‘I hadn’t heard he was drinking, ma’am,’ Brigid said.

Whenever his wife became pregnant Broderick haunted the public houses. He was a man brought low by small misfortunes.

‘Ask Miss Pollexfen to send over a note,’ she advised. ‘Ask if he could manage an improvement.’

The new maid, Patty, freckles all over her cheeks and nose and forehead, incredulous about the eyes, sat at the long table in her afternoon black, her lace-trimmed cap and apron crisply white. Mrs Rolleston’s arrival had caused her to rise to her feet, but she had been motioned to sit down again. Her broad, plump hands were still awkward with cutlery and plates, her brown hair forever escaping from the pins that tugged it into place beneath her cap. She would never learn, she had privately confided to Brigid, but Brigid told her not to sound like a fool.

Mrs Rolleston watched while the unsatisfactory beef was placed in the oven. ‘There’s potatoes in the scullery that want skinning,’ Brigid said, sharply, to the maid. ‘And carrots that want cleaning with a scrubbing-brush. Take off that apron and put on an overall.’

Patty rose in a hurry to do as she was bidden. Mrs Rolleston lingered, and when the sound of running water began in the distant scullery she said:

‘Is that child content, Brigid?’

‘Why wouldn’t she be, ma’am? Isn’t it a great chance for her?’

‘Has she stopped crying, though? Is she lonesome still?’

Brigid sniffed. She folded her arms, on which the sleeves of the jumper she wore beneath her overall were rolled up beyond her elbows. The girl was best kept busy, she declared. When a girl like that was cutting kindling or skimming milk, where was the time for tears?

‘Keep an eye on her all the same, Brigid. It isn’t easy for the young ones sometimes.’

As she left the kitchen, she realised that that was why she had paid the visit: she had been worried about the new maid because she was so young. Some time or other, perhaps yesterday or the day before, she had woken out of a dream, feeling sorry for somebody and knowing it was Patty. She’d been sorry for the others too, all the new girls who had come to Carriglas, only fifteen or sixteen years old most of them. ‘God, ma’am, it’s a great house you have,’ Kathleen Quigley had said, and she, too, had been lonesome. ‘It’s only I miss the fields, ma’am,’ Kathleen Quigley had said, it’s only I miss the ways we have at home.’

Brigid followed Patty to the scullery and worked beside her at the draining-board, peeling apples for a charlotte. She had become used over the years to Mrs Rolleston’s tenderness, indeed she had benefited from it herself, but she often reflected that what the old woman didn’t realise, and never would, was that compassion was sometimes inappropriately extended. Girls like this raw creature beside her knew better where they were with regular scolding. Concern for their well-being only led to confusion, and then the bouts of weeping began.