Thursday’s Child and Far to Go first published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd in 1970 and 1976

Published in these editions by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2020

Published in this ebook pack edition in 2020

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Text copyright © Noel Streatfeild 1970, 1976

Cover illustrations copyright © Sarah Gibb 2020

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBNs: 9780008244040 (Thursday’s Child) and 9780008244071 (Far to Go)

Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780008384890

Version: 2020-03-18

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Thursday's Child

Far to Go

About the Author

Books by Noel Streatfeild

About the Publisher

Dedicated to an American penfriend, Kathy Retan, with love

Monday’s child is fair of face,

Tuesday’s child is full of grace,

Wednesday’s child is full of woe,

Thursday’s child has far to go,

Friday’s child is loving and giving,

Saturday’s child works hard for a living,

And the child that is born on the Sabbath day

Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

– Anonymous

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter One: The Choice

Chapter Two: Packing Up

Chapter Three: The Journey

Chapter Four: The Orphanage

Chapter Five: First Day

Chapter Six: School

Chapter Seven: Lavinia

Chapter Eight: A Letter

Chapter Nine: Plans for Sunday

Chapter Ten: Half a Sunday

Chapter Eleven: The Picnic

Chapter Twelve: A Night Adventure

Chapter Thirteen: By Moonlight

Chapter Fourteen: The Archdeacon’s Brother

Chapter Fifteen: The Invitation

Chapter Sixteen: Questions

Chapter Seventeen: Sunday with Mr Windle

Chapter Eighteen: Trouble

Chapter Nineteen: Escape

Chapter Twenty: Jem

Chapter Twenty-one: Polly Makes a Discovery

Chapter Twenty-two: The Nightdress

Chapter Twenty-three: Ma Smith

Chapter Twenty-four: Wilberforce

Chapter Twenty-five: First Morning

Chapter Twenty-six: In the Drawing Room

Chapter Twenty-seven: Rain

Chapter Twenty-eight: New Plans

Chapter Twenty-nine: Goodbye to Matron

Chapter Thirty: The Tunnel

Chapter Thirty-one: At the Bull

Chapter Thirty-two: At Morning Prayers

Chapter Thirty-three: The Theatre

Chapter Thirty-four: The Whole Truth

Chapter Thirty-five: The Rehearsal

Chapter Thirty-six: The Crusader

Chapter Thirty-seven: Curtain Down

Chapter One
THE CHOICE

Margaret had been discovering all her life that grown-ups were disappointing conversationalists. So now that she was ten she was quite prepared to carry on a conversation by herself. That January afternoon as she walked – or sometimes, forgetting it was a crime – skipped home beside Hannah, she argued about boots.

‘I know you say and Miss Sylvia and Miss Selina say that boots are economical because they last longer but I don’t think that’s true. All the other girls at school wear shoes and they say they don’t wear out quickly and they ought to know. And what nobody understands is what wearing boots does to me – they humiliate my legs. If I wasn’t me but a different person they would humiliate me all over, but not even boots can do that. I am Margaret Thursday and unhumiliatable.’

Hannah, her mind worrying round like a squirrel in a cage, had not been listening to a word Margaret said. Now she pulled her to a halt in a shop doorway.

‘Let’s have a look at you, dear. You are to have tea with the rector.’

Hannah was a bony woman, made bonier by wearing long stiff all-embracing corsets which creaked. She had worked for Miss Sylvia and Miss Selina Cameron most of her life, having first come to the house when she was thirteen as a between maid. She had sobbed herself sick before she went, much to her mother’s annoyance.

‘Give over, do,’ she had said. ‘What have you to cry about with everything so nice?’

The ‘everything’ had been packed in Hannah’s wicker basket, material provided by Mrs Cameron but sewn by Hannah and her mother. Such riches! Print dresses, black dresses for the afternoon, aprons, caps and, of course, an outfit for church on Sundays.

The Camerons had been kind to her, which was why Hannah had stayed with the family. There had been periods when she had got so far as walking out with one or other of the menservants, but things had happened. First, Mr Cameron had died. Mrs Cameron was the helpless type and she had clung to Hannah, who had by then risen to being parlourmaid, as though to a rock. For some reason, which Hannah had never understood, after Mr Cameron’s death there was less and less money. Slowly, changes had to be made. Not at once but over the years. First the menservants, then the cook and her assistants were given notice, until finally – except for a man once a week for the garden – there was only Hannah.

When Hannah had first come to work for the Camerons, Miss Sylvia had been twenty and Miss Selina eighteen. In those days they had been known as ‘Those pretty Cameron girls’. Now Hannah was over sixty, so Miss Sylvia was over seventy and Miss Selina rising seventy, and they were known as ‘The old Cameron ladies’.

Hannah had, almost since she was a baby, carefully taught Margaret how to be a good housewife. Her efforts had little effect for Margaret loathed dusting, polishing and sweeping, and as for laundry she just would not try. But Hannah’s efforts were not altogether a failure for she had taught Margaret to cook. Often Hannah found herself so tired at the end of the day she could scarcely drag herself up to bed, but it had never crossed her mind to give in her notice. Miss Sylvia, always the delicate one, was getting very frail, and poor Miss Selina ever so hazy in her mind. Anyway, Saltmarsh House, where they lived, was her home. She could not imagine living anywhere else.

Now Hannah’s bony, work-roughened fingers attempted to tidy Margaret’s hair. This was chestnut-coloured and very curly, so not at all easy to control.

Margaret tried to wriggle out of Hannah’s reach. She loved the rector but was surprised to be going to tea with him, for he was not the sort of man to give sudden invitations.

‘Why am I going to tea with the rector?’ she asked, still trying to pull away from Hannah. ‘Please leave my hair alone, you know the rector isn’t the sort of person who cares how people look.’

‘Tidiness shows respect,’ said Hannah. She stood away from Margaret to see the whole effect. Margaret was dressed as simply-brought-up children were dressed in the winter at the beginning of the century. A blue pleated skirt, a darker blue jersey and a red coat. On her head was a red tam-o’-shanter. On her legs black woollen stockings and the boots.

Hannah sighed, conscious that all Margaret’s clothes were darned and could do with a sponge.

‘I suppose you’ll have to do, but if only we’d had warning you could have worn your Sunday green.’

‘Thank goodness you didn’t know,’ said Margaret, ‘because I hate wearing my green for you’ve patched the elbows with stuff that doesn’t match.’

Hannah gave her a sad smile.

‘Beggars can’t be choosers. Come on or I’ll be late getting my ladies’ tea.’

Margaret liked going to the rectory for Mr Hanslow, the rector, was, excluding Hannah, her greatest friend. The rectory could have been a beautiful house, but the rector was very poor so both it and his garden were neglected. He was looked after by a Mr and Mrs Price who lived in a cottage down the road. Mr Price was really the verger, but he managed to combine his church work with a bit of gardening and cutting wood for the rector. Mrs Price cooked abominably and did what little housework was done.

Margaret never rang the rectory bell, she just opened the front door and shouted.

‘Can I come in? It’s me – Margaret.’

The study door opened and the rector came smiling into the passage. He gave Margaret a kiss.

‘There you are, my pet. Come in. Mrs Price has made toast for our tea.’

Over burnt toast and stewed tea, Margaret chattered away as usual, bringing the rector up to date with home and school news. Then, when Mrs Price had cleared away the tea things, she stuck out her legs.

‘Do you think you could speak to Miss Sylvia about these boots? Truly nobody wears boots any more. All the girls at school have laced-up shoes.’

Mr Hanslow did not look at the boots but straight into Margaret’s eyes.

‘I have always thought you were a sensible child, which is why I have asked you here today to discuss your future.’

Margaret was surprised. What future? Nothing ever changed in Saltmarsh House. It must, she decided, be something to do with the little school for the daughters of gentlemen which she attended.

‘Is it about school?’

‘That is one of the things we have to talk about,’ said the rector. ‘You remember, of course, the details of how you came to live here.’

Margaret was proud of her history.

‘Of course I do. One Thursday you found me on the steps of the church when I was a teeny-weeny baby. And with me in my basket there were three of everything, all of the very best quality.’

‘And a note,’ the rector reminded her.

‘Oh yes. Printed so no one would know who had written it. It said: THIS IS MARGARET WHOM I ENTRUST TO YOUR CARE. EACH YEAR FIFTY-TWO POUNDS WILL BE SENT FOR HER KEEP AND SCHOOLING. SHE HAS NOT YET BEEN CHRISTENED.’

The rector nodded, smiling at the memory.

‘You were a beautiful baby and if screams were anything to go by you certainly got the devil out of you at your christening. I would have dearly loved to take you in, but Mrs Price could not sleep in and an old bachelor did not seem a suitable guardian for you, so …’

‘So,’ Margaret prompted him, for she thought he was being rather slow telling the well-known story, ‘you asked the Miss Camerons to have me as they were the only people hereabouts with a big enough house and they said “yes”.’

‘God bless them,’ said the rector, ‘for there was no one else in the parish suitable and it did work out very nicely, but now things have gone wrong. This Christmas no money arrived for your keep.’

‘No money!’ Margaret gasped, for always the money had arrived with the utmost regularity. It came each year between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day. It was put in a bag somewhere in the church – fifty-two golden sovereigns. The bag was never found in the same place twice and no one had ever seen the money arrive. ‘Do you think it came and someone stole it?’

The rector took a card out of his breast pocket and passed it to Margaret.

‘This was found in the font.’

Like the card which had come with her when she was a baby, this one was printed. It said ‘NO MORE MONEY FOR MARGARET’.

Margaret was shocked.

‘How very mean! You would think a mother would manage something. Have you told Miss Sylvia and Miss Selina?’

The rector hesitated.

‘Really this card has hastened something which had got to happen sooner or later. Miss Selina is getting very old.’

Margaret giggled.

‘She’s getting more and more like a baby every day. Now Hannah has to dress her and undress her.’

‘Very sad,’ said the rector, ‘but it is also very worrying. You see, with the old ladies needing so much attention, Hannah has too much to do. It has broken her heart to admit this but it is true. So even before Christmas I had agreed to find you a new home.’

Margaret felt like Alice must have felt as she fell down the rabbit hole. A new home! But Saltmarsh House was her home, her only home. How could she be going to a new one – children never did that.

‘I suppose you didn’t know,’ she said, ‘but I help Hannah. Often and often I cook the supper and I do lots of other things – not as well as I cook, but I do them.’

The rector took one of Margaret’s hands.

‘It is not a question of helping in the house, it’s everything. The two old ladies are all Hannah can manage. She admitted this before Christmas and we discussed plans, thinking you still had an income of fifty-two pounds a year. But now the situation has changed. The Miss Camerons are, as you know, very far from rich, and now you have no money …’ The rector broke off, looking at Margaret with great love but also with a childlike confusion.

The rector’s worried face pulled Margaret together.

‘If I still had fifty-two pounds a year where were you going to send me?’

‘Nothing was decided, but we had thought of a boarding school.’

‘Well, I’m glad I haven’t got the money for that for I’d hate it. Couldn’t I live with you? I could do all the things Mrs Price does and I’d work in the garden as well as I’d eat very little.’

The rector looked more worried than ever.

‘I thought of that, but Mrs Price refused to consider it. She is a great sufferer with bad legs and …’

Margaret had her own opinion about Mrs Price’s bad legs, which she thought were used as an excuse not to work.

‘Well, send her away. I can look after both of us – truly I can.’

The rector gave a little groan.

‘It can’t be done, pet. You see, there’s Mr Price. He doesn’t really charge me, as you know, he throws me in, as it were, with his position of verger. But I did speak to the archdeacon about you, asking his opinion as to whether you could possibly live here. But he said he thought an old bachelor like myself was a most unsuitable guardian for a little girl.’

Margaret made a face.

‘How silly of the archdeacon. Well, if I’m not staying at Saltmarsh House and I’m not staying here, where am I going?’

The rector had spent many hours on his knees asking God for advice and help in handling this interview. He was convinced help and advice would be given to him if only he was spiritually able to receive it. Now, with Margaret’s brown eyes gazing up at him, he felt painfully inadequate and ashamed. Why was he so ineffectual a man that he had not risen in the world so that he had the wherewithal to succour children such as Margaret?

‘I’m afraid, pet, you are not going to care for either of the two solutions I have to offer. You are, I know, a brave child, but now you will need all your fortitude.’

Margaret stiffened to take what was coming.

‘Whatever it is,’ she said, ‘I’m still me – Margaret Thursday. Go on, tell me.’

Since Margaret had no surname it was the rector who had chosen Thursday, the day on which he had found her. He thought it touching that she was so proud of it.

‘I have, of course, tried everywhere to find you a home in this parish. I have succeeded in only one case. Your school. I know you do not much care for your teacher, but though perhaps she has a difficult nature she is a good Christian woman.’

