The rest of the first week passed in a pleasant blur for Ruby. She and Hermione visited the dressmaker who eyed Ruby up and down before making suggestions as to what styles she thought might suit her, and they then spent a pleasant half an hour choosing the fabrics for two new gowns. The following day they boarded the train to Coventry and came home loaded with bags of things that Hermione insisted Ruby would need, although Ruby was a little concerned at how much the woman had spent on her.

‘Oh, don’t get worrying about that.’ Hermione waved her hand breezily when Ruby broached it. ‘Eventually you will be spending time with clients and in the shops so it’s in my interest that you look the part.’ She went on to tell Ruby what her wages would be. ‘And you may have each evening after eight o’clock and every Sunday afternoon to do as you please.’

Ruby was more than happy with the arrangement, and realised how lucky she was to have been given this chance. But despite this, she still missed the friends she had made and thought of them all often. So when someone rapped on the front door late in the afternoon the following week and Hermione told her to answer it, she was delighted to find Miss Wood and Betty standing there.

‘Hello, my dear,’ Miss Wood said. ‘We thought we would come and see how you are settling in. Mr Pembroke would have come too but he had an appointment with a client this afternoon who has commissioned him to make some jewellery for them.’

Ruby ushered them inside with a broad smile on her face and once she had shown them in to Hermione, who was in the sitting room, she hurried off to make a tray of tea for them all. She didn’t like to ask Mrs B to do it as she was busily preparing the evening meal.

‘How nice that they’ve come to see you,’ Mrs B commented when Ruby told her who the guests were. ‘They must have thought quite highly of you.’

Minutes later, Ruby carried the tray, laden with scones fresh from the oven and a pot of tea, to the sitting room.

‘She seems to be settling in nicely,’ she heard Hermione tell the visitors as she entered the room, and while they chatted on, she strained the tea into Hermione’s highly prized china cups and saucers. Hermione had told her that they had once belonged to her mother. They had been the only decent thing the poor woman had ever owned, by all accounts, so Ruby was always terrified of breaking them.

‘How are things back at the house?’ Ruby asked when everyone had been served, hoping that she didn’t sound too forward.