‘We’ve time to pack everything,’ Ellen said, trying to keep cheerful. ‘You’ll soon get another farm.’

But he didn’t, even though he put out the word that he was looking for another position. There were seasonal labouring jobs, but Harry wanted something more permanent, something he could settle into.

‘If we had the money,’ he pondered one evening, ‘I could settle for working for myself. Just a small plot, just enough to keep us.’

Ellen had shaken her head. ‘No, you couldn’t,’ she said. ‘You like ’security of working on big farms, you enjoy having a lot of acreage to look after, and, be honest, you like looking after large herds of animals too.’ She paused. ‘And ’camaraderie of working with other men.’

‘Camaraderie,’ he joked. ‘My wife, the reader of big words.’

‘Well, what would you have called it?’ she challenged him.

He thought about it and then said, ‘Aye, you’re right. Companionship. Friendship. I do. I’ve known most of ’lads round here since I was just a nipper. I wouldn’t really want to work on my own.’

He wouldn’t, she thought. He was such an easygoing, friendly man. Everybody liked him. Everybody trusted him, and that was all very well, but if there were no jobs going … She sighed and thought that she might ask her mother if she’d be willing to look after the children for a couple of days a week, and ask around to see if there were any washing or ironing jobs in some of the big houses. Or she could ask Mrs Hodges if she could help out there.

When Ellen visited her mother she agreed that she would have the children for one day a week, but said she couldn’t manage more. She was already looking after Frances’s little girl and Julia’s son for two days.

‘I’m not as young as I was,’ she said. Sarah had the bones of a sparrow and was stick thin in spite of having given birth to ten children. ‘You girls forget.’

‘You’re not old either, Ma, but you’re right, we should try to manage just as you used to,’ Ellen agreed. ‘It’s not fair of us to expect you to help out.’

‘It’s not that I don’t like having ’em here,’ Sarah said. ‘I do, but when they’re all together they run rings round me.’