‘I have never seen anything very Christian about her,’ said Margaret. ‘I think she’s hateful.’

The rector shook his head.

‘You must not make such harsh judgements, pet, especially now that she is trying to help. She has offered you a home in the school. Her suggestion is that you should do schoolwork in the mornings and housework in the afternoons and …’

But there the rector stopped for Margaret, her eyes flashing, had jumped to her feet.

‘I’d never live there, I’d rather die. You should see that poor Martha who works there now. I think she beats her and there are black beetles in the kitchen. Anyway, do you think I’d be a maid in my own school where, whatever anybody else thinks, I know I’m not just as good as anybody else but a lot better? Remember I came with three of everything and of the very best quality.’

The rector screwed himself up to tell Margaret his alternative suggestion.

‘The archdeacon has told me of an institution of which his brother is a governor. It is an orphanage, but an exceptionally pleasant place, I understand. He has offered to speak to his brother about you.’

Margaret swallowed hard, determined not to cry.

‘Where is it?’

‘Staffordshire.’

Margaret tried to recall the globe in the school classroom. She was now in Essex, surely Staffordshire was miles away.

‘Near Scotland?’ she suggested.

‘Oh, not so far as that. The orphanage is near a town called Wolverhampton. I do not know it myself.’

Margaret was so dispirited her voice was a whisper.

‘Would they take me for nothing?’

‘Yes.’

‘And I would be treated like all the other girls?’

‘Girls and boys – orphanages take both.’

Margaret gulped hard but she would not cry.

‘Then that’s where I’ll go. If I can’t stay here I’d rather go to a place where I am treated as a proper person.’

Chapter Two
PACKING UP

The orphanage – called St Luke’s – was, so pamphlets pleading for funds said, ‘A home for one hundred boys and girls of Christian background’. The building had been given and endowed by a wealthy businessman who had died in 1802. He had stipulated in his will that though the actual building was near Wolverhampton no child from any part of the country who was an orphan and a Christian was to be refused a vacancy provided they were recommended by a clergyman of the Established Church.

‘So splendid of the archdeacon to recommend you,’ the rector said to Margaret, ‘for he carries more weight than I could hope to do, and then, of course, there is his brother who is a governor.’

One of the worries of the committee who ran St Luke’s was how to collect their children. Most of them were too young to travel alone, especially if the journey included changing trains and crossing London. So a system had been devised by which new arrivals were collected in groups. When possible, new entrants were delivered to London by their relatives or sponsors, and there they were met by someone from the orphanage.

The rector came up to Saltmarsh House each time there was news about Margaret, but it was March before he arrived with definite information. Hannah always considered it unseemly that the rector should come into the kitchen, so he was led into the drawing room, which was cold, for neither Miss Sylvia nor Miss Selina came down until teatime so the fire was never lit until after luncheon.

‘Stay and hear the news,’ the rector told Hannah, ‘for it concerns you.’ He opened a letter from the archdeacon and read.

I have now heard from the chairman of the committee of good ladies who run the domestic affairs of the orphanage. She says there are two members of one family to be admitted at the same time as your protégée Margaret Thursday. They are to meet in the third class waiting room at Paddington Station on the 27th of this month at 1 p.m. The train does not leave until 2.10, but the children will be given some sort of meal. They say Margaret Thursday should bring no baggage as all will be provided.

Hannah was appalled.

‘No baggage indeed! That’s a nice way for a young lady to travel. Margaret came to us with three of everything and she is leaving us the same way, not to mention something extra I’ve made for Sundays.’

‘I think,’ the rector explained, ‘the orphans wear some kind of uniform.’

‘So they said on that first form they sent,’ Hannah agreed, ‘but there was no mention of underneath.’ Then she blushed. ‘You will forgive me mentioning such things, sir.’

The rector dropped the subject of underneath.

Do you think arrangements could be made for someone to stay with your ladies for one day while you take Margaret to Paddington Station? I would take her myself, but the archdeacon says …’ He broke off, embarrassed. Hannah understood.

‘No, better I should go. It’s not a gentleman’s job. We’ll have to book on the carrier’s cart to the railway junction for London.’

The rector was glad to do something.

‘I shall see to that, indeed, I will arrange everything. All you have to do is to be ready by the 27th. Can you manage that, Margaret, my pet?’

Margaret had been waiting for a chance to speak.

‘Can I take my baby clothes with me?’

‘Whatever for?’ gasped Hannah.

‘I don’t quite see …’ the rector started to say, but Margaret interrupted him.

‘I don’t want to get to this St Luke’s looking like a charity child. If I show my baby clothes – three of everything and of the very best quality – they’ll know I’m somebody.’

The rector looked at Margaret’s flashing eyes. He spoke firmly for he wanted her to remember his words.

‘If you behave like somebody you will be treated like somebody. Never allow anyone to suggest that because you do not know who your parents were you are in any way inferior to others more fortunately placed.’

‘You needn’t worry,’ said Margaret. ‘I never will. But what I think is that it will help if everybody can see I’m someone who has a mother who cared that her baby was properly dressed. How can people know that if they don’t see the clothes?’

The rector held out a hand to Margaret and she came to him.

‘It is my hope that some day your mother will come and claim you. You do not know and I do not know what terrible thing happened to her that forced her to leave her baby on the church steps. Nor do we know what new misfortune has deprived her of money, but I believe – and I pray for this night and morning – that one day her fortunes will change and then she will come to me and say: “Where is my Margaret?” Then I shall ask: “First, madam, describe the baby clothes you left for the child, otherwise how do I know you are her mother?”’

‘Well, truthfully,’ said Margaret, ‘it’s not likely the wrong mother would want me. What for?’

The rector smiled.

‘How do we know?’ he teased her. ‘Some day you may prove to be the heir to a great fortune. Remember Thursday’s child has far to go.’

‘Or,’ Hannah suggested, ‘you might become famous. I’m always telling her, sir, she might write a book. You ought to hear the stories she tells me of an evening, and all out of her head.’

‘So you see,’ said the rector, ‘I must keep the baby clothes for the day when your mother claims you.’ He got up. ‘Now I must get on with your affairs. I will arrange for the carrier to call here on the 27th.’

Hannah still had the wicker basket which she had brought to Saltmarsh House. Now she gave it to Margaret. To make her an ‘underneath’ trousseau she had raided the old ladies’ cupboards. There she had discovered an unused length of flannel, part of a roll bought to sew Miss Selina into one winter when she had pleurisy, and there was a voluminous cambric petticoat once worn by Miss Sylvia and other useful bits and pieces. She had sewn the clothes at night after Margaret was in bed, so it was the night before she left that Margaret saw them for the first time after they were packed in the wicker basket.

‘Three of everything,’ Hannah said proudly, lifting layers of tissue paper. ‘Three plain cambric petticoats. Three pairs of drawers with feather stitching. Three scalloped flannel petticoats. Three linings in case at that orphanage they make you wear dark knickers. Three liberty bodices and three nightdresses – all fine tucked.’ Then Hannah drew back yet one more piece of tissue paper. ‘And here for Sundays is a petticoat and a pair of drawers edged with lace.’

Margaret gasped. Then she threw her arms round Hannah.

‘Lace! Oh, darling Hannah, thank you. It’s like being a princess. When we go to church on Sundays I’ll be sure to see my frock sticks on my heel so everyone can see the lace.’

Hannah was shocked.

‘You’ll do nothing of the sort. What you have to remember is you were spoke for by an archdeacon so don’t shame him.’ Then she turned back to the wicker basket. ‘Your Bible and Prayer Book are in the bottom. I’ve tucked your stockings in wherever there is room, but on the top are your hankies, your brush and comb, your toothbrush and one nightie so you can get at them easy if you arrive late. And in a corner down at the bottom is that tin of mine with the cat on it you’re fond of. I’ve filled it with toffees.’

Suddenly it all seemed terribly final. Although most of Margaret had accepted that she was going to the orphanage, another part of her had refused to believe it. Could she really be going away from the rector and Hannah and all the people she knew and loved? With a howl she threw herself at Hannah.

‘Must I go? I’ll work in the house much more than I ever have before. I’ll like dusting, truly I will, and I’ll hardly eat anything at all.’

Hannah, her eyes dimmed by tears, gave Margaret a little push.

‘Don’t, my darling. Don’t. It won’t do no good.’ Then she knelt down and closed the wicker basket and fastened round it a leather strap.

Chapter Three
THE JOURNEY

The orphanage was poor. The endowment, which a hundred years before had seemed more than sufficient to dress, feed and house a hundred orphans, was now quite inadequate. Charitable people subscribed and sometimes held bazaars and jumble sales to raise funds, but there was still barely enough to keep the home going. The matron, who was a hard woman and in any case disapproved of spoiled orphans, kept the expenses down as low as they would go, largely by saving on food. ‘What won’t fatten will fill’ was one of her favourite sayings. As a result, Miss Jones, called assistant nurse but really assistant everything, who had been sent to meet Margaret and the other children, was very conscious of the lightness of the bag in which was her own and the orphans’ dinners to be eaten in the waiting room. A stale loaf of bread, some margarine, one ounce of cheese per person and a bottle of water.

Miss Jones was already in the waiting room when Hannah and Margaret arrived. She scarcely looked at them but fixed horrified eyes on the wicker basket.

‘I hope that is not the child’s luggage. You were informed no luggage was to be brought.’

Hannah had measured up Miss Jones. ‘That’s a jumped-up Miss Nobody,’ she thought. Out loud she said:

‘No young lady I have charge of goes away without baggage and they’re not doing so now, and don’t forget Margaret is no common orphan, she was spoken for by the archdeacon whose brother is one of the orphanage governors.’

Miss Jones never saw the governors, her life was ruled by Matron, of whom she was terrified. But it was common knowledge in the orphanage that even Matron had to listen to the governors. Perhaps if this child – to whom she had taken an instant dislike – knew a governor it was better to leave the question of her baggage to Matron. She looked coldly at Margaret.

‘You are, I suppose, Margaret Thursday.’

‘That’s right,’ Margaret agreed. ‘Of course, Thursday isn’t my real name. I was called that because that was the day the rector found me and …’

Miss Jones pointed to the bench on which she was sitting.

‘That’s enough talking, sit down quietly.’ Then she said to Hannah: ‘You can go now.’

Both Margaret and Hannah forgot Miss Jones. They gazed at each other with stricken faces.

‘Oh, my dear pet!’ said Hannah, holding out her arms. ‘Oh, my dear pet!’

Margaret put down the basket and ran to her.

‘Hannah! Hannah! Don’t leave me.’

Hannah, with tears rolling down her face, knelt and hugged her.

‘You got some stamps,’ she whispered, ‘the rector gave you. Bear it if you can, dear, but if you can’t you write and something might be thought of.’

Margaret hugged Hannah tighter.

‘Don’t leave me. You can’t! You can’t!’

Hannah knew every minute she stayed made things worse for Margaret. She freed herself from her clinging arms and, blinded by tears, stumbled towards the door. Margaret tried to run after her, but Miss Jones had stood enough. She grabbed Margaret by the wrist and picked up the wicker basket.

‘Sit down and behave yourself. I never saw such a display. You wait until Matron hears of this.’

‘Hannah! Hannah!’ screamed Margaret.

But Hannah was gone and the door had shut behind her.

Miss Jones was furious. There were others in the waiting room and they were looking pityingly at Margaret. It was too much, making her look like the wicked stepmother in a fairytale when really she should be admired.

‘Be quiet,’ she said in an angry whisper. Then, raising her voice for the benefit of the others in the room: ‘This is a very ungrateful way to behave for you are a lucky girl to be going to St Luke’s.’

At that moment there was a diversion. The waiting-room door opened and three more children came in – a girl and two boys. They were shabbily dressed in black and each was as golden-haired as Margaret was brown. The eldest, who was the girl, led her brothers towards Miss Jones. In spite of the shabby clothes, she had evidently known better days for she spoke in the clear voice of the well-educated.

‘Are you the lady from St Luke’s?’

Miss Jones nodded.

‘You must be the three Beresford children.’

‘That is correct,’ the girl agreed. ‘I am Lavinia. This’ – she pulled the elder boy forward – ‘is Peter, and this’ – she tried to pull forward her younger brother – ‘is Horatio,’ but Horatio refused to be pulled.

‘Don’t like that lady,’ he announced. ‘Horry wants to go home.’

Miss Jones made tch-tching noises. This really was her unlucky day. Now another child was going to make a scene. But she had reckoned without Lavinia.

She let go of Horatio’s hand and felt in her coat pocket and brought out a sweet and put it in the little boy’s mouth.

‘You mustn’t mind him,’ she told Miss Jones. ‘He’s only little, but he’ll settle down.’

Miss Jones opened her coat to look at her watch, which was fixed to her blouse with a gunmetal bow. Thankfully she saw it was time to eat.

