‘Whatever would your father say? He’ll think I’m letting you run wild – or worse, making skivvies out of you.’

‘Oh, no – he won’t,’ Annie assured her with her usual forceful confidence. ‘You don’t need to tell him, do you? And Mother used to say, Perfect love casteth out fear . . . One John, chapter four, verse eighteen. How can you take the message of God’s love into the world if we’re afraid to be in it in the first place?’

Aunt Hatt stared at her nonplussed, this being a dilemma with which she was not especially familiar.

‘I just want to get some experience, Aunt,’ Annie said, more appeasingly.

‘Well, you’ll certainly get that,’ Aunt Hatt retorted. ‘And a lot more, if I know anything about those places.’

After their tour of the works of Watts & Son that morning, the girls had gone into the front office where Susan was seated at her desk, Bridget standing at the bench by the window, surrounded by little boxes, and Cousin Georgie leaning over his mother’s desk, the two of them talking shop. Aunt Hatt looked elegant as ever, a gold brooch pinned to the high neck of her dress.

Georgie greeted them in his friendly way and said he would bring Clara and little Jimmy over to meet them as soon as they could all manage and that they must come to Handsworth and visit the house.

‘We thought we might go out for a short while,’ Margaret said tentatively. It now felt as if she and Annie were in the way in the office as well as in the rest of the house. With all this business carrying on around them it felt as if the only place to go to was the attic.

‘D’you think it’s all right for them to wander about like that?’ Aunt Hatt asked Georgie.

‘You’ll be all right,’ Susan piped up. She had a brisk, confident manner. Bridget was nodding her agreement.

‘People always think there are thieves and robbers on every corner in this part of town,’ Georgie said. ‘There’re always some who are out for what they can get, but it’s quite safe just to walk about in the daytime – don’t you worry. Just don’t go wandering too far off – and mind the horse road. You won’t be used to as much traffic as we have here.’

Margaret could see that Aunt Hatt was torn between needing the two of them out of her hair while feeling responsible for their safety.

‘We’ll be all right, Auntie,’ she said. ‘We go out and about at home all the time, visiting people and so on.’ A pang of homesickness gripped her as she said this. If only they could be there today, in the peace and beauty of the countryside, serving the people of their own village as they had always done.