‘You should have a proper riding habit,’ he said. ‘A proper riding habit and be up on your own. It’d look grand. Robert Gower’s Amazing Equestrian Show with Lady Dandy in the Ring,’ he said.

He gave Dandy five shillings for a bolt of real velvet and she made herself a riding habit in two evenings, working under the lantern until her eyes were bleary from the strain. When Jack next cried-up the show, he took her up behind him with her beautiful blue riding habit sweeping down Snow’s shining side. Dandy’s smile under her blue tricorne hat was heart-stoppingly lovely. In the next village we had the best gate we had ever taken.

‘The public like lasses,’ Robert announced at supper that night. ‘I want you riding in the ring, Meridon. And Dandy you’re to cry-up the show with Jack every day. Stay in your costume to take at the gate.’

‘What shall I wear?’ I asked. Robert looked at me critically. I had wearied of brushing my thick mass of copper hair every day and had started cutting out the tangles and the hayseeds. Dandy had exclaimed at the ragged edges I had left and had trimmed it in a bob, like a country lad. The natural curl had made it into a mop of red-gold ringlets, which tumbled about my head like an unruly halo. I had gained no weight over the summer of good living with the Gowers though I had grown taller. I was as lanky and as awkward as a young colt while Dandy had the poise and the warm curves of a young woman.

‘I’m damned if I know,’ Robert said chuckling. ‘I’d put you in a pierrot suit for half a crown. You look like a little waif, mophead. If you’re going to grow as bonny as your sister, you’d better make haste!’

‘What about dressing her as a lad?’ Jack said suddenly. He was wiping out his bowl with a hunk of bread, but he paused with sticky fingers and smiled his confident smile at me. ‘No offence, Meridon. But she could wear a silk shirt and tight white breeches and boots. You look at her when she’s in those old trews of mine, Da, she looks unladylike…but it would work in the ring. And she could do a rosinback act with me.’ Jack pushed his bowl to one side. ‘Hey!’ he said excitedly. ‘D’you remember that act we saw when someone came out of the crowd? The show outside Salisbury one time? We could do something like that and I could come out from the back, pretending to be a drunk, you know, and come up on the horse and knock Meridon off.’

‘More falls,’ I said glumly. ‘I had enough of them when I was breaking horses for Da.’