The Farm by the Lake

Chapter 1

Lucky ones strolling Morecambe front often pointed north over the silver-blue water to the smudge fifteen miles away and described it pityingly as Barrow.

“Fancy living all your life under that . . .!”

Fortunately, those who had to live beneath the cloud were not aware of their awful fate. To them the soiled air was natural; and when any had the good chance to get away to Grange over Sands, or even five miles down coast to Aldingham, or a little farther to Baytree, they never thought that daytime at Barrow should be just as bright; they accepted the sparkle and beautiful white light as somehow due to the sea’s magic.

Flo, now that the date of her leaving Barrow was nearly come, wondered how she would live away from the town that had always been her home. Had she done right? What would it be like at . . .? Oh, such a queer name: M-O-S-S-D-Y-C-H-E she spelt slowly, half aloud; but how did you say it? she wondered. Ditch, or should it be like dike?

Along narrow Dalton Road she wandered among the slow-moving shoppers. Probably ever since she had been able to walk alone she had gone down Dalton Road on Saturday morning, and then across to the Market behind the red Town Hall. Why she had always gone in there she could not have told. All she knew was that she liked it. On cold, wet days, it was sheltered there under the ridged glass roof; and even on such a good March day as this it seemed nicer than in Dalton Road, perhaps because of a greater feeling of friendliness and intimateness that there was among the stalls. How much better it was, for instance, to see all the things piled up without a glass front to keep you away. And how much nicer stall-keepers were than shop people who, as soon as you went in at the door, swooped down just as if you were an interloper, or a thief even. The stall-keepers let you look as long as you liked; they simply went on chatting with friends at the next stall, or shouting across the passage-way to friends there. Flo always stopped longest at the flower stalls, though she liked the piled vegetables, also. But to-day the market only increased her sadness. Although indubitably she was there, she had a queer feeling that she was not really there; not a real part of it as she had always felt before; as if she were half a stranger already. She was glad to reach Mrs. Mawson’s which was against the wall. These side-stalls were considered the best, by florists anyway, because staging could be built up and backward in long steps, the top step perhaps ten feet from the ground. As she got near, Flo was aware of a yellowness, and then she saw that the stall was smothered with daffodils, hundreds, perhaps thousands, brief-stalked, small and delicate.

“Oo, how lovely!” she couldn’t help exclaiming; and Mrs. Mawson looked round from serving and smiled and said naturally, “Aren’t they?” and then went on counting and dropping coppers into a woman customer’s long pale hand.

Flo stood under the stall front and looked up and seemed to feel cleanness coming from the daffodils, as if they had brought some of the wood’s freshness with them.

“I got ’em from the Keg . . . you know the Keg, the planting up by Albertside?” said Mrs. Mawson.

“No,” said Flo, still looking at the daffodils.

“Eh, I’ll have to take you,” said her friend.

“I’m goin’ away,” said Flo. “On Monday.”

“For a holiday?” asked Mrs. Mawson with sympathetic gladness.

“No; to work,” said Flo. “To a farm.”

“Eh, now. Fancy that. . . . You on a farm! It’s hard work, though. Who’s are you going to?”

“It’s at a place called Mossd-y-c-h-e,” said Flo, spelling the end, “in Derbyshire.”

“In Derbyshire!” exclaimed Mrs. Mawson. “Is there no work nearer than that? You’ll have got it through them Home folk, eh? I wouldn’t go . . . I wouldn’t let any girl of mine go. What for do they want to send you so far off?” she demanded energetically. “Eh now!” This, however, was not for Flo but for a woman in a tight-fitting blue Harris costume. “Twopence a bunch; morning picked,” went on Mrs. Mawson in the same matter-of-fact energetic way.

“Twopence! Why, they’re only wild; a penny is ample . . . you get them for nothing.”

“But I don’t live on nothing; an’ I’ve a husband as can’t, either, though he can’t do anything,” retorted Mrs. Mawson.

