“Maybe you can do things differently when you go back. People think that the war will change things here, in the social system, and it might. Although I don’t have much hope for it. We British are so steeped in our traditions, and part of that is keeping the lower classes down and not giving them a chance to make something of themselves. Whatever you’re born is what you stay here, forever. I’ll always be a poor, low-class girl from the slums here. America is the land of opportunity. It’s different there. And things will probably change there. Women have joined the workforce, even here. They’ve managed everything—family businesses, children, jobs—while their husbands were at war. They can’t just shut women away and ignore them again when the war ends. We have a voice now. And that should be true in your world too. You should be able to do what you want and be what you want when you go back to America.”

“I don’t think my family believes that,” Alex said seriously, impressed by what Emma had said to her, and even more so by what she had overcome to survive poverty, go to nursing school and become a midwife, and now what she was doing in the RAF with the air evacuation transports. She had really made something of herself, no matter what class she had started out in. “You know, you’ve really defied the class system yourself,” Alex reminded her.

“Pru says that too, but I doubt that any other aristocrat would admit that or give me credit for it. Pru is a very special woman, and a very caring human being. Most of them aren’t.”

“Her parents sound like they are, with all those children and orphans they took in. Not many people would do that. My family certainly wouldn’t,” Alex said thoughtfully.