‘Now sit down, all of you, and have some dinner. We have a long journey ahead of us.’ She opened the dinner bag and took out the food and a knife. She cut five slices of bread, smeared on a little margarine, then on each slice she placed a small knob of very dry cheese. She passed a slice to each of the children. Horatio looked in disgust at his slice.

‘Is this meant to be dinner?’ he asked.

Lavinia put an arm round him.

‘Eat it, darling,’ she whispered. ‘Then you shall have a sweetie.’

Margaret had received her slice but she made no effort to eat. She had succeeded in stopping crying except for an occasional hiccuping sob, but she had such a lump in her throat she knew she couldn’t swallow anything.

Lavinia, taking advantage of a moment when Miss Jones was repacking the food and the knife, leant across to Peter.

‘Put the little girl’s slice in your pocket,’ she whispered. ‘She’ll be hungry later on.’

Somehow the other children had got the food down them. Miss Jones took another look at her watch. She got up.

‘Come along,’ she said. ‘Pick up that basket, Margaret, and hold my hand. You three,’ she told the Beresfords, ‘follow me and be sure to keep close.’

In the train Margaret began to feel better. Presently she felt so much better she was able to eat her bread and cheese, now rather hairy after being in Peter’s pocket. They had a reserved compartment and Miss Jones sat in a corner as far from the children as possible, so in a whisper Lavinia and Margaret exchanged information.

‘I’m not going to St Luke’s except for a few days,’ Lavinia explained. ‘There were only vacancies for the boys. Anyway I’m fourteen, so I’m going into service somewhere near so I can see the boys on my half days.’

Margaret could not imagine Lavinia in service, she was not a bit like Hannah or that poor Martha at the school.

‘Will you like being in service?’

‘I want to learn how to run a house,’ Lavinia explained.

Peter broke in.

‘Our mother said you could never give orders if you didn’t know how a house should be run.’

Margaret had not supposed orphans gave orders, so Peter’s statement cheered her. She knew that she would be a giving-orders sort of person, but it was nice to think she would not be alone. Then she had another cheering thought. Perhaps if she made friends with these children Lavinia would see her as well as her brothers on her half days.

‘I’m ten, nearly eleven,’ Peter told her. ‘How old are you?’

‘I’m nearly eleven too,’ said Margaret. ‘How old is he?’ She pointed to Horatio.

‘It’s rude to point,’ said Horatio, ‘but if you want to know I’m six.’

Peter was determined Margaret should be well informed.

‘Our mother’s dead,’ he announced.

‘Yes, I suppose she is, and your father too,’ Margaret agreed, ‘or you wouldn’t be orphans.’

Peter started to answer that, but Lavinia evidently didn’t want him to.

‘No, we wouldn’t be, would we? Now tell us about you.’

‘Well,’ said Margaret, ‘I’m not properly an orphan. I was found on a Thursday in a basket on the church steps with three of everything of the very best quality.’

The Beresfords were thrilled.

‘How romantic!’ said Lavinia.

Peter looked admiringly at Margaret.

‘So you could be absolutely anybody?’

‘That’s right,’ Margaret agreed.

‘And until this Christmas every year gold money was left in the church in a bag to keep me.’

‘And nobody saw who left it?’ Lavinia asked.

‘Never.

‘My goodness,’ said Peter, ‘it’s like a book!’

Lavinia looked across at Miss Jones and saw she was asleep.

‘Peter is going to write books when he grows up,’ she whispered to Margaret. ‘He’s very clever, he never stops reading.’

‘I keep hoping there’ll be books in the orphanage,’ said Peter, ‘then I won’t mind how awful it is.’

Horatio looked as though he might cry.

‘It won’t be awful, Vinia, will it?’

Lavinia sighed.

‘Why did you say that?’ she said to Peter. ‘Now he’s going to cry and I’ve no sweets left.’

That was Margaret’s moment. She climbed quietly on to the seat and took her wicker basket off the rack.

‘But I have,’ she said. ‘A whole box of toffees. Let’s share them out before she wakes, for I bet they won’t let us eat them when we get there.’

Chapter Four
THE ORPHANAGE

The train did not arrive at Wolverhampton until nearly six o’clock and then there was a long drive in a horse-drawn omnibus. As a result the children, who since breakfast had only eaten the slice of bread and the morsel of cheese, were so exhausted that they scarcely took in the orphanage.

To make everything more muddling the orphans appeared to be wearing fancy dress. They were having supper when the children first saw them. Forty-nine girls at one table, forty-eight boys at another, eating, the children noticed sadly, only bread and margarine and drinking what looked like cocoa.

‘Oh dear!’ Lavinia whispered to Margaret. ‘I did hope it would be soup and perhaps eggs.’

The ‘fancy dress’ was, the children were to learn, ordinary orphanage wear. It had been designed when the orphanage had first opened over a hundred years before and had never been changed. For the girls there were brown cloth dresses to the ankles, white caps and long aprons. For the boys there were loose brown trousers and short matching coats. Out of doors both girls and boys had brown capes. On Sundays the girls had white muslin scarves folded into their dresses and the boys wore white collars.

That first night the children seemed to see nothing but brown everywhere they looked – brown out of which rose the noticeably pale faces of the orphans. As the children stood in the doorway swaying with tiredness and hunger, they were startled by the harsh voice of the matron.

‘Don’t stand there gaping, sit down. There is room for you two boys there and you girls here.’

Lavinia pulled herself together.

‘I think perhaps,’ she suggested in her quiet but authoritative voice, ‘I had better sit beside my little brother just for tonight. He is so tired he may need some help …’

She got no further for she was confronted by Matron, a stout woman who looked as if she had been poured into her black dress and then had set inside it, so upholstered did she look. She had sandy reddish hair and a fierce red face.

‘I am matron here, young woman,’ she said, ‘and I give the orders. Off you go, boys, and you two girls sit. And do not forget to thank God for your good food.’

The bread was stale and hard to get down, but the children were ravenous, and the cocoa – if it was cocoa, for it tasted of nothing – was hot.

‘We can have two slices each,’ a little girl next to Margaret whispered to her, ‘and sometimes, if there’s any over, a drop more cocoa.’

Lavinia strained round to see how Horatio was getting on. Fortunately he was not crying for he was nearly asleep, but he was swallowing the pieces of bread soaked in cocoa which Peter was pushing into his mouth. Then she saw that Miss Jones, who was talking to Matron, was pointing to Margaret.

‘Expect a storm,’ she whispered to Margaret. ‘I’ve a feeling Miss Jones is telling Matron about your basket.’

Miss Jones was, and presently Matron came striding over to Margaret, her black, upholstered chest heaving with what appeared to be rage. She clapped her hands.

‘Silence, everybody,’ she roared. ‘What, children, is the orphanage rule about luggage?’

‘Bring no luggage,’ the children chanted, ‘everything needed will be provided.’

‘And is it provided?’ Matron asked.

‘Yes,’ answered the children.

‘But here we have a new orphan who has quite deliberately disregarded the committee’s rule.’ Matron beckoned to Miss Jones. ‘Bring Margaret Thursday’s basket.’

Miss Jones – a much meeker Miss Jones than the one who had met the children – scuttled out and was soon back carrying, as if it were a bomb, Hannah’s wicker basket. At the sight of it in Miss Jones’s arms, Margaret nearly broke out crying. Was it only last night that Hannah had so proudly shown her what she had packed? Lavinia slipped a hand into Margaret’s.

‘Don’t give that Matron the pleasure of seeing that you mind. I bet she likes seeing people cry.’

Clearly Matron was surprised, in fact, almost pleased, at the beautifully made and packed clothes. She had placed the basket on the end of the girls’ table and had tossed aside the tissue paper. But as she took out one garment after another she made no comment except an occasional mutter to Miss Jones. ‘Ridiculous.’ ‘Much too good for an orphan,’ and finally, ‘Lace! Look, Jones, lace!’ But as she repacked the little basket she laid a few things on one side.

‘Come here, Margaret,’ she said.

Giving Margaret’s hand a last squeeze, Lavinia moved to let Margaret get off the bench. Margaret, having scrambled over the bench, raised her chin in the air and marched over to Matron.

‘I have not yet decided what shall be done with these clothes, but you may keep your Bible and Prayer Book and your toothbrush. What is this tin for?’

Matron held out the now empty toffee tin. The much-loved cat’s head seemed almost to smile at Margaret. She swallowed a sob.

‘It’s to keep things in. It was a goodbye present.’

Perhaps because she had no use for it, for it could not have been from kindness, Matron laid the tin beside the Bible, Prayer Book and toothbrush.

‘You can go back to your seat. Take these things with you. Now stand, children. Grace.’

The orphans pushed back the benches and stood, hands folded, heads bent. Then they sang Bishop Ken’s Doxology.

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.

Praise Him, all creatures here below,

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Matron. ‘Never forget how fortunate you are and how much you have for which to praise God. See them up to the dormitories, Jones, but leave Lavinia Beresford with me.’

‘Oh, couldn’t I see Horatio to bed?’ Lavinia pleaded. ‘He’s so little and so tired.’

Lavinia, from the tone of Matron’s voice, might have suggested having a bath in public.

‘Go into the boys’ dormitory! Are you mad, girl? Quick, children, march.’

The boys went first, each one as he passed Matron bowing his head as if before a shrine. At the end, dragged along by Peter, came Horatio. He was, Lavinia saw, really walking in his sleep so he at least would not suffer. The girls followed the boys, but they, as they passed Matron, each had to curtsey.

‘I won’t curtsey to anybody,’ Margaret muttered to Lavinia.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ Lavinia retorted. ‘What is the point of putting her back up?’

Margaret respected Lavinia’s opinion and anyway she was too tired and too miserable to have much fight in her. So, clutching her possessions, she followed the last girl and, in spite of having her arms full, succeeded in making the necessary bob.

‘I don’t like the look of that girl,’ Matron observed to Miss Jones, who was following the children. ‘She has a proud air, she must be humbled.’

‘Quite so, Matron,’ Miss Jones agreed. ‘I thought the same the moment I saw her, and the scene she made in the waiting room was disgraceful.’

Lavinia followed Matron into her sitting room. It was, she noticed, a surprisingly comfortable room to find in that desolate place, and though it was March there was a cheerful fire burning in the grate. Drawn up to the fire was a table laid for a meal. Evidently, thought Lavinia, she is going to have her supper. Matron sat down at her table, but she did not ask Lavinia to sit.

‘I have good news for you,’ she said. ‘The Countess of Corkberry, who has always taken a kindly interest in this place, needs a scullery maid. You are to receive five pounds a year, but Her Ladyship has agreed to advance part of that sum so that you may have a respectable wardrobe. I understand you have a tin trunk at the railway station. Does it contain any clothes suitable for a scullery maid?’

‘I don’t really know what a scullery maid wears,’ Lavinia confessed, ‘but I have some plain frocks, perhaps they will do.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Matron. ‘You will need print dresses, aprons and caps and a black outfit for Sundays. All the staff have to attend church.’ She looked at Lavinia’s fair plaits. ‘And of course you must put your hair up.’

‘My hair up!’ Lavinia gasped. ‘I’m only just fourteen.’

‘Fortunately in sewing classes our girls work at wardrobes for our leavers who are going into service, so you can be fitted out – at your expense, of course. I should think two days will be enough to provide everything. A carrier will bring your box here tomorrow.’

‘Two days!’ said Lavinia. ‘I had hoped perhaps a week to see the boys settled in.’

‘Two days,’ said Matron. ‘We have no room for you here. For tonight a mattress has been put on the floor at the end of the girls’ dormitory …’ Matron stopped for there was a knock on the door. ‘Come in.’

The knock had been made by a girl who looked no older than Margaret. She was wearing the orphanage uniform but her hair was screwed up inside her cap. She was carrying a laden tray.

‘Ah, Winifred! Supper,’ said Matron. ‘Good.’

Winifred put in front of Matron a large steak, a dish of potatoes and another of cauliflower. Then from a cupboard she fetched a bottle of porter.

Lavinia felt saliva collecting in her mouth at the sight of such good food.

‘That will be all, Lavinia,’ said Matron. ‘Winifred will direct you to the girls’ dormitory.’

Margaret, shivering with tiredness and lack of food, had accepted without question the bed pointed out to her. She had followed the other girls into an inadequate washroom in which were jugs of cold water and tin basins, in one of which they all cleaned their teeth. She had been shown a tiny shelf over her bed on which she was told to put her toothbrush and mug, her Bible and Prayer Book.

‘And when Miss Jones says “Pray” you stop whatever you are doing and kneel by your bed,’ her guide whispered, ‘or she hits you with a hairbrush.’

Margaret had just pulled on the ugly coarse greyish-coloured nightdress, which was lying on her bed, when the order came for prayer. She hurriedly dropped to her knees and buried her face in her hands. Evidently it was Miss Jones who decided how long prayers should be, for a few moments later there was another bark from her. ‘Up, girls, and into your beds.’