“I’m afraid you all tell tales like that,” said the woman with a mechanical unfriendly smile. “If you’ll let me have them at a penny I’ll take twelve bunches.” She lifted her handbag as if to undo the clip.

“Nothing doing,” said Mrs. Mawson in her husky man-like voice. “Twopence a bunch.”

The woman went on.

“You’ve got to stick up to those sort,” said Mrs. Mawson. “If I gave way once she’d be back barging me down every week. You’ve got to keep straight against them folks . . . when you’re like me with a chap as is useless dependin’ on you.”

“I wish I could stick up for myself like you do,” said Flo. “I’d have . . .”

“You’ve got to stick up for yourself on this job,” Mrs. Mawson broke in. “And if you’re going away on a farm, you’ll have to stick up for yourself, or you’ll get all the dirty work. Where d’you say?” Flo repeated the name in the same way. “Never heard of it,” said Mrs. Mawson, turning to serve another customer with two bunches.

“Don’t they tell you anything about them?” she asked, turning back again. “Sending you all that way and you don’t know a thing! I shouldn’t wonder it’ll be someone like her as wanted ’em twelve a penny: them are the sort as takes on through Homes and Help-you schemes and all that . . .”

“I don’t know,” said Flo. “I’m fed up doing nothin’. And I get a dress an’ . . .”

“I bet you do,” interrupted her friend, “pay out of your wage. I know . . . so they have you tied and working for nothing. It’s a damn swindle. When d’you say you go?”

“Monday.”

“Eh, then I shan’t be seeing you again,” said Mrs. Mawson, her tone quite altered. “Perhaps they’ll turn out all right, you know. There’s good folk as well as bad. . . . Here, I mustn’t let you go without something; which d’you like?”

She held up two bunches taken from different places.

“I’ve no . . . no money,” said Flo.

“Money . . . who mentioned money?”

“Oh, those then,” said Flo, indicating the right-hand bunch. “They look so . . . so lovely.” The word she was searching for was “dainty”, but it didn’t come into her mind till too late. “I like these whitey petals round them,” she added, touching them gently.

“Yes, you’d wonder how they’d come out in the cold and the wind. But these are dearest; you should have these,” said Mrs. Mawson. “These are out of the garden . . . double ones. Most folk prefer ’em.”

“I don’t,” said Flo, raising the tight little boss of wild flowers to her nose. They had a very slight cool-leaves smell, which she wouldn’t have said was nice, but which somehow excited her. “Oh, if only I could see them all,” she exclaimed.

“Here, take these as well,” said Mrs. Mawson, abruptly holding the garden bunch out. “I’ve plenty, and they’re not sellin’.”

“Oh, but you know they will; it’s early,” protested Flo, though strangely tempted.

“Early, nothing; take them,” ordered Mrs. Mawson. “I know what I can give better than you, don’t I? You’ll be telling me my own business next. Here’s a customer; I can tell by the looks of ’em. Watch me sell . . .”

Flo stood at the stall corner and toyed with the flowers. In the wild bunch there were thirty or forty all tied tightly together as if for companionship; but of the double daffs there were only a dozen with a piece of spruce fir and a piece of wild ivy. These flowers were deeper, egg-yolk, and the dark evergreens set them off, so that for a moment she wondered whether, after all, they weren’t the prettier.

“See,” said Mrs. Mawson, jingling coins in the pocket of her black apron. “What did I tell you? Three bunches, and no grousing, either. Them’s the sort. If I’d known you’d wanted a job, I wouldn’t have minded asking someone like her. You should ’a told me.”

“I wish I had,” said Flo. “It’s very good of you. I’ll write, if I can, sometime, if you’d like . . .”

“Yes, do. Good-bye.”

