‘Oh, there are apprentices all over the place,’ said Mistress Penman. ‘London is full of them. Our milliner has three girls working for him. Don’t you remember, Mistress Marshall? One of them had spectacles that were smeared thick with her own fingerprints, and you wondered how she ever saw out of them, never mind how she ever sewed a straight line.’

‘Dreadful,’ said Mistress Marshall. ‘Oh, there are more apprentices than anyone knows what to do with. You can’t get the service in some places, for there are too many apprentices. Young men and women like yourself. All seeming to do very well for themselves, and spending their wages like there is no tomorrow, wouldn’t you agree, Mistress Penman? On entertainments and frivolities. I should say the theatres are not what they used to be at all. Full of working folk. Quite filling the stalls at the Theatre Royal. Cheap hats and paste jewels as far as the eye can see.’

I stroked the edge of my own glass ring. I was not put off by these two snobs, not at all. Their tales of the new London were music to my ears. Music fit to fill a hundred theatres.

But then there was a new problem to deal with. Worse than any I had dealt with before.

Chapter Thirteen

Kelso
April 1724

Finally the day came when I had to admit to myself that I was with child.

It was a dawning suspicion that had crept up on me, week by week. Think of the snake, the serpent – how he comes upon Eve – and that is how my pregnancy came upon me. Hidden at first, in plain sight. For I’d eaten heartily, now that I had a glut of treats I had never eaten before, like roasted turkey of a Sunday or date-pie, although I did not seem to savour the taste of these things so much as the food at home. Mibbie it’s not salted enough, I’d thought.