured hair. The old song sprang immediately to mind. ‘Fifteen, eh?’ he’d said, tongue-tied himself for once. Fifteen, the same age as his youngest sister Polly, and sister of his best friend Billy. He’d seen the shyness and the signs of burgeoning womanhood. He’d wait.

He was four years older than her, the same age as Billy, and he’d waited until she was old enough before he asked if they could walk out together; she’d just turned seventeen and she’d said shyly that he must ask her father and Mrs Hodges, and wondered if he had been counting the years. Mrs Hodges said that Ellen was a good worker and she’d be sorry to lose her, and that Cook was particularly put out, for she had said Ellen had good cool hands for bread-making. She guessed though that her parents would be relieved to have the last of their daughters courting, for she was one of eight girls and two boys.

‘Summat in ’water,’ her father had mumbled. ‘This village is awash wi’ daughters.’

They had begun their courtship along the quiet lanes of Holmpton on Sundays when they both had time off, and on one of those days he’d turned up early, driving a two-seat trap pulled by a sturdy mare that his employer Mr Oswald had lent him.

Her father had watched from their cottage window and asked Billy if she would be safe with him. Billy had looked out and nodded. ‘Every hair on her head, Da.’