Margaret had hidden the tin Hannah had given her in her bed. In the dark she hugged it to her. It was a little bit of Hannah. Putting her head under the scratchy inadequate bedclothes, she stifled her sobs.

‘I can’t bear it. They’ve taken all my clothes. I’ll never wear lace on Sundays. Oh, Hannah! Hannah!’

But when a little later Lavinia crept up to the dormitory and found Margaret, though her face was wet with tears, she was asleep.

Chapter Five
FIRST DAY

When Margaret woke up the next morning she could not at first think where she could be. Accustomed to a room of her own, she was puzzled by the sleeping sounds which came from the orphans. Then, as if a cold heavy weight had dropped on to her solar plexus, she remembered. This was the orphanage. St Luke’s Orphanage that the archdeacon had told the rector was ‘an exceptionally pleasant place’. Pleasant! Rage filled Margaret. Then she remembered she had three carefully hidden stamps – wait until she wrote to the rector and told him what the archdeacon had dared to describe as exceptionally pleasant.

Margaret sat up and looked down the dormitory. There was not much light because the curtains were drawn, but peering over the twenty-five beds which lined each wall she could see at the far end of the room a mattress on the floor covered, as were the beds, with a grey blanket. ‘That,’ she thought, ‘must be Lavinia. I bet she won’t mind if I wake her up.’

To think of something meant for Margaret doing it immediately. In a second she was out of her bed and, holding up her long greyish nightgown, was running down the dormitory. She sat down by the hump under the blanket which was Lavinia.

‘Lavinia! Lavinia! Wake up. It’s me. Margaret. What shall I do? I can’t stay in this dreadful place. You won’t leave Peter or Horatio here, will you?’

Lavinia had the gift of waking up clear-headed.

‘You’d better go back to your bed,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sure you aren’t allowed to be here.’

Up went Margaret’s chin.

‘I don’t care. I’m doing no harm. Did you hear what I said? I’m running away. I can’t stop here.’

Lavinia sat up.

‘I’m only going to be here for two days. I’m to be scullery maid for somebody called the Countess of Corkberry.’

‘Two days!’ said Margaret. ‘I thought you said a week.’

‘I did, and that’s what I hoped, but it’s not to be, but I’ll be back every other Sunday.’

‘They said you could?’

Lavinia spoke with quiet authority.

‘Either I have every other Sunday or I won’t work for the Countess.’

Margaret looked approving. That was the way to talk.

‘I wish I could be a scullery maid. I’m a good cook and it’s sure to be better than being here because it couldn’t be worse.’

‘Well, you can’t be,’ said Lavinia, ‘you’re too young. You would have to pass a labour exam before you could go out to work. I quite see that you want to run away, but please stick it out for a bit. You see, I want you to keep an eye on Peter and Horatio.’

Margaret weakened. She wanted to leave that morning. But perhaps she could bear a week or two, especially knowing Lavinia would come back every other Sunday.

‘Well, I might stick it out for a bit, but …’

Margaret got no further for Miss Jones had flung open the door and was clanging a huge bell. She stopped in mid-clang, her mouth gaping, unable to believe what her eyes told her.

‘Margaret Thursday! What are you doing out of your bed?’

Margaret got to her feet.

‘Talking to Lavinia. She’s my friend.’

‘Go back to your bed at once,’ Miss Jones thundered. Then she gave another clang on the bell. ‘Up, girls, up. Form a line for the washroom.’ She looked again at Margaret, who had not moved. ‘Now what is it?’

‘You said I was to go back to bed. Then you said “Up, girls, up”, and now you say form a line for the washroom. What do you want me to do?’

Miss Jones was more sure than ever that she did not like Margaret Thursday.

‘You will get your toothbrush and mug and join that line there for the washroom.’

It was a slow shuffling walk to get washed, made the more dismal by the shrieks of the small children who were being washed by Miss Jones and an assistant.

‘They put soap in their eyes,’ a small girl who was in front of Margaret told her. ‘It happens every day. It used to happen to me.’

‘Beasts!’ said Margaret.

Lavinia, who had taken her place behind Margaret, whispered:

‘I do hope Peter has managed to wash Horry. He’d kick anyone who put soap in his eyes.’

Margaret found her clothes had disappeared and in their place were her orphanage clothes: a vest, a bodice, coarse long straight-legged drawers, a grey winceyette petticoat, the uniform dress, an apron and a cap. The only thing left of her own clothes were her boots.

‘It would be them,’ she thought resentfully, ‘knowing I always hated them.’ Then there were tears in her eyes. Even the despised boots were something of home.

None of the clothes were new and none fitted, but Margaret was given some good advice by an older girl whom Miss Jones sent to show her how the uniform cap should be worn.

‘Don’t say anything doesn’t fit,’ she whispered, ‘for you’ll be made to alter it yourself in what they call “free time” – we don’t get much of that.’

There was no such thing as a looking-glass in the dormitory, so Margaret could only guess at her appearance. She could see, however, how the others looked and that was enough.

‘My goodness!’ she thought. ‘Suppose Hannah could see me now!’

As a matter of fact, Margaret was wrong. Of course the clothes were a hundred years out of date and they felt ridiculous to her, used to skirts to her knees, but grown-up people thought the orphanage children looked picturesque. The cap really did suit Margaret. It was made of white cotton with a drawstring at the back which held it tightly in position. The children were supposed to strain their hair out of sight under the caps, but Margaret’s curls refused to be controlled and spiralled out round her face.

Breakfast was another depressing meal. Each child had a bowl of lumpy porridge served with a mere splash of milk and no sugar. This was followed by one slice of bread and margarine and a cup of weak tea.

The orphans were not taught in the orphanage but, wrapped in their brown cloaks, they were marched two-and-two down to the village school.

‘At school don’t they laugh at us in these clothes?’ Margaret asked the girl who was paired with her, whose name was Susan.

Susan shook her head.

‘No. They’re used to us, and anyway I think they are sorry for us. Sometimes they give us things. Once I had a whole apple.’

Margaret, used to the large overgrown garden at Saltmarsh House where she could have all the fruit there was for the picking, felt even more depressed. Imagine speaking of an apple like that – something to be remembered!

‘Don’t we ever get fruit at the orphanage?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Susan. ‘Always at Christmas we are given an orange.’

An orange! It was not just that an orange a year was all she was to expect, but Susan’s calm acceptance that outraged Margaret. But she had other questions to ask. One had been worrying her since she had been given her uniform for nobody could run far dressed in it.

‘What do they do with our own clothes?’

Susan looked scared, peering round to see that Miss Jones was not within hearing distance.

‘We don’t know.’

‘But they must be kept somewhere.’

Susan whispered so low that Margaret had to strain to hear.

‘Some of them say Matron sells them.’

‘For herself?’

Susan nodded.

‘But that’s only what they say. We don’t know.’

‘They won’t sell mine,’ said Margaret. ‘I’ll ask Matron for them.’

Susan clutched at Margaret’s arm.

‘Don’t. Just for asking you get a terrible punishment, you could …’

They were outside the school playground. Miss Jones, red-faced, was standing by Susan.

‘What were you saying? You know talking is forbidden.’

Susan might look meek, but she evidently knew how to fool Miss Jones.

‘I was only telling Margaret what work we shall do in school this morning.’

‘Oh!’ Miss Jones turned away. ‘Quick march. Straight to the classrooms, children. No playing in the yard.’

Chapter Six
SCHOOL

A Miss Snelston was head of the village school and from the first the children liked her. It was not easy with only one pupil-teacher to assist her to teach children of all ages in two rooms, but somehow she managed.

Most of the pupils other than the orphans were the children of farm labourers, red-cheeked and solidly built on a diet largely composed of vegetables, eggs, milk and bread, for at that time farm labourers’ wages were very low so meat was a rarity. All the children, urged on by their parents, had one aim which was to pass the labour exam as early as possible so that the girls could go into service and the boys get work on the farms. Miss Snelston, of course, knew this was their ambition and she accepted it. ‘After all,’ she would say to her pupil-teacher, Polly Jenkin, ‘they may as well leave when they are twelve for you and I know, however long we keep them here, very few would learn any more, and of course it’s hard for the parents to find the school money.’ School money was twopence a week, which in those days was paid as school fees.

It was Miss Snelston’s hope each time there was a new batch of orphans that a really intelligent child would turn up. That was how she had found Polly Jenkin. She had taught her since she came to the orphanage at the age of four and had discovered in her a real fondness for learning, so the moment she had passed her labour exam she had applied to the governors for her. She arranged that Polly was to receive two-and-sixpence a month and would live in her cottage, in return for which she would help with the housework.

The school morning started with prayers and a hymn, then, leaving Polly to get the school work started, Miss Snelston called Margaret, Peter and Horatio into her little office and gave them their slates.

‘These are your very own,’ she explained. ‘You must look after them carefully for on them you do your sums and sometimes dictation. My aim is to see four sums right on every slate.’ She smiled at the three children, hiding from them her deep pity for well she knew how hard their lives would be. ‘You,’ she said to Peter, ‘must be Peter Beresford and this must be Horatio.’

Horatio, looking very tiny in his brown uniform, which was at least two sizes too large for him, smiled back at Miss Snelston.

‘That man that washed me put soap in my eyes,’ he told her.

‘I’m sure he did,’ Miss Snelston thought, looking at Horatio’s still bloodshot eyes and tearstained cheeks. She turned up the sleeves of his jacket which entirely hid his hands.

‘Dear me, that suit is very big for you.’ She turned to Peter. ‘Bring him in here in middle morning break and I’ll stitch the sleeves up.’ Then she looked at the trousers flapping round the child’s ankles. ‘Do you think Matron would mind if I shortened the trousers?’

Peter was a good-looking boy with large blue eyes. Now he turned these anxiously to Margaret.

‘Would she mind?’

Margaret felt something she had never felt before. A sort of warm feeling round her heart. All her life people had looked after her, now somebody needed her. It was nice to be needed.

‘I shouldn’t think she’d notice.’

Miss Snelston evidently thought that sensible.

‘You are Margaret Thursday?’

‘That’s right,’ Margaret agreed. ‘It’s not my real surname. You see it was a Thursday when the rector found me. I was in a basket with three of everything packed with me, all of the very best quality. And there was a card which said my name was Margaret and that fifty-two pounds would come every year to keep me – and so it did until last Christmas.’

Miss Snelston would like to have heard more but the school needed her.

‘Can you read and write?’

Margaret thought that a foolish question.

‘Yes.’

Miss Snelston turned to Peter.

‘And you?’

‘Oh yes, of course.’

There was something about the way Peter answered that caught Miss Snelston’s ear.

‘What do you read?’

‘What I can get. Before …’ Peter hesitated, then said: ‘Before we were sent here I was reading David Copperfield.’

Miss Snelston held out a hand to Horatio.

‘You and Margaret can sit next to each other,’ she told Peter. ‘Horatio will be in the next room with the little ones – or can you read too, Horatio?’

Horatio shook his head.

‘But I can draw pictures.’

‘Good,’ said Miss Snelston, longing to give him a hug. ‘If you draw a good picture we will put it up on the wall.’

Back at the orphanage, Lavinia had been sent to what was called the linen room. There on a trestle table were piles of print dresses, aprons and caps made in sewing time by what Miss Jones described as ‘the female orphans’. She held a dress up against Lavinia.

‘Mostly these fit anyone,’ she said. ‘The apron ties them in.’

Lavinia turned the dresses over. ‘There are so many pretty prints in the shops,’ she thought. ‘I wonder why they have to choose such ugly ones.’

‘I think I’ll just take two dresses,’ she said. ‘They’ll do to start with and I can buy some prettier ones later on.’

Miss Jones jumped as if she had been bitten by a snake.

‘Prettier! Prettier! Who do you think you are? Pretty indeed! It is not prettiness that Her Ladyship is expecting from her scullery maid.’

But Lavinia was not easily cowed.

‘Did you never hear the proverb, “He who pays the piper calls the tune”? Just now I am paying the piper and I say I only want two print frocks. I have a black dress and coat which will do for Sundays, but I will take four aprons and caps.’

Miss Jones could have shaken her. It was, she thought, foolish of Matron to have told Lavinia she had to pay for the dresses. Better to have fitted her out and then sent the bill to Lady Corkberry’s housekeeper for payment to be deducted from her wages.

‘Very well,’ she snapped. ‘Take what you want and then follow me. I will show you where you can sew.’

The orphans came home at twelve for their dinner. This was the big meal of the day. A regular amount of food was allowed for each orphan each week and from this ration Matron was supposed to select the meals. But Matron was fond of her food so she made a point of never weighing the meat the butcher sent or the fish from the fishmonger, well knowing she would be rewarded by tasty steaks and delicate soles. As a result the main meal, though eaten to the last lick, usually left the orphans hungry. That day the meal was a stew which should have contained at least a quarter of a pound of meat per child, but in fact was mostly turnips, parsnips and potatoes, with fragments of meat floating around. However, there had been complaints that the children went back to school hungry, so the stew was followed by a slice of suet pudding served with a teaspoonful of treacle. The suet puddings were so solid it was said if you threw one against the wall it would not break up but would bounce back to the thrower.

