After all, Martha did not go to live there. Her mother was not satisfied with her account of the place and her father heard the next day that the house was haunted. “She shan’t goo there while we’ve got a crust for her,” said her Dad. “Not as I believes in ghostesses—lot o’ rubbish I calls ‘em—but the child might think she seed summat and be scared out of her wits an’ maybe catch her death o’ cold in that girt, draughty, old kitchen.”

So Martha waited until two sisters, milliners in the market town, wanted a maid; and, once there, grew strong and rosy and, according to their report, learned to say a great deal more than “Yes, mum”; for their only complaint against her was that she was inclined to be saucy and sang so loudly about her work that the customers in the shop could hear her.

When the girls had been in their petty places a year, their mothers began to say it was time they “bettered themselves” and the clergyman’s daughter was consulted. Did she know if a scullery-maid or a tweeny was required at any of the big country houses around? If not, she would wait until she had two or three such candidates for promotion on her list, then advertise in the Morning Post or the Church Times for situations for them. Other girls secured places through sisters or friends already serving in large establishments.

When the place was found, the girl set out alone on what was usually her first train journey, with her yellow tin trunk tied up with thick cord, her bunch of flowers and brown paper parcel bursting with left-overs.

The tin trunk would be sent on to the railway station by the carrier and the mother would walk the three miles to the station with her daughter. They would leave Lark Rise, perhaps before it was quite light on a winter morning, the girl in her best, would-be fashionable clothes and the mother carrying the baby of the family, rolled in its shawl. Neighbours would come to their garden gates to see them off and call after them “Pleasant journey! Hope you’ll have a good place!” or “Mind you be a good gal, now, an’ does just as you be told!” or, more comfortingly, “You’ll be back for y’r holidays before you knows where you are and then there won’t be no holdin’ you, you’ll have got that London proud!” and the two would go off in good spirits, turning and waving repeatedly.