‘I am setting up a trade in London, as I have an interest in perfumes,’ I told her. Now this was a lie, for I had no knowledge of Spencer’s trade or contacts. But I had remembered what he’d also said, about apprenticing myself as a seamstress or milliner, with my knowledge of lines and knots and fast working hands, and that is what I planned to do. That plan felt a little too loose, however, to be sharing with strangers and I wanted this lady to think highly of me.

‘Perfumes, you say?’ She sounded intrigued, but asked no more. ‘Well, Mistress Dickson, you shall keep your hands off my belongings and I don’t want to be woken before nine,’ she continued. ‘I keep late hours and I need my beauty sleep. So if you’re on a morning coach, ready yourself quietly.’

I nodded and she thawed a little and started unlacing her boots.

‘Oh, it’s been a long day,’ she said. ‘And I am peckish already and it’s not yet supper time.’ She peered towards my creel. ‘Goodness that’s an unwieldy-looking basket. Is that the fashion by the coast? Do they carry them on their backs? Are the girls there all broad-shouldered like you?’

I nodded, feeling like a hulk.

‘Do you have anything decent to eat in it?’ she went on. ‘I can’t bear to go downstairs yet and sit there, with all those men gawping at me and trying to buy me cheap ale.’

I did, as it happened. I had the bottle of whisky, which I brought out and her eyes lit up at, and I had a big piece of gingerbread, which I had bought in Lauder and not finished, so I let her have the rest of that and a tot of whisky and that appeased her greatly. She sat and nibbled away at it all, quite delicately, and I hovered around, not knowing whether to go and get that new bonnet or stay and become acquainted, for I was not well versed in the ways of travelling women.

After a few moments I asked her what her name was and what her business was and why she was in Kelso. I asked in a friendly way, but she did not like the questions much.

‘I am Mrs Rose, a widow,’ she said. ‘I have an uncle who lives here in Kelso – a physician as it happens, a widower himself – and I am visiting him.’ She frowned. ‘And he likes me to visit him at his cottage, but not stay the night, for he does not have the space for a guest. He is a kindly man, my uncle, and I am his favourite niece.’

Well, that was an odd story, but I let her carry on with it.