Flo went on through the market, but she was thinking too much about what was going to happen to her to feel any more interest in the stalls. She turned out at the first door and behind the Town Hall. As she was walking up to the main street she saw Sally Gore crossing with a Navy man. Sally had her hair in long swaying ringlets and was looking up at the sailor with a laugh as if she had known him for years, which Flo didn’t think likely because never before had she seen them together. But, of course, Sally always had been able to get friends anywhere. Flo held back, aware of her loneliness again; and then all at once she felt that it would be a good thing when she got away. She would be able to start fresh. Here everybody knew her, and everything about her, and didn’t bother with her; but there she wouldn’t be so . . . so . . . Well, she’d stick up for herself, as Mrs. Mawson said. And perhaps she’d find someone; and forgetting her flowers she began to look about for the kind of man that she thought she’d like to walk out with. In Duke Street she came unexpectedly into a rush, all the men and boys loosed from the shipyard, jostling and mostly jovial because of pay-day and the afternoon’s freedom before them. They took no notice of her, and to avoid being bumped into she had to stand against the front of the Town Hall. Most of the men were oil-smudged and dirty, their caps greasy, overalls tattered. Flo was used to these things and looked only for faces, but talking and grinning they went past so fast that there was no time to choose. They were a blur and she gave up, and in less than five minutes the younger men were past and there were only the less eager ones, all probably married. She wondered where Jack Oates was; Jack who had gone to sea, nobody knew exactly how or where. She remembered how he had been truant from school for two days and then when they went out for afternoon playtime he had been there behind the shelter and had boasted about the job he had got. After that none of them had seen him for more than nine months till again he had turned up at the school gates, but this time he had been hardly recognisable, he had grown so and broadened. It wasn’t this, however, that had impressed Flo particularly, but the carefree change in him; he seemed so reliant and dependable that all at once she had felt that she wanted to hold his hand and have him look after her. Only, of course, he had not taken any notice of her. She had stood disregarded and seen him go off with five of the eldest boys, and the only thing that she had to be thankful about was that he had ignored Sally Gore and all the other girls as well.

Now the coming of men towards Flo had ended. Instead she was in a weaker flow of office girls and men setting across the bridges towards Barrow and Walney Islands; in the flow but not of it, because all these persons ignored her, passing, talking busily together. Most of the girls were neat and obviously satisfied with themselves, going along with their shoulders slightly swaying and high heels tapping on the smooth, worn macadam. Flo had no idea how different her own manner was; she simply went on, carrying the daffodils, not for show, but as if they were precious. Now she was clear of the buildings and on the first bridge, and a cool wind from off the bay hidden beyond the channel bend flickered the pale petals of her flowers and toyed with the crinkled trumpets. She stopped, facing the wind, looking over the heavy metal balustrade. Immediately beneath by the wharf so that she looked on it as from the top of the mast was a small coaster. The deep hold was nearly empty. Alongside were six railway trucks loaded with new crates, three feet high cubes, and she wondered what was in them and where the vessel would take them. How strange it was, she thought, that she had been at that place so often and seen so many ships and yet she had hardly any idea of where any of them went or of what they took. There was a man sitting side-saddle as it were on the ship’s counter, occasionally sending up a blue curl of smoke from a cherry-wood pipe and gazing down the water, a fatherly kind of a man, and she wished that he had been nearer, then she would have asked where the ship had been and where it had to go to. She felt vaguely sorry that she had not got to know more about the ships before . . . before now when she was leaving them.

On the far side of the channel about a hundred yards below the bridge was the new battleship which seemed to have been there for years, as if it never would be ready. Although everybody in Barrow spoke of it as the “new” battleship, Flo thought that it really looked old already and shabby. This was because of its paint, which was all shades of grey mixed with black and ochre rust-stains from bolts. Even the deck did not yet seem to be finished, and there were gaps in its edge showing against the mottled sky from where she stood, adding to the vessel’s appearance of dilapidation. To Flo it didn’t look anything like worth seven millions of pounds. If only someone had given her just a bit of all that money, she thought longingly, she wouldn’t have to be going away. What would she have done with it? For several minutes her thoughts drifted pleasantly among hats and coats and dresses that she had seen in shops on Dalton Road, and she pictured herself as pretty as a bride in the Daily Sketch which her mother occasionally brought home after she’d been charring.

