‘Well,’ Collis told her, ‘I’m not surprised. The most I can ask of you now is that you accept my apologies, and my explanation, and forget about the whole thing. I won’t try it again.’

‘You won’t have to,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I said, you won’t have to. I know what your railroad means to you. I’ve read about you in the newspapers. I also have the wit and the intelligence to know what it’s going to mean to San Francisco. It’s going to help San Francisco to grow up — to grow more educated, more aware of the world around it, and more fashionable. How do you think it feels to wear dresses that have travelled for two hundred days around Cape Horn, knowing that even before you’ve set eyes on them, they’re nine months out of date? What do you think it’s like going to operas and concerts and theatrical plays that are eons behind New York? For the sake of their absurd monopolies, my father and all his cronies are doing everything they can to keep us isolated, and stifled, like a bunch of country simpletons on a hill.’

Collis put his head on one side quizzically. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you agree with the railroad?’

‘Agree with it? Are you mad? It would change my whole life. I could travel to Washington whenever I wanted. I could go to New York. I could order clothes and books and expect them within the month. My father’s mistake, Collis, was to bring me up as an educated and fashionable and self-opinionated young lady, and I’m not the only one. There are plenty of wealthy young men and women in South Park who feel just the same as I do. We’re bright, social, and cut off from civilisation, and we don’t like it.’

‘Oh,’ remarked Collis. He didn’t know what else to say.

Sarah stood up, and came across to him, and took his hand. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘we can make your plan work, but we’ll do it my way.’

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘You want us to go ahead? You want us to — you actually want us to take the calotypes and blackmail your own father?’

Sarah beamed and nodded. ‘Not completely undressed, mind,’ she said, raising her finger. ‘A few pictures in my corsets. But we can always imply in our blackmail letter that we have something more intimate.’

‘We?’ asked Collis, stunned.

‘Yes, we. We’re the conspirators, aren’t we? I just as much as you, if I let you take these pictures of my own free will.’

‘Well, yes,’ said Collis, still unsure of her. ‘But how can you blackmail your own father? He’s — well, he’s your father.’