“A long time ago. We’re up early.”

“Then you shall have one now and a slice of toast.”

After some protests, she sat down in the wicker chair. We came to the compromise, at her insistence, that she would drink from the saucer and I must have the cup.

Crumbs from our toast fell generously onto the rug. We salted the boiled eggs which had grown hard. It took a little encouragement to make her speak. I told her about a hospital where I once worked. One nurse cried an awful lot. Another never cried at all. “We’re all different.”

Slowly her story came out. She could not go to chapel this morning because something was going to happen afterwards. The Temperance Band intended to march to the railway station, take the train to Wakefield and from there march to the prison. They would play outside the prison walls so that their music would reach Stephen Walmsley’s cell. He would know that they were there. They would play out his innocence to heaven and the authorities.

“Milly, we’ll go together.”

She shook her head, unable to find words. Eventually, her tears lessened. She folded her arms and rocked. Her story of why she couldn’t walk with the band came out with little sighs and sucking in of breath as she tried to compose herself.

She and Stephen had been to the pictures. They had walked over the common. She liked him and was waiting for him to hold her hand but he never did because he was shy and so was she. And then he took up with Joan and it wasn’t fair. Joan played the tambourine in the band and so she and Stephen were together a lot. She saw them holding hands. Joan was supposed to be her friend.

“That’s not so terrible, Milly. You still like him, and you still like Joan. It might be a flash in the pan that they held hands. There’s nothing to stop you walking with the band.”

This brought on a fresh bout of weeping. “It was Joan’s idea that we go to the prison. It should’ve been mine.”

“Do you play in a band?”

“No.”

“Well then.”

There was something to stop her, she explained. It was this.

“On that Friday, I thought I’d just go see. I knew they walked back together from band practice and so I went to look. I kept out of the way, round the corner. I said to myself if Stephen walks her home, and if he holds her hand, I’d know it was hopeless. Along they came, she playing her tambourine as she walked. I watched them walk to the top of the street, and go into her house. She lives with Mr. and Mrs. Arkwright.

“I didn’t know what to do. I thought, I’ll just go see Mrs. Farrar. She’ll tell me if there’s no hope. She’ll tell me if they are courting. The shop door was locked, but I knocked. There was no answer.”