‘And let me pledge here and now: when the baby is safely delivered, and the nursery is bustling, then I will send for you. Indeed, of course I will send for you. Heavens, now I think of it, how on earth can Nurse and I even begin to manage all those little boys without you, their important big sister! So, yes, my love. I am in full agreement. You can come home to us then.

‘You have my word.’

By the expected time of the birth, Mary was back in the schoolroom in Albion Place, Ramsgate, where the wind whipped off the sea and the pupils kept their gloves on in lessons for fear of losing their fingers to frostbite. Though she had not particularly minded being there as a New Girl, Mary now found that the more established she became, the more passionately she loathed it. With an increasing and unhappy impatience, her every conscious and unconscious moment was consumed with longing for the moment her mother finally sent word to summon her home.

When, twice a day, the girls were dispatched to march up and down the promenade in crocodile formation, she alone kept her eyes on the school in case a carriage arrived. In lessons, her ear was permanently cocked towards the hall entrance, to catch that delightful, featherweight drop of paper packet upon pewter. By night, she sucked quietly on her little fingertip, recalling those heavenly sensations of napkins and muslins and milkiness and felt something quite close to soothed. Until at last, one cold Thursday morning, news arrived that the baby was born safely and to be called John. Curiously, the note was from Great-Aunt Dorothea, Lady Banks, rather than either parent. And although it was obvious there could be no good reason for that, with heroic self-control, Mary chose not to consider the matter too closely.

Officially, ‘Letters’ was an activity restricted to that Sunday afternoon lull between the many, many church services the girls were required to attend but, by the full force of her powers of persuasion, Mary obtained special dispensation to message her mother at once. She expressed her earnest love and good wishes and – though no one could expect her to be too excited about a fifth brother in five years – her conviction that she would adore him, in time. She closed with the assurance that no more than a moment’s notice would be required for her to quit Mrs Grant’s for ever, and waited, with her few possessions neatly assembled, for the blessed hour of deliverance.