The horse acts had grown almost beyond recognition now that I could ride in the ring and we had two rosinbacks. I did not yet know what order Robert planned to run the show but we had the dancing pony team, Snow doing his tricks with counting numbers and flags, Jack and me doing a two-horse bareback riding act, my dancing on the back of Bluebell, and then the second part of the act when Jack came in dressed as the farmer. The little ponies could still do the Battle of Blenheim of course; and it was rather more impressive now that the flower of British cavalry outnumbered the French by four to three, and for the end of the show Robert planned some kind of historical tableau.

‘Summat like Saladin, but with the three lasses,’ he said to himself, chomping on his pipe as he did when he was struggling with an idea. He walked around the stable yard in a small half-circle. The pipe puffed a little cloud of triumph. ‘Rape of the Sabine Women,’ he said to himself.

We would be an impressive sight on the road, too. There was Snow, Robert’s grey stallion; Sea, my grey stallion; Bluebell and Morris, the two rosinbacks; Lofty, the new wagon horse; and seven little ponies. Lofty was a heavy draught horse bought with Robert’s profits from the Salisbury gamble to pull the new wagon which would carry the heavy flying rigging and the new screens he ordered. Bluebell and Morris would pull the two sleeping wagons. This summer William would come on the road too, for the first time. Robert might be parsimonious but even he could see that Jack and he could not set the rigging alone. We would need help with the horses at the end of two shows as well.

Then we worked. Worked and waited. It snowed hard in January and when I fell off the back of Bluebell I fell soft into drifts on either side of my track. I fell wet and cold too and Robert took pity on me and ordered me two new pairs of breeches and smocks so that I could change into dry clothes at each break. Mrs Greaves kept them warming for me on the front of her stove and I would dash into the kitchen, my teeth chattering with the cold and strip off my icy cold breeches and smock and drop them on the floor.

William came in one time, as I stripped from my snow-encrusted smock, and dropped the pallet of wood he was carrying and had a tongue-lashing from Mrs Greaves and was banned from the kitchen. But then she turned to me.

‘You must cover yourself, Merry,’ she said gently. ‘You’re not a little girl any more.’