Margaret was furious. ‘I don’t need charity, thank you. I’ve got my skirt and jersey and …’

‘But no coat,’ Sarah pleaded, ‘and the winter coming on.’

Sir John, who had stayed for this discussion, broke in: ‘I’m sure I can help there. I have a little girl just your age. I will speak to Lady Teaser. I’m sure she has cupboards full of frocks and fal-lals she will never use.’ He saw Margaret’s eyes beginning to flash. ‘Don’t be angry with me. It’s a very sensible suggestion, for I am sure Mrs Beamish here will be able to alter them to fit you. Then you can keep that red dress for parties.’

‘Study the part at the pages I’ve marked,’ said Tommy. ‘Then come back at three o’clock tomorrow and perhaps we will have some clothes ready for you.’

Margaret had the last word.

‘I could manage, my jersey and skirt are quite good and I expect I could buy a second-hand coat.’

When Margaret and Sarah had gone, Tommy and Sir John solemnly shook hands.

Then Sir John said: ‘If she can lose her temper when she’s acting as she does in life that little girl is the find of the new century.’

Katie was in her own way a beauty. She wore her hair cut very short, almost like a boy’s. It was rather fine hair and her mother believed that if she wore it short as a child it would be thick and glossy when she grew up. She was a quiet, studious child with her head always buried in a book. Her mother said she was a great reader, but Katie and her governess, Miss Grey, knew the books she read were mostly play scripts passed on to the schoolroom secretly by the theatre manager, whom she called Uncle Tommy. She also read and reread Shakespeare’s plays and knew most of the women’s parts by heart.

Miss Grey was the daughter of a country parson. Her mother was dead and she came in the middle of a family of nine, and though the rectory where she was brought up was rent-free, the rector’s income was only one hundred pounds a year, so there were never even halfpennies to spare. But the rectory children had good brains and were determined to be educated. All the boys got scholarships to schools which offered special places to the sons of clergy, and the girls learned all the village school could teach them and then taught themselves from books. In addition they learnt a lot that no books could have taught them. How to stretch the hundred pounds so that they had enough to eat and were all covered, if not exactly dressed. As an aid to this the girls ran about barefoot even in the worst weather so that there were boots for the boys to take to school. Some sort of footwear they had every Sunday and for school, but these were curious homemade efforts. Those boys who were still at day school always walked to their school with their boots hung round their necks, only putting them on when the school was in sight.