‘I don’t mind. I feel responsible for her. Couldn’t you have her if I paid you the one and sixpence every week?’

‘I’ll ask Mother, but I’m sure she never will.’

So Sophia had to break the news to Mrs Barker.

‘Aoaw!!’ wailed Mrs Barker, her face contorting into the best mask of watery grief, amazement and indignation that it had yet achieved. ‘You aren’t ALL going away, are yer, dear?’

‘I’m afraid so, Mrs Barker.’

‘Aoaw! you ’ave been so good to me, and now you’re all going away and I do count on the steps so. They ’elp. It all ’elps. Not gettin’ married, are you, dear?’

‘No, I’m certainly not.’

‘Oo’s comin’ ’ere then?’ asked Mrs Barker, shrewdly.

‘Mrs Carmody,’ said Sophia without thinking, and then saw what she had done.

A more peaceful look, with a suggestion of bodeful planning, came over Mrs Barker’s face.

‘Aoaw, then that’s all right, dear. I know Mrs Carmody, see. I worked for ’er before. She’ll ’ave me do the step, see. It’ll be all right. Why didn’t you tell me before, dear?’

‘I expect I forgot,’ said Sophia ruefully, who was wondering why she had told her now.

‘When’s she comin’, dear?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, I’ll be down ’ere every mornin’ after you gone, see, dear, and I’ll catch ’er, see.’

I’m sure you will, thought Sophia, watching Mrs Barker’s tiny goblin figure bobbing away with its bucket, after it had made a watery goodbye.

She was spared a scene of this kind from Miss Tessitt. She had the pleasure of sacking Miss Tessitt without letting her know they were leaving the cottage. She considered that Miss Tessitt had played quite a large part in the collapse of their ménage. She had idled shockingly, scamped her duties and let the cottage get dirty and unattractive, imposed shamefully upon Sophia’s youth and inexperience and taken advantage of the fact that she was away from home all day. It was true that Sophia should have taken her firmly in hand and made her work, but that did not excuse Miss Tessitt’s behaviour. Sophia would have liked to tell her that Mr Harry had called her an inefficient old tart. She imagined that the noun would give more offence than the adjective, though it did not describe Miss Tessitt with accuracy, and the adjective did.

So when she came home one evening, a few days before they were to leave the cottage, the usually peaceful Sophia was pleased to find a cause for complaint in the logbook of the laundry which she was about to check and put away. Miss Tessitt was waiting to receive her fifteen shillings. Sophia gave it her; and then said: ‘Miss Tessitt, I see that two kitchen cloths were sent to the laundry last week.’

Miss Tessit made a bird-like inclination of her head over the laundry book.

‘So there was,’ remarked Miss Tessitt impersonally. She implied that the cloths had gravitated to the laundry of their own will.