She gave Patty a hug and she climbed into the trap, Bill whipped up the horse and they rattled away. May watched them for a few moments, then turned away. She remembered what Mrs Kelly had told her about working in a great house. It seemed that she was the lucky one, after all.

Christmas was approaching, and May found herself working harder than ever as Mrs Wilkins began preparing for the festivities. She stirred puddings and heated up the water in the copper to steam them, and chopped fruit for mincemeat. She had never tasted either delicacy and the smell of the puddings as she stirred made her mouth water; but there were compensations for the extra work – a raisin secretly popped into her own mouth instead of the pudding basin, or her fingers run round the empty bowl and licked.

At the beginning of December there was a disturbance in the household. Miss Parsons announced that she needed two weeks leave of absence to help her married sister, who had just had a baby. Sweeping the stairs outside the schoolroom, May heard her giving her instructions to Isabella.

‘Your other lessons will continue as normal, except for the riding as there will be no one to take you to the stables. Mrs Fortescue, Silvia’s mama, will take you to dancing class with Silvia. I shall leave you tasks to perform while I am away. I shall expect them to be completed by the time I return.’

May felt that a shadow had been lifted from the house by the governess’s departure and suspected that Isabella felt the same. She was increasingly sorry for the other girl. She seemed to have no friends of her own age, and very little leisure. From time to time other girls were invited for tea, but the event was always supervised by Miss Parsons and there was no chance for any of them to exchange private confidences. May thought back to her own childhood in the workhouse. It had been hard, but there had always been other girls she could gossip and giggle with. She had never heard Isabella giggle.

One morning, cleaning up the schoolroom while Isabella was downstairs having her piano lesson, May found several sheets of paper screwed up and thrown in the fireplace. She smoothed them out, thinking that she might be able to reuse them for her own drawings, and saw that they were designs for a sampler. The text, ‘Honour thy father and thy mother’, was written out in various different scripts and various ideas had been tried out to embellish it, but none were very successful. May guessed that this was one of the tasks set by Miss Parsons, but clearly Isabella was not making much progress with it.

Friday was the day for Isabella’s art lesson and after Mr Latimer had departed May went in to tidy the room. She found Isabella hunched over her desk, sobbing.