Margaret and Lavinia succeeded in sitting next to each other and in exchanging a little conversation.

‘The school’s nice,’ Margaret whispered. ‘Miss Snelston turned up Horry’s suit. Nobody can read as well as Peter. We are made to point to each word as we read it.’

‘I’m going tomorrow,’ Lavinia told Margaret. ‘My trunk is coming this afternoon and there are things in it I want to tell you about. I’ll have to wait until everybody is asleep, but I’ll come and talk to you tonight.’

Afternoon school was given up to the lighter subjects. First there was dancing, which Margaret loved, then there was two-part singing and finally drawing. ‘If only it was all school and we never had to go to the orphanage, wouldn’t it be lovely?’ Margaret thought, but soon school was over and Miss Jones was outside shouting ‘Get into line. One two. One two. No talking.’ Sadly, out of the corners of their eyes, the orphans watched the village children laughing and pushing each other about as they ran home to their teas.

For the orphans, work was not over for the day. After tea, which was a slice of bread and margarine and a cup of milk and water, there were what were called ‘tasks’. Some of the girls were sent to sew, others to the kitchen to peel potatoes. For the boys there was wood to cut and bring in and what was called ‘repairs’, which meant mending any piece of furniture which needed it.

The youngest children, of whom Horatio was one, were turned loose during this time to play. There were no toys in the so-called playroom, but the children managed without, so almost at once Horatio was seized on by two small girls who told him he was their little boy for they were going to play ‘Home’. ‘Home’ was an immensely popular game with the smaller children, who could spend hours pretending they were mothers and fathers – creatures few of them had seen.

Margaret, because it was an unpopular task, was sent by Miss Jones to the scullery to peel potatoes. This was supposed to be done in silence, but the cook and her assistant were out so only Winifred was in charge, and of course nobody paid any attention to her. Occasionally she squeaked:

‘Oh, be quiet, do. If Matron was to hear she wouldn’t half wrought me,’ but mostly she kept darting to the scullery door to hear what was going on, for she was only thirteen and had, before Matron took her on to work in the kitchen, been an orphan herself.

Margaret was holding the floor. Apart from the fact that she was new so no one knew her story, she loved an audience and knew how to keep them amused. Of course she told the story of her arrival in a basket, but on this occasion she added a few touches.

‘And every one of my baby clothes was embroidered with – what do you think?’ It was clear the little girls couldn’t think. ‘A coronet. And amongst my baby clothes was a beautiful diamond brooch.’

Susan was amongst the potato peelers.

‘Oh, Margaret, you are a fibber!’

‘I’m not then,’ said Margaret. ‘I’ll write to the rector to tell you it’s true. Then you’ll see.’

‘Who do you think you might be, then?’ another child asked.

Margaret had so often wondered about this she had dozens of suggestions to offer.

‘Well …’ she said, ‘I might be …’ From that night onwards Margaret was established as the queen of storytellers.

Margaret was almost asleep by the time Lavinia felt it safe to come to her bed. She brought with her two books, David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities.

‘These are Peter’s. I can’t get them to him as I can’t get into the boys’ dormitory. Anyhow, I don’t believe he’d know how to hide them. Could you?’

‘I can try. I made my tin box into my bed this morning and nobody noticed, but I don’t know if they look sometimes. Really I ought to get them to school, they can be safe in Peter’s desk.’

‘Well, do what you can.’ Lavinia put the books into Margaret’s bed. ‘He must have something to read. He’d rather read than eat. And here,’ she put a piece of paper into Margaret’s hand, ‘is my address. If anything goes really wrong get a message to me there. Perhaps that Miss Snelston would help, she sounds nice.’

Margaret rummaged round and found her tin box and opened it.

‘I’ll keep it in here. I may take this to school. I’ll see. It depends if they search our beds.’

Lavinia found and held Margaret’s hands.

‘Don’t run away, will you? It’s awful enough going off and leaving Peter and Horry, but if you weren’t here I think I’d die.’

‘I won’t run away without telling you, I promise you that. But you will come every other Sunday? Promise.’

Lavinia kissed her.

‘I promise, or at least, if they won’t give me every other Sunday, I’ll find another place to work. I can promise you that.’

‘Good,’ said Margaret. She lay down again and, hugging her box to her, she was soon asleep.

Chapter Seven
LAVINIA

Lavinia drove away the next morning in an estate cart belonging to the Corkberrys. The children did not see her go as they were at school. The young man who drove the cart shouldered her tin box and, though Miss Jones saw her drive away, she neither waved nor smiled. It was a dismal departure.

Lavinia tried hard not to cry but she had to gaze out over the fields so the driver would not see that her eyes were brimming with tears. But if he could not see the young man guessed.

‘Don’t ’ee take on now,’ he said. ‘You’ll like it up to Sedgecombe Place. They be good employers, His Lordship and Her Ladyship. And the grub’s good – far better than you would get in that old orphanage. Cruel hard on the little ’uns they say that be.’

The driver told Lavinia his name was Jem and he worked with the horses. He was a cheerful youth and made Lavinia feel better.

‘Do you think I shall see Lady Corkberry today?’

Jem shook his head.

‘No – not her. There be a Mrs Tanner, she be the one you’ll see. She be the housekeeper. Bit of a dragon seemingly, but they say if you do your work right she’m fair.’

Lavinia’s heart sank. Would Mrs Tanner want to see if she worked well before she promised her every other Sunday?

‘Is it far from Sedgecombe Place – I mean from the orphanage? You see, I want to get back there on my time off, I’ve two little brothers there.’

‘Not far,’ said Jem, ‘maybe four miles – not more. Walk it easy, pretty walk too all along the canal bank.’

Lavinia looked round.

‘I can’t see a canal.’

‘Not from here,’ Jem agreed, ‘but this is canal country, it’s near here where the Shropshire Union Canal runs into the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal. I did ought to know for I was born on a canal boat.’

‘Were you? What made you leave it to work at Sedgecombe Place?’

‘The pneumonia,’ Jem explained. ‘Cruel sick I was and down at a place called Autherley my dad had to call the doctor. Well, there wasn’t no hospital near so the doctor told her ladyship about me and she fixed it so I was put to bed in the house. Well, when I was better like, the doctor he said I wasn’t to go back on the canal no more, so that’s how I come to work with the ’orses. I see me dad and mum often enough when they’re passin’. All the way to London my dad goes.’

Lavinia knew nothing about canals. She thought it very odd to be born on a boat.

‘Have you got a lot of brothers and sisters?’

‘Five. Tight squeeze it was when we was all there, but now my eldest brother he has his own boat and the next he give up same as me, then me two sisters got married so now there’s only young Tom left, eleven he is, he leads the horse – not the same one, of course, but the one they give you at the stables.’

‘Doesn’t Tom have to go to school?’ Lavinia asked.

‘No – canal people don’t go to school. I can make me mark because one of the men I work with showed me. Young Tom would have gone to school if he could have been spared, but a course ’e couldn’t be, not with there bein’ nobody else for the ’orse. He don’t like the canal life, Tom don’t. Dad’s dead scared he’ll run off some time.’

‘I must get someone to show me the canal path,’ said Lavinia. ‘It will be nice walking by the water now the spring’s coming.’

‘You’ll see me around,’ Jem promised, ‘and if you tell me when you have time off I’ll put you on your way.’

At the next bend in the road they could see Sedgecombe Place – a grey battlemented building lying in a great park.

‘My word!’ said Lavinia. ‘It is a big place, there must be a lot of servants needed to keep it right.’

Jem whipped up the horse.

‘You’ve said it.’ He did not speak again until he drove the cart through some wrought-iron gates. ‘We go up this path here, it leads to the back door.’

Just as Jem had predicted, Lavinia was taken at once to be interviewed by Mrs Tanner. She was a tall rather severe-looking woman in a black dress with a black silk apron over it. Round her waist was a chain on which hung a bunch of keys. The housekeeper’s room in which she saw Lavinia was, however, cosy, with pretty curtains and primroses in a vase, so perhaps, Lavinia thought, she is gentler than she looks. Mrs Tanner sat upright in a stiff chair while Lavinia stood just inside the door.

‘You are Lavinia Beresford?’

Lavinia curtseyed.

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Have you worked in a kitchen before?’

‘No, ma’am. This is my first place.’

‘I see. This is a big place and we all have to work hard. You will receive five pounds a year less what you have had advanced for your uniform. You will share a room with the under kitchen-maid. Between you there will be your room to do and you have to look after the rooms of three footmen. You will rise at six for, as Mrs Smedley the cook will explain, you will have the kitchen range to see to so that the water is hot by the time she comes down. Otherwise your work is to wait on her and, of course, wash up. At night, before you go to bed, there will be the range to blacklead and the kitchen and scullery to hearthstone. At all times you will call Mrs Smedley ma’am. That is all, do your duty and you should be very happy with us.’

Lavinia could see she was meant to curtsey and say ‘Thank you’, and she wished she could have, but she must arrange her days off.

‘Please, ma’am,’ she said, ‘what about my time off?’

Mrs Tanner frowned.

‘Her Ladyship does not give time off to you young girls, but sometimes, if there are no guests, you may go out together in the afternoon providing you do not leave the grounds.’

Lavinia swallowed nervously.

‘I quite understand, ma’am, but you see I have two little brothers at the orphanage. The younger is only six. So I can only take a place where I am permitted to visit them. I had thought perhaps every other Sunday.’

Mrs Tanner, as she told Lady Corkberry later, was so surprised she did not know how to answer.

‘A personable young woman, m’lady, very nicely spoken. I did not know what to answer because I understand she wants to keep an eye on the brothers. Still, it wasn’t for me to go against your rules so I said I would speak to you.’

Lady Corkberry was a good woman. Taking Jem into her house when he had pneumonia was not an isolated kindness. She expected to serve her fellow men when the opportunity offered; that, in her opinion, was what great positions and possessions were for. It was not her custom to meet her junior maids for she left their care to those immediately in charge of them, but this was an exceptional case.

‘Very well, Tanner, I will see the young woman in the morning room after breakfast tomorrow.’

Although it was her first day, Lavinia found that after she had unpacked and changed she was expected to work, but not before she had eaten. Midday dinner was over in the servants’ hall, but there was plenty of food about. Mrs Smedley, a large red-faced woman, pointed to a table by the window.

‘Sit there.’ She nodded at a dark-haired, anxious-looking girl. ‘This is Clara. You share her room. Give her some dinner, Clara.’

Lavinia remembered her instructions.

‘Thank you, ma’am.’ She sat while Clara put in front of her a huge plate of cold meat with a large potato in its jacket, a jar of pickles, a loaf of bread, at least a pound of butter and a great hunk of cheese.

‘Eat up, girl,’ said Mrs Smedley. ‘You’ll find you need to keep your strength up here.’

After the food she had eaten at the orphanage Lavinia needed no encouragement.

‘My goodness,’ she thought, ‘if all the meals are like this it will be a great temptation to take some leavings in my pocket for the boys.’

Mrs Smedley was right about Lavinia needing to keep her strength up for she did find herself very tired before she stumbled behind Clara up to their attic. There had been guests for dinner, and after running to and fro waiting on Mrs Smedley all the evening there had been a great mound of washing-up to do in the scullery. Then, after a supper taken standing, the girls set to at their housework. Blackleading the range, hearthstoning the kitchen and scullery floors and a long passage.

‘Terrible, isn’t it?’ Clara groaned. ‘And we’ve been one short until you came. Sometimes I’ve been that tired I haven’t known how to get up the stairs.’

But in spite of going to bed late and rising early, Lavinia looked, Lady Corkberry thought, remarkably fresh and pretty when Mrs Tanner brought her to her the next morning.

‘The young person Beresford, m’lady,’ Mrs Tanner said, giving a curtsey.

It was clear Mrs Tanner meant to stay, but Lady Corkberry did not permit that.

‘Thank you, Tanner. You may leave us. Your name is Lavinia Beresford?’ she asked.

Lavinia curtseyed.

‘Yes, m’lady.’

‘And you have two brothers in the orphanage?’

‘Yes, m’lady. Which is why I asked if I could have time off every other Sunday. I must see they are all right.’

Several things were puzzling Lady Corkberry.

‘You speak very nicely. Where were you at school?’

Pain showed in Lavinia’s face.

‘We did lessons at home with my mother.’

Lady Corkberry looked sympathetic.

‘She taught you well. A pretty speaking voice is a great advantage.’ She hesitated. ‘You say you must see your brothers are all right. Surely you know they are all right at the orphanage. It is highly spoken of.’

