‘What kind of gossip?’

‘Oh, the usual kind. How he was, the way he worked from morning to night, just like his father used to do. According to the butler, he took to tailoring like a duck to water, and folk respect him almost as much as they did his father.’

‘It takes years to build up that kind of respect.’

‘Cook says Harry will never get over losing his father. He works in lamplight, with the curtains drawn, and hardly speaks a word to anyone except his mother. He idolises her.’

‘Some say she’s got worse since her husband passed on. Is that the truth, Bridget?’

Bridget shook her head. ‘Since I left the big house two months ago, I’ve heard nothing of her.’ Pity touched her heart, but her real concern was for Harry. ‘I can imagine how Harry must miss his work, driving the horse and wagon, and always outside in God’s fresh air. He loved every minute of it, and now he’s shut himself away.’ If she let herself think too long about that, it would break her heart. ‘So you see, we’re both paying the price.’

‘You know his father left a small fortune.’

‘So they say.’

‘I’ve heard the eldest sister got the lion’s share.’

‘I don’t know about that, but it wouldn’t surprise me. She and Harry both cared for their parents, but Harry had a job and could always earn a living. The younger sister, too, has work, and she’s well thought of at the orphanage. Harry told me about her. He said she was a lovely natured girl, with ambitions far and away above her age. He described her as a strong-minded young woman who would go places on her own merit.’ Bridget had never met Fay, but she would have liked to. Harry was very fond of his younger sister, she could tell. ‘It isn’t easy for a woman,’ she said to Fanny, ‘particularly a woman like Alice who’s never had to work. I suppose her father thought it his duty to set her up so she would never have to go without.’

‘From what they say, she’ll never wed, too plain and miserable from all accounts.’

‘Don’t believe everything you hear. You know as well as I do that some people can be very cruel.’

‘Do you know Alice?’

‘I’ve never spoken to her.’ Bridget didn’t like talking about Harry’s sister in this way. ‘I only know her by sight. Harry pointed her out once, when we were washing the master’s dog in the tin bath outside the kitchen door. The old devil had rolled over in fox’s muck and smelled to high heaven. Harry was ploughing in the field when he saw the dog run off. Dripping wet, he was, where I’d soaked him with carbolic. I were yelling and screaming for him to come back and Harry heard me. He chased the dog and fetched him back, then stayed with me till the job was done.’

‘What was his sister doing there?’