Cook shook her grey head. ‘No. It wouldn’t do no good.’ Her small piggy eyes fell to the fair-haired child, who promptly smiled at her, melting her heart. ‘Poor little tyke,’ she said, thinking how all three made a sorry and pitiful sight. ‘Look… wait here a minute,’ she told the young woman. ‘I know there’s no work to be got, but there’s a larder just bursting with certain goodies that would never be missed by them upstairs.’ She jerked a podgy thumb heavenwards. ‘I’ll not be a minute,’ she chuckled, tousling the child’s unkempt curls before she turned to go quickly back into the kitchen.

As good as her word, the old dear returned within a short time, bearing a strawberry basket tucked under her arm and filled with food from the larder: a crusty loaf, a tub of butter, two rosy apples, a chunk of pork pie and three slabs of her best cherry cake. ‘Here, take this and make yourself scarce. If we’re found out, there’ll be four of us going down the road to beggary… you mark my words!’ She thrust the basket over the young woman’s outstretched arm and, without another word, stepped back into the relative safety of her own kitchen. ‘Lord love and preserve us!’ she was heard to mutter, before hastily making the sign of the cross on herself and shutting the door against the sight of that poor young woman with her two fatherless brats.

‘Thanks very much, missus.’ The young woman smiled and began walking away down the long narrow path that would lead her to the outer lane.

Satisfied that they were far enough away from the big house, she stopped and sat on the high bank beside the ditch. The children sat beside her, waiting for something to eat. Breaking two chunks of bread from the loaf, she gave a piece to each of the children. ‘There you are, my beauties,’ she said in a soft, loving voice. Then, at the sight of them both happily tucking in to the old cook’s generous gift, she laughed aloud, throwing her arms round them and declaring with delight, ‘Just follow your mammy’s example… and you’ll never go hungry. What… if that old woman had offered me a job in that big posh house, I’d have fainted on the very spot!’ When the two children took pleasure in Molly’s infectious laughter, she hugged them all the more tightly, her heart bursting with love and a prayer of thanks to the Lord that, somehow, he always managed to see them through the hard times.

From the window of the kitchen Cook had watched the pathetic ensemble as it went away down the path. ‘There’s always somebody worse off than yourself,’ she murmured, feeling guilty that she had spoken so sharply to the young woman at first, because there was something about the creature that seemed to put her above the usual beggar or vagabond. She shook her head thoughtfully and turned her attention to the baking of the day’s bread. But the image persisted awhile, until she deliberately pushed it from her mind. They’d be all right, she told herself, them sort had a way of surviving. She was astonished though, to think that a young woman of such attractive looks should be made to wander the streets like that. Oh, and what sort of a fellow would ‘run off’ and leave his woman and children to fend for themselves?