Lavinia did not know how to answer. She did not want Lady Corkberry descending on the place for Matron would, of course, guess who had talked, which might make things harder for the boys. So she hedged.

‘It’s not what they are used to. It will be better when they settle down.’

Lady Corkberry could feel Lavinia was hiding something, but she did not want to bully the child.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Every other Sunday.’ Then she smiled. ‘Perhaps one day in the summer I might have the little boys here for a treat. You would like that?’

A flush spread over Lavinia’s face.

‘Oh, I would, m’lady. It will be something for them to look forward to.’

‘Very well. Now go back to your work. I will see what can be arranged.’

Chapter Eight
A LETTER

Because she enjoyed the school and truly was getting to love both Miss Snelston and Polly Jenkin, Margaret, though she still meant to run away, had no immediate plans to do so. This was not only because of her promise to Lavinia and that she was growing fond of Peter and Horry, but also because of her Sunday underclothes. Whenever she thought of that lace-edged petticoat and those drawers she was so full of rage she felt she could not run away until in some way she had paid Matron back. Poor Susan, on the walk to school, would have been bored to exhaustion with the lace on Margaret’s Sunday underclothes only Margaret was always inventing new things she would like to do to Matron and Susan enjoyed hearing about those.

‘I would like a great enormous saucepan full of frying fat,’ Margaret would whisper through the hood of her cape, ‘and I’d push her in and fry her and fry her until she was dead,’ or, another day: ‘I thought of something in bed last night. I would shut her up in a cupboard with thousands and thousands of hungry rats so they would eat every bit of her.’

But Margaret did not only plan horrible ends for Matron, she collected information about her from the children, particularly those who had been in the orphanage since they were babies. As a result, she gradually built up a picture of the way Matron managed things. She learnt that in May each year Matron had a holiday. She went up north, it was said, to visit a brother, and that was when – so the story went – she sold any clothes belonging to new orphans which were worth selling.

‘She goes away with a great big box,’ a child called Chloe told Margaret, ‘and it weighs ever such a lot because Mr Toms has to carry it’ – Mr Toms was the Beadle – ‘and he swears ever so, but when she comes back it’s so light anyone could carry it.’

‘Clothes wouldn’t weigh all that lot,’ said Margaret.

‘It’s not only clothes,’ Chloe whispered, ‘it’s food. Our food. Last year we nearly starved before she went so she could take a huge joint of beef to her brother, and sausages and pounds of cheese and that.’

‘How do you know?’ Margaret asked.

‘Winifred, of course. They think because she works in the kitchen she’s one of them, but she never is, she’s still one of us.’

Margaret, turning over these scraps of information in her head, saw that they made a pattern. Somehow, before Matron went away in May, she must get back the clothes Hannah had made for her. And somehow she must get hold of her jersey and skirt before she ran away.

Meanwhile, Margaret did what she could to look after Peter and Horry, often getting punished for it. Punishments in the orphanage were tough. They ranged from being sent to bed without supper to beatings, but in between there were other terrors, such as being locked in a cupboard, being tied to a tree in the garden or being shamed by being sent to church on Sundays without a white fichu or, in the case of the boys, a white collar; this told the whole congregation a child was in disgrace. By suggestion, the children had learnt to look upon being disgraced in church as the worst punishment of all.

The very morning Lavinia left Margaret had secreted Peter’s two books under her cape and carried them to school. At school she had put them in his desk.

‘You can read all through playtime,’ she told him, ‘and other times, perhaps, if you ask Miss Snelston.’

Peter was delighted to see his books again, but he absolutely refused to keep both in his desk.

‘I must have a book in the orphanage, Margaret, it’s awful as it is, but with no book I think I’d die.’

‘But when could you read?’ Margaret asked him. ‘I know we are supposed to have free time every day, but mostly we don’t.’

‘It’s better for us boys, I think,’ Peter explained. ‘At least that’s what the boys say. They say Mr Toms doesn’t seem to mind if they don’t do much as long as Matron doesn’t know. They say he hates Matron.’

‘I bet he does. Who wouldn’t?’ Margaret agreed. ‘But where will you keep a book?’

‘I’ll find a place,’ said Peter confidently. ‘Out of doors somewhere, but of course safe from rain.’

Margaret looked in surprise at Peter. He was such a thin, pale little boy, most of his face seemed to be eyes. Yet he wasn’t at all weak, at least he wasn’t about things he cared about – like books. She had been thinking of him as a small boy, but now she remembered he was as old as she was.

‘Will you take a book home tonight?’

‘Of course,’ said Peter calmly. ‘Those horrible cloaks aren’t good for anything except hiding things in.’

But in spite of Peter’s confidence, Margaret felt responsible for him, so after tea she nipped out before tasks to see where the book was to be hidden. Peter had been ordered to act as donkey to the big lawnmower, tugging it along by ropes worn over each shoulder while another boy pushed. This suited Peter perfectly.

‘This is grand,’ he told Margaret. ‘Harry’ – he indicated the other boy – ‘says it’s all right if I read while I’m doing it, he’ll shout if I go crooked.’

That was the first time Margaret was caught and punished. She was slipping back into the orphanage when she ran slap into Miss Jones, who turned puce with rage.

‘Margaret Thursday! Where have you been? I distinctly heard Matron say you were to help in the kitchen.’

Margaret thought quickly. Whatever happened she must not mention Peter.

‘I thought I heard a cat crying.’

‘A cat!’ Miss Jones’s face turned even more puce. ‘We have no cats here, with a hundred orphans to feed and clothe we cannot afford to keep a cat.’

‘Thank goodness!’ thought Margaret. ‘Poor cat, it would starve in this place.’ Out loud she said: ‘May I go to the kitchen?’

‘At once,’ Miss Jones ordered, ‘but this will, of course, be reported to Matron and you will be punished.’

‘I think that’s mean when I was only trying to help a cat that wasn’t there,’ said Margaret, and dashed off to the kitchen.

Miss Jones, on her way to Matron’s office, muttered: ‘That is a very unpleasant child. There is something impertinent about her.’

Matron, when told about Margaret and the supposed cat, agreed with Miss Jones about the unpleasantness of Margaret.

‘One of these independent children,’ she agreed. ‘It will take time before she is moulded to our shape. Send her to me when she comes in from school tomorrow, she shall have ten strokes on each hand. That will teach her who is the ruler in this establishment.’

It was very difficult to help Horatio, but he so badly needed help Margaret did all that she could. There were two periods when he needed her most. One was morning washing time and the other was his free time when he came home from school. Two ex-orphans not suitable for farm work were employed on the boys’ side of the home to help keep discipline and to wash the little boys. They were loutish types in their late teens who enjoyed their small power and showed it by bullying and taking pleasure in being rough. It made Margaret mad to see poor Horry come into the dining room, his eyes red from soap, his cheeks shiny from tears. But Margaret, though seething with rage, kept her temper. She could do nothing for the time being for it was past imagining what the punishment would be if a girl was found in the boys’ dormitory.

‘Most likely I’d be beaten so hard I’d die,’ she thought, ‘and that wouldn’t help Horry.’

Then she had an idea. When on the train she had opened her wicker basket to give everybody toffee, she had told Lavinia she had three stamps. Lavinia already had a pretty shrewd idea what the orphanage was going to be like.

‘Hide them,’ she advised. ‘Stick them inside one of your boots, they won’t find them there.’ So far Margaret had not used a stamp for she did not want to write to Hannah or the rector with news which must depress them, for what could they do? And she certainly was not going to tell Hannah what had happened to her underclothes. But that meant she still had her three stamps and one of these she used to write to Lavinia. She took off the boot in which the stamps were stuck to the inside of the toe and took one out, then Miss Snelston gave her a piece of lined paper and an envelope and promised to post the letter.

Margaret had never received a letter. Although she did not know it, she would have been receiving letters regularly from the rector, had not the archdeacon warned him that it had been found that letters upset the orphans and so they were discouraged, so Margaret was very hazy how a letter should be worded. However, she did her best and at last she got over what she wanted to say. She wrote:

Margaret Thursday says when you come on Sunday she would be obliged if you could bring some sweets to bribe that beast Ben who washes Horatio very faithfully Margaret Thursday.

Chapter Nine
PLANS FOR SUNDAY

Quite by chance, Margaret learnt where Matron kept the orphans’ own clothes. It was through a girl at school called Sally, whose father had met with an accident and as a result could only do part-time work, so Sally’s mother helped out taking any little job she could get. One morning in break Sally said to Margaret:

‘My ma is goin’ up to your old orphanage next week.’

‘What for?’ Margaret asked.

‘It’s work she does for the matron – dead scared of your matron my ma is.’

‘I don’t wonder,’ said Margaret. ‘I think most everybody is.’

‘It’s washin’ and mendin’ and that she does,’ Sally explained.

Margaret was amazed.

‘Washing! I can’t think why Matron pays your mother to do that, for all us female orphans do it all day Saturdays. Cruelly hard it is, especially the ironing, you try washing for one hundred orphans, and the senior girls have to do Matron’s caps as well, and all the week at “tasks” some of us mend.’

‘It’s not what you wear my ma does,’ Sally explained. ‘It’s special stuff. Kept locked up at the top of the house my ma says. When it’s done my ma has to pack it ready to travel when your matron goes on her holiday.’

Sally had moved away so she did not see how Margaret’s eyes flashed and her chin shot into the air. Getting Sally’s mother to pack the clothes Hannah had made for her, was she? Mean beast! But Margaret kept her head. Nobody – nobody at all must guess what she planned, though think as she would she could not imagine what she would do with her lace-edged petticoat and drawers when she got them, she just knew that somehow she must get them back. Hannah’s lovely present was not going up north for Matron to sell.

Lady Corkberry, although she was a very busy person, had not forgotten her nicely-spoken scullery maid. In the week before Lavinia’s first half-day she spoke about her to the housekeeper when she came for orders.

‘Good morning, Tanner. Before I forget, that new scullery maid, Lavinia Beresford, is to be allowed to visit her brothers in the orphanage this coming Sunday. She must be home before dark so she may leave immediately after church. Will you see a generous lunch is packed with some sweet cakes which she will no doubt wish to share with the little boys.’

Mrs Tanner was very fond of her mistress and used to her ways. She thought it amazing that a great lady should remember the half-day of a new scullery maid, but she was like that. So she made a note on her pad. Then she had an idea.

‘I was hearing there is something for us at the station at Wolverhampton, m’lady – garden stuff, I believe. It wouldn’t be much farther for the cart to go on to the orphanage to tell them the girl will be coming on Sunday, it would be a pity if her brothers were out.’

‘What a capital idea!’ said Lady Corkberry. ‘Will you see to it?’

‘Of course, m’lady,’ Mrs Tanner agreed.

That was the day when Margaret’s letter for Lavinia arrived. She read it, amused at its formality, but worried by its contents. She had no money to buy sweets and she did not know when she would be paid the balance of the five pounds a year. Over washing-up, she asked advice of her room-mate Clara.

Clara, as usual, looked worried.

‘I wish I could help, but my mother has all my money; sometimes she gives me a tanner for myself, but I haven’t got anything now and won’t have till old mother Smedley gives me my penny for the plate on Sunday.’

Each Sunday before the staff left for church, the heads of departments saw that their juniors were properly dressed, had clean handkerchiefs and money for the plate.

‘My penny for the plate!’ said Lavinia. ‘That would buy sweets.’

Clara, who was drying, nearly dropped a bowl.

‘Lavinia Beresford! You wouldn’t dare take money from the church. Why, you might be struck dead.’

Lavinia laughed.

‘I wouldn’t be, you know. Jesus loves children and he wouldn’t grudge me keeping my penny if it was to help Horatio.’

‘Don’t do it,’ Clara implored. ‘Even if you aren’t struck dead, Mrs Smedley or someone might see, which would be almost as bad.’

Lavinia laughed again, but what Clara had said gave her an idea.

‘All right, I won’t take my church penny. I’ll tell Mrs Smedley why I want it and ask her for a little advance.’

Lavinia got her chance to speak to Mrs Smedley when that lady came down from her room for her afternoon tea. Although, of course, the cakes and scones for the drawing room were made in the kitchen, Mrs Smedley had nothing to do with the actual meal, for food such as scones was collected from the under-cook by one of the footmen, but the cakes were arranged and sandwiches were cut by the butler who, with the footmen, served the tea. So at about five o’clock Mrs Smedley, refreshed by a good sleep, could come down to a kitchen scrubbed and cleaned by her juniors, to find her tea waiting on the table.

Kitchen tea was far more substantial than drawing-room tea. There was always a tasty dish of some sort as well as dripping toast and large slices of rich fruit cake. This meal was eaten by all the kitchen staff, for usually there was a busy night ahead with at least six courses to be served for dinner, so there was no time for them to eat until quite late.

