The girls were good, too, with food. Everything that was edible and that grew wild was gathered in. They caught fish in a stream and snared rabbits. Miss Grey could keep Katie happy for hours describing her childhood.

‘It was hard, I suppose,’ she would say, ‘but we were happy and people were good to us. They loved my papa and would pass it on to us in little gifts of vegetables or perhaps eggs, and the squire gave us the run of his library for books. And we have all done well. I have three brothers who are doctors and two are in the Indian Civil Service and all my sisters are well and happily married.’

‘I’m glad you’re not married,’ Katie would say. ‘I’m so glad you have come to look after me.’

‘Coming here was just what I wanted,’ Miss Grey would say. ‘Although as a child I never went to a theatre, I always longed to. I read whatever I could find about the theatre but there is not much written. Then I saw your father’s advertisement in The Times newspaper. It gave his name and I went for an interview. I never thought he would take me for, now that everybody is to be educated, teachers are expected to be trained and play the piano, and certainly have fluent French and perhaps dancing …’

Katie laughed at the thought of Miss Grey in her thick shoes, worn sizes too big because she was used to running about barefoot, trying to teach dancing.

‘But I have outside teachers for all those, it’s you as a person I need. Papa was quite right, you are just perfect for me.’

That evening Sir John asked Ada about Katie’s old clothes.

‘I am hoping the child will do. She speaks nicely but it seems she was brought up by two ladies, and there is some romantic story about being found in a basket. Tommy says it will do for the newspapers if the child proves suitable. But something must be done about her clothes, she could not even attend rehearsals in what she has. Has Katie any old clothes and could someone fit out the child?’

Katie was charmingly dressed in soft fabrics in pastel shades, and to her mother dressing her was rather like dressing a doll, but the real fun was when there were new clothes to be made. Any day now she was planning to take Katie to the dressmaker to order her a winter wardrobe. Invariably, when a new season came round, what she always described as ‘that comical Miss Grey’ would say: ‘Oh, but there is a cupboard full of clothes scarcely worn.’ How convenient that this child had turned up now! She would give orders. Miss Grey was to fit the girl out.

‘You see to it, Miss Grey,’ she said. ‘Any of Katie’s old clothes should do, though not of course party frocks.’

Miss Grey went back to the schoolroom where she had left Katie writing an essay. She had closed the door, but even so she lowered her voice just in case Lady Teaser should be passing.