Ruby left for Newcastle the following day. Once back, she immediately visited the new premises where her builder was hard at work. Now that the attic room had been cleared of its contents, she could see the idea she’d had regarding it would work. She told the builder she wanted the space divided into one small room and a larger one, with a narrow landing outside so each room had its own door. It would be perfect for Alice and Olive, whilst her mother could occupy the bedroom on the floor below. With her sister and niece’s comfort in mind, she told the builder she wanted the roof better insulated against the harsh northern winters and for his carpenter to build in wardrobes and a dressing table to make the most of the limited space under the sloping roof.

Ernest McArthur listened to ‘the bit lass with ideas above her station’, as he had previously described Ruby to his wife. He knew why she had spent the last week in Sunderland, and he had offered his condolences on her return, but now, as she explained the reason for the extra work she wanted doing, he found himself re-evaluating his opinion of her. He didn’t hold with all this new thinking about women being able to stand for Parliament and equal rights and the rest of it – a woman’s place was in the home and that was that, and a young lass like this one setting up a business on her own with no man to keep her in check wasn’t right in his opinion – but, that said, it seemed the lass’s heart was in the right place. And to be fair, she’d paid him promptly for the work he’d carried out on her first property, which was more than most of the blokes he dealt with did.

Mentally knocking a few pounds off the amount he had intended to ask when she had first mentioned the conversion of the attic room, he offered a few practical suggestions of his own before they agreed a price and Ruby disappeared.