Tea over, Mrs Smedley would change from the cheerful woman who had come down for her tea into a fury. Not that she felt like a fury, but she considered that it was part of her rôle to let everybody know who was who as far as the kitchen was concerned. So the moment tea was cleared away she would give out her orders with the rapidity of a machine gun. But though she was very much the general commanding the battle when there was dinner to be cooked, she never really lost her warm heart. For whenever there were guests, which meant extra hard work for everybody, she would open the cooking sherry and pour out for each of her staff a good glassful and see that they drank it.

‘Now, no faces,’ she would say to the girls who hated sherry. ‘Drink it up, it’s a tonic and you’ll need it before the night is out.’

That day Lavinia caught Mrs Smedley at her tea, beaming and rosy fresh from her sleep and enjoying a couple of juicy kippers.

‘Well, dear,’ she asked, ‘what can I do for you?’

Lavinia, seeing how good-humoured Mrs Smedley looked, decided to take her into her confidence as far as she could – that is to say, without actually complaining of the orphanage. For she knew Mrs Smedley was the sort of woman who, if she suspected cruelty, would dash straight to Mrs Tanner demanding that someone visit the orphanage immediately, and how would that help poor Peter and Horry?

‘It’s a note I had from a girl at the orphanage, ma’am. She asked me if, when I go on Sunday, I could bring some sweets. You see, my little brother Horatio is only six and he needs a bit of help I expect at washing and dressing, and this girl thought it would help if I brought some sweets that could be handed out as a sort of thank-you to those who help him.’

Mrs Smedley looked up from her kipper and her shrewd eyes studied Lavinia.

‘There’s stories told about that orphanage. Are they true?’

Lavinia hesitated.

‘I was there only one night. It was all right as far as I could see.’

Mrs Smedley went back to her kippers.

‘Each Saturday before your Sunday off remind me you’re going. I’ll see there’s a nice basket to take with you so you can have a picnic. Now, about these sweets. You want some money, I suppose? Remind me tomorrow when I’ve got my purse. You can have a shilling.’

At exactly this time back at the orphanage Jem was pulling up the horse who pulled the cart outside the entrance. He hitched the reins over a paling and ran up the steps. Miss Jones answered the bell.

‘Yes?’ she said.

Jem handed her an envelope.

‘It’s from Sedgecombe Place.’

‘I suppose that girl we sent is giving trouble,’ Miss Jones thought. Out loud she said: ‘Wait here, I will see if there is an answer.’

Matron was in her office. She cut open the stiff envelope and drew out a sheet of crested paper. The letter was from Mrs Tanner.

‘I am asked to inform you that on this Sunday next Lavinia Beresford will visit the orphanage in the afternoon for the purpose of seeing her brothers. Her Ladyship would be obliged if the little boys could be waiting for her and some place found where they can be by themselves. A. Tanner (Housekeeper).’

But Mrs Tanner had talked to Lavinia before she sent the letter so there was a postscript. ‘Her Ladyship would be glad if you would also allow Margaret Thursday to see Lavinia as she has shown kindness to the two little boys.’

Matron muttered: ‘Tell him the children will be waiting,’ which sent Miss Jones scurrying back to Jem. Alone she looked at the letter as if she could have bitten it. ‘Her Ladyship would be obliged if the little boys could be waiting.’ The nerve of it! She didn’t want that Lavinia coming back here. Carrying tales she’d be, as like as not. And why Margaret Thursday? What kindness had she ever shown Peter or Horatio? It was a sneaking, low-down way of getting the orphanage talked about, that’s what it was. But if there was talk she’d know where it started and she’d have the hide off Margaret Thursday if it was the last thing she did.

Chapter Ten
HALF A SUNDAY

Sunday was a lovely day. All the household at Sedgecombe Place got up an hour later than usual on Sundays, so Clara and Lavinia had not to be down until seven. Lavinia, when she woke, ran straight to the window and looked out.

‘Oh, Clara! The sky’s as blue as blue and that field over there is gold with buttercups.’

Clara came yawning to the window.

‘I’m glad it’s fine for you, but you wouldn’t catch me walking all that way on me half-day. I always say to me mum when I get home all I want is to put me feet up.’

Clara’s mother had been in service in Sedgecombe Place and had married one of the under-gardeners. They lived in a cottage on the estate, so Clara was allowed home most Sundays.

‘Does your mother let you put your feet up?’ Lavinia asked.

Clara gave Lavinia a friendly dig with her elbow.

‘Give over! Is it likely with ten little ’uns to look after? Why, I’m not inside the door before it’s “Clara do this”. “Clara do that”.’

Lavinia leant against the window.

‘I do wish I had something pretty to wear to match the weather, it’s not a day for black.’

It was a rule of the house that all the servants wore black for church on Sundays.

‘Can’t you change?’ Clara suggested.

‘No, I was told specially I could leave right after church.’

‘Tell you what,’ Clara suggested. ‘When “They’’ – “They” was how the staff usually referred to the family – ‘have gone, take off your titfer and give it to me. Proper figure of fun we look in them.’

All the women servants had to wear small black hats to church or else black bonnets. The hats, which were provided, were made of unbendable chipped straw with a band of narrow ribbon round them. It was said in the servants’ hall that they were chosen because they were guaranteed to suit nobody.

Lavinia poured some cold water from a jug into a tin basin and started to wash.

‘What a good idea! I was going to put it in my basket with my lunch, but if you’ll take it home it’ll be lots better. I’ll let my hair loose, I hate it up.’

As the village church was not far away, on fine Sundays the staff walked to Matins through the grounds. When it was wet they were driven in a brake with the hood up. That Sunday Lavinia, walking last as became her humble position, almost danced down the drive. She was carrying the basket Mrs Smedley had given her and, though she had no time to look inside, it was so heavy she was sure it was full of good things. On top of it she had put the bag of sweets, chosen with care to prove irresistible to the Ben who washed Horry. Suddenly she heard a whistle and there was Jem looking round a rhododendron bush. Lavinia, on an afternoon walk in the grounds, had told him this was her Sunday to visit the orphanage, but he had not known then how much free time he would have, though he had promised to set her on her path. Now he had good news.

‘I got the half-day, too, see, so I can walk most of the way with you. I’ll wait on the canal bank – I’d like a word with them on the canal boats on account they may have seen my dad, see? Then I can take you home.’

Lavinia was delighted.

‘Could you really? I would like that. I have to be back at the house before dark, but it’s a long walk and I’d enjoy your company.’

Jem thought this very fancy talk so all he said was, ‘See you after church,’ and disappeared back behind the rhododendron.

Every weekday at Sedgecombe Place there were family prayers. These were taken by Lord Corkberry and all the staff had to attend in strict order of precedence, starting with the butler and finishing with Lavinia. Sunday morning service was, Lavinia thought, very like family prayers, for again they lined up behind the butler and sat in pews in strict precedence, again finishing with herself. That Sunday she was glad that she came last because it gave her a chance to hand the verger her precious basket and ask him to look after it.

It was peaceful in the little church, with the smell of wallflowers blowing in through the door and doves cooing on the roof. In the ordinary way, Lavinia would have enjoyed the service, glad of the chance to sit down and join in singing favourite hymns to well-known tunes. But that day she could not get her mind off Peter and Horry. Had they been told yet that she was coming? In spite of being asked for by Mrs Tanner, would she be allowed to see Margaret?

After church all the staff had to form up in two lines on either side of the churchyard path. Then, as Lord and Lady Corkberry and any guests they might have passed, all the men had to raise their hats and the women to curtsey. Usually the Corkberrys would nod and smile in reply, though sometimes they would pause to speak. That morning Lady Corkberry stopped in front of Lavinia.

‘Have they given you a good packed lunch?’

Lavinia gave another curtsey.

‘Oh yes, m’lady. I haven’t looked but it feels heavy.’

Lord Corkberry was a man who liked to spend his life on a horse, though he would as a change shoot game, or fish. He left the running of his house entirely to his wife and seldom spoke to the indoor servants. Now, to Lady Corkberry’s surprise, he spoke to Lavinia.

‘And where have you secreted this packed lunch which you have not seen but which feels heavy?’

Poor Lavinia, with all the servants’ eyes on her, turned pink. She gave yet another curtsey.

‘I – asked the verger to look after it, m’lord.’

Lady Corkberry smiled.

‘Have a pleasant day.’ Then she moved on.

When they were out of earshot, Lord Corkberry asked his wife:

‘Who is that girl, Rose?’

Lady Corkberry was surprised at his interest.

‘The new scullery maid. She has two little brothers at the orphanage whom she is going to visit.’

‘Funny,’ said Lord Corkberry, ‘she’s the dead spittin’ image of somebody. Can’t remember who, but it will come back.’

The Corkberrys and the heads of staff out of sight, Lavinia dashed into the church to retrieve her basket, tossed her despised hat to Clara and joined Jem at the church gate.

At all times a canal bank is a fascinating place. That morning in April it seemed to Lavinia to have magic about it. There were primroses and cuckoo flowers along the banks, and in the woods she could see celandines and wood anemones. Jem could not understand her excitement.

‘They’m pretty all right, but you don’t have time for no prettiness when you have to lead the ’orse what pulls the boat. Very contrary critters canal ’orses can be.’

Lavinia forced herself to attend to Jem.

‘Fancy being born on a boat, it must have been odd.’

‘Not really. It’s what you’re used to, I suppose, but it was a tight squeeze. Our boat, the Crusader, she’s called, like all canal boats is only seven feet. There’s two cabins like, one fore and one aft, with a cross-bed for me dad and mum. Well, you can see with six of us there wasn’t much room for larkin’ or that.’

Lavinia looked at the canal, so quiet with trees reflected in it, while a mother moorhen taught her babies their way around, and a heron flashed low over the water looking for a fish.

‘I wonder why you and your brothers hated the canal life, it looks fun to me. I’d love to walk along leading a horse.’

Jem sniffed.

‘Think you’d love it, do you? That’s all you know. You try it all weathers. Mind you, though it’s cruel ’ard on the boys, it’s worse on the ’orses. There’s stables all up and down the canal and we ’ires them from there. A canal boat loaded weighs maybe twenty, maybe thirty ton, and the ’orse he has to pull that weight eighteen maybe twenty hour a day, and when he has to start the boat movin’ it’s wicked for there’s the weight of the water added.’

‘Poor horses!’ Lavinia agreed, but her mind was only half with Jem, the weather was lovely and so soon she would see the boys.

Jem left Lavinia about a mile from the orphanage.

‘I shall wait here,’ he said. ‘Should be a boat along any time now. See you later.’

‘Dear Jem, thank you so much,’ said Lavinia, and hurried off along the path.

Chapter Eleven
THE PICNIC

Matron did not mention to Margaret, Peter or Horatio that Lavinia was coming until after midday dinner. Sunday dinner was the big meal of the week, so it was enormously looked forward to by the orphans. Sometimes it was boiled silverside with dumplings and on another Sunday a round of beef with Yorkshire pudding. Actually, whatever was served, there was more of the dumplings or pudding on each plate than meat, but the orphans didn’t mind – suet or pudding made you feel full and that was something they seldom felt.

After grace had been sung, Matron held up a hand for silence.

‘Seeing the day is so fine you may all take your Prayer Books into the garden for an hour and learn the collect for the day outside. I shall hear you repeat this myself this evening. You little ones who cannot read can look at the Bible picture books. When the hour is up, Miss Jones will give you all Sunday tasks, during which you will take turns to read out loud The Pilgrim’s Progress. I wish to speak to Peter and Horatio Beresford and Margaret Thursday.’

All day Margaret had been waiting for a message. This was Lavinia’s half-Sunday. She didn’t suppose she would be allowed to see her, but she meant to have a good try, and anyway she would bring sweets for that awful Ben.

Matron waited until the orphans had filed out, then she ordered Peter, Horatio and Margaret to stand in front of her. She fixed her eyes on Peter.

‘I have received a letter from Sedgecombe Place. Your sister Lavinia is being allowed to visit you this afternoon. As an exception I am allowing her to take you and Horatio for a walk.’

Nobody ever went outside the orphanage except to school or church. Even Peter, vague as he was, knew this. A walk with Lavinia! It was a glorious promise. His eyes shone.

‘Oh, thank you, Matron.’

Matron turned to Margaret.

‘Lady Corkberry is under the illusion that you have been of service to Peter and Horatio so she asks that you may be allowed to join the party. I was much inclined to refuse this request for I am far from satisfied with your behaviour, but as the suggestion comes from Lady Corkberry I have decided – unwillingly – to allow this great treat, so you may join the Beresford boys on their walk with Lavinia.’

Margaret had to hold her tongue between her teeth to prevent herself from answering. She longed to say: ‘Thank you – but I don’t want any favours from you.’ Instead, splendidly conscious that she had arrived on the church steps with three of everything all of the very best quality, whereas Matron when a baby was most likely dressed in passed-down woollens which were grey with age, she gave a curtsey. Then, smiling sweetly, she said:

‘Thank you kindly, Matron.’

Matron could feel that somehow Margaret was making fun of her, impertinent child that she was, but she could say nothing, so she strode out of the dining room calling over her shoulder:

‘Get ready now, you can sit in the hall until Lavinia arrives.’

The Sunday fichus on the girls and white collars on the boys gave the orphans a cared-for look. But even in their Sunday clothes Lavinia was shocked when she saw Margaret and Peter. Horry, she noticed thankfully, was much as usual. But Peter’s face had shrunk and his eyes seemed to have grown bigger. Margaret seemed to be much paler and her hair, though still curling under her cap, was less defiant. Lavinia put down her basket and knelt in the hall hugging all three to her while she murmured: ‘My darlings! My poor darlings!’

Margaret said:

‘Matron said we could go for a walk with you.’

Lavinia was delighted.

‘We’ll have a picnic. I saw a wood not far off and I’ve got the food in this basket.’

For a picnic the despised brown cloaks came into their own. Lavinia spread them out so there was room for them all to sprawl on them without getting damp. As the children had just eaten their dinners she decided to leave the meal until as late as possible so they could enjoy it. ‘After all,’ she thought, ‘I eat well every day so it won’t hurt me to have my dinner late for once.’

‘Vinia,’ Horatio demanded, ‘I think there’s wolves in this wood, can I go and look?’

Lavinia took off his Sunday collar.

‘Of course you can, and if you find a friendly one you might bring it back with you. Give me your collar, Peter. We mustn’t mess them up and you can go wolf-hunting too.’

Peter obediently took off his collar.

‘Did you bring me a book? I’m reading as slow as slow, but I’ve nearly finished A Tale of Two Cities and I’m over halfway through David Copperfield.’

‘Not this week I didn’t but I’ll see if I can get hold of anything for next time. Aren’t there any books in the orphanage?’

‘Just The Pilgrim’s Progress and some Bible picture books, and they are kept in Matron’s room,’ Margaret explained.

Lavinia, having no idea how she would manage it, repeated her promise to try to get hold of something, which seemed to satisfy Peter for he ran off with Horatio.

‘Are you happy to stay here,’ Lavinia asked Margaret, ‘or would you like to pick primroses?’

Margaret stared at her, surprised that anyone so sensible could ask so silly a question.

‘What could I do with primroses?’

‘I suppose, even in the orphanage, there must be a jam-jar.’

Margaret took off her fichu in case she should crumple it.

‘I should have thought even in the little time you were there you would know orphans don’t have flowers, in fact, orphans don’t have anything. I’ve still got that box Hannah gave me that the toffees were in. I keep it in my bed, but they’d take it away if they knew and I’d be punished.’

‘How do they punish you?’

Margaret held out a hand which had red marks across the palm where she had been given ten strokes with a switch.

Lavinia drew in her breath.

‘Do Peter and Horry get beaten like that?’

‘Neither of them have got punished yet. The things Peter does, like reading when he’s pulling the mowing machine, they don’t know, and the little ones get more slaps than real punishments.’

Lavinia took Margaret’s hand and looked at it.

‘Mean beasts!’

‘Truly, I’d rather have my hands hit than some of the other punishments. I hate being locked in a cupboard and it’s pretty awful being sent to bed without supper because you are so hungry you can’t sleep.’

‘You and Peter look as if you were usually hungry – Horry doesn’t look so bad.’

‘That is because of Polly Jenkin. She helps Miss Snelston who is head teacher, they are both awfully nice. Polly is very fond of Horatio and she sneaks things to him when the others aren’t looking. Good things like sandwiches full of meat and hardboiled eggs, and often he gets a glass of milk.’

‘God bless Polly!’ said Lavinia. ‘I do hope some day I can thank her.’

Margaret looked worried.

‘I know Peter is getting thin, but it’s difficult to help him. You see, the boys and the female orphans don’t often meet. Sometimes I sneak out to talk to Peter, but if I’m caught I’m punished. But I’ve got a plan.’ She lowered her voice as if even there Matron could hear. ‘The cook – she’s called Mrs Bones, and it’s a good name for her for all we get is bones – well, she has to cook Matron’s supper, but if she knew I could cook I think she’d be glad to let me do it for she says she’s on her feet all day and they hurt something chronic. Well, I’m working on Winifred, who was an orphan but now is in the kitchen, to tell Mrs Bones about me, and if I get a chance to cook I’ll get some pickings, and I don’t care what punishments I get I’ll share them with Peter and Horry.’

Lavinia looked fondly at Margaret.

‘You are a kind girl.’

‘Not really,’ said Margaret. ‘Mostly it’s sort of revenge. I despise Matron so much I don’t care what I do to annoy her.’

The picnic was a wild success. There were such delicious things in the basket. Sandwiches of all sorts, a fruit pie, cakes, biscuits and a slab of chocolate. With cries of delight, the hungry children fell on the food until there was not a crumb left. They were so busy eating they did not notice Lavinia gave them everything, eating nothing herself.

‘What’s in that bag, Vinia?’ Horatio demanded.

Lavinia handed the bag to Margaret.

‘It’s sweets. Peter is going to give one to Ben every day so that he does not put soap in your eyes.’

‘Where shall we hide them?’ Peter asked.

‘At school,’ said Margaret. ‘You can bring one back every day.’

Lavinia was very silent on the walk home to Sedgecombe Place. It had made her cry to leave the children at the orphanage. Surely somewhere there was a better place that would take them in?

Jem was used to being on his own so he respected Lavinia’s silence and walked on ahead whistling.

When Lavinia got in Mrs Smedley was starting to prepare Sunday supper. She looked out of the window where the sun was setting.

‘Just in time,’ she said. ‘There’s a good girl. I’m giving them macaroni cheese for a hot dish so, as my girl’s out, you can grate the cheese for me.’ Then she noticed that Lavinia looked tired. ‘But have some tea first.’

In the kitchen there was a cupboard called ‘The Housemaids’ Cupboard’. This was always bulging with snacks: game, cold chicken, cold meats, as well as fruit puddings and cakes. Any of the staff could help themselves from that cupboard whenever they felt hungry. Lavinia took a plate and piled on to it a rich assortment of food, then, fetching a knife and fork, she sat down at the table in the window and ate the lot.

Mrs Smedley watched her. She had packed her luncheon basket herself so she knew what had been in it. At last she asked:

‘Was the dinner all right?’

Lavinia looked up apologetically from her plate.

‘Lovely. I was able to share it with the boys and Margaret.’

‘Share nothing,’ thought Mrs Smedley. ‘I think you thought the children were hungry and gave them the lot. I’ll have a word with Mrs Tanner about that orphanage and maybe she’ll find a way to pass it on.’

Chapter Twelve
A NIGHT ADVENTURE

Margaret, by tactful questioning, managed to get out of Sally some news.

‘My mum is going up to your old orphanage after dinner Tuesday.’

It was all very well to have the information, but Margaret could not imagine how she would use it. But she was determined that somehow she would. So on the Monday after the picnic she decided, as a first step, to find out where the room was in which Sally’s mother would work. Sally had said ‘at the top of the house’ – a part of the building no orphan had ever seen, but Margaret, by talking to Winifred, had collected a little information.

‘I sleep on top under the roof with Mary,’ Winifred had said – Mary was Mrs Bones’s kitchen maid. ‘Funny little room it is, with the water tank in the corner what makes noises like an old man with the wheezes. Still, it’s not so bad on account there’s only us so we can do what we like up there. Mrs Bones wouldn’t half take a turn if she could see what we sneaks up for our suppers.’

‘Lucky you!’ Margaret had said. ‘I’d love to sleep in the only room at the top of the house, it’s awful sharing with forty-nine other girls.’

‘Don’t I remember!’ Winifred had agreed. ‘Sniffin’ and snuffin’, not to say throwin’ up at times.’ She had lowered her voice. ‘But it’s not the only room. There’s another where Matron keeps you know what.’

Margaret had hidden that she was bursting with interest.

‘Have you ever seen inside?’

Winifred shook her head.

‘Not likely!’ There had been drama in her voice. ‘I wouldn’t dare go in. It wouldn’t surprise me if, as well as the clothes what we know are there, there wasn’t some dead orphans poked away in a cupboard.’

Margaret carefully planned her time for exploring. Winifred had to carry in Matron’s supper the moment the last orphan had gone up the stairs to bed. Miss Jones, having put out the lights in the girls’ dormitory, retired to her room, which was just off the passage outside. She, like all the staff except Matron, had eaten her supper with the orphans. As bread, margarine and cocoa were barely enough to keep the orphans alive, it was likely that somehow Miss Jones got hold of something extra and ate it in her room. So just after lights out was the ideal time, but the snag was that just after lights out few of the orphans were asleep. No one dared to get out of bed for fear Miss Jones would reappear, which sometimes she did, but there was a lot of whispering and giggling from bed to bed. If the orphans saw Margaret get out of bed and go out of the dormitory one of them would be certain to telltale for tale-bearing was rewarded, usually with an extra slice of bread and margarine, though sometimes with a real luxury like a piece of cheese. But Margaret had it all planned. Softly as a kitten jumping, she eased herself out of her bed and then lay flat on the floor; from there she rolled from bed to bed until she reached the end of the room next to the door.

Miss Jones always wedged the dormitory door open so that she could hear if there was any disturbance. There was a gas jet in the passage, but it was turned very low so there was little light. Fortunately the child in the bed by the door, called Violet, had her back to it when Margaret reached the door, for she was whispering to her nextdoor neighbour, so, still flat on the ground. Margaret was able to crawl out. But as she crawled she passed over a loose board which gave a loud creak. Had anybody heard? Violet in the end bed had. She shot up, stifling a scream.

‘There’s a burglar outside, I’m sure there is,’ Margaret heard her whisper.

‘What would a burglar come here for?’ another girl replied. ‘D’you think he’s after our uniforms or maybe he’d fancy my nightie?’

This witticism was relayed up and down the dormitory, causing explosions of laughter.

‘I’d better move,’ thought Margaret. ‘If that noise doesn’t bring old Jones nothing will.’

Margaret got to her feet and ran down the corridor to the stairs and was just going to climb them when she heard Miss Jones open her door. Quickly, she lay down flat against the banisters.

From where she was she could see Miss Jones, who had not yet undressed, go to the dormitory door.

‘Who was laughing?’ she asked.

In a frightened squeak, Violet answered:

‘Please’m, I mean Miss Jones’m, I thought I heard a burglar.’

Miss Jones expressed astonishment by using the word ‘burglar’ like a piano. She started on a low note and rose almost an octave.

‘A burglar? And what, pray, would a burglar want here?’

Violet was evidently nearly in tears.

‘I don’t know, Miss Jones.’

Miss Jones had not come to the dormitory unarmed. Out of her pocket she took a hairbrush.

‘A girl who keeps others awake must be punished,’ she said.

Margaret could hear no more except muffled cries. Too well she knew what was happening. Poor Violet was being beaten on her behind with a hairbrush, and very painful it was. Margaret was sorry and decided, as it was her fault, to give Violet one of Ben’s sweets in school tomorrow. Then, taking advantage of Miss Jones being by Violet’s bed, she ran up the stairs.

The boys’ dormitory was over the girls’ room. Here the same system prevailed. The dormitory door was fixed open, there was a low gas left on all night, but the room which on the floor below belonged to Miss Jones was on the boys’ floor occupied by Mr Toms, the Beadle. It was orphanage gossip that he liked a glass or two of porter at night and did not expect to be disturbed unless an orphan was so ill death might be expected. Margaret, relying on this gossip being true, ran up the passage and climbed the last flight of stairs.

There was not a sound on the top floor except the wheezing of the water tank. Margaret was not surprised at the quiet, for she knew Mary and Winifred would not be up yet for they had the stove to blacklead and Matron’s supper to wash up before they could go to bed. There were two doors just as Winifred had described, and she knew which was the room she wanted because behind the other door she could hear the wheezing tank. Quietly she turned the handle. To her surprise the door opened, for she had expected it to be locked. She closed it softly behind her and looked around. There was a moon that night and by its light she could just see that the door being unlocked was going to do her no good for the room was empty except for a table, a chair and two large cupboards standing side by side just away from the wall. Margaret tugged and pulled at the doors of the cupboards, but they held firm. She was wasting her time for both were locked.

‘I can’t break them open,’ thought Margaret, ‘so I must get the keys or I must get up here when Sally’s mother is working and try to fool her that Matron wants her or something.’

It was no good hanging about, for she still had the adventurous journey back to her bed. So she went to the door and had just opened it when she heard heavy breathing and steps climbing the stairs, and there was the flickering light of a candle.

‘Matron!’ thought Margaret. Softly she closed the door, then she dashed across the room and squeezed herself behind the cupboards.

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