This happy drift of Flo’s stopped when a stronger wind puff went searching coldly over her shoulders under her frock. She clutched the wings of her worn rabbit-skin collar together with her free hand and started on across the bridge again. Why couldn’t she have a bit of the money that was being spent on the battleship? she wondered. She’d heard them say, and it had been in the North-Western Daily Mail that the battleship had been given to Barrow to build so that they should all have something to do. But it hadn’t given her anything to do. That was why she was having to go away. Why hadn’t the battleship helped her? She looked towards it now feeling resentment, as if it’s great unsightly bulk had somehow picked her out for unfair treatment while being fair to everybody else. And then all at once she realized how foolish this thought was, and a smile shaped her lips and her rounded cheeks showed a dimple each, and she knew that she was really proud of the vessel, as everybody in Barrow was; and that she had really been looking forward to the time when it would at last be ready, a big fine sight, going off round the world for the King. Now it would probably go off without her seeing it again. She had never thought that that would happen.

Her dimples smoothed out and she turned soberly to go back. But now the red flag was up and traffic was being stopped. She wondered what it was for and noticed people gathering against the other balustrade. She crossed and saw two tugs manœuvring with a submarine between them. The nose of the submarine was high like a whale snout, but its tail shaped away long and thin, almost us though it were a silver pencil lying along the water. One tug had a hawser belayed to the bow and the other tug had a hawser from the tail. Flo, however, was not interested in the manœuvring, for on the submarine’s curved flank, with feet caught on a narrow ledge only just above the water line, lay a youth in greasy purple overalls. He lay back apparently exceedingly content and unaware of the increasing crowd peering down. His gaze was into the depth of water gently slipping past, though every now and then he glanced forward to where a small Union Jack waved gently at the submarine’s prow. Flo seemed suddenly to know his thoughts: how proud he felt, and how he was thinking on into the future when he might be captain of such a vessel. She felt a great surge of sympathy towards him and wished that she could be at his side, slipping smoothly along without effort. His face, she thought, was “roguish”. Although now he was so quiet and thoughtful, he looked as if he was of the kind that laugh naturally very easily. He moved his left hand and touched up the broad peak of his cap and his hair showed nearly the colour of Lyle’s golden syrup, which was the colour of her own hair. Now the first tug was pulsing slowly between the divisions of the bridge and the submarine followed obediently till Flo could no longer see it because of the crowd round about and because of the bridge structure. She hurried across the roadways and stared over from the opposite side. There up channel was a floating dock with a small steamer high and dry between its arms like a toy. The tug seemed a long time coming through, and Flo waited impatiently, afraid that the youth might be gone. But he was there nonchalant, undisturbed. She felt that she could have thrown her flowers right on to him. She imagined the surprise that it would have given him; though also she felt sure that he would have liked it, and probably he would have grabbed the flowers safe from the water and have waved them, and perhaps have looked up and have guessed who had thrown them. And this, of course, would lead to a meeting; she would go to the dock gates, or he would come up on the bridge. Anyway, they would meet, and then . . .

Poor Flo. Actually the youth had never looked up; and had he done, he could not have picked her out among all the rest. Nevertheless, she enjoyed this second brief daydream, and when the bridge was lowered back, she went on again more cheerfully, homeward.

Quite as she had expected, there was no one in. From the rustied biscuit tin in the dark space under the stairs that was “the pantry”, she brought out a half-loaf and ate four thick slices thinly scraped over with margarine and tinned raspberry jam. She drank weak tea brewed in a jade green teapot with the spout lip chipped off. That was her “dinner”, Ma came in just after four, red-faced and tired.

“What do they take me for?” she demanded as soon as she saw Flo. “A mug. Supposed to finish at one . . . an’ see what time it is! ‘You won’t mind stayin’ to wash pots, will you, Mrs. Royer?’”

She dragged off her black felt hat and crushed it on the dresser among the crumbs and pushed up the streaks of dark hair from over her ears and forehead and flopped into the wooden armchair as Flo got up.

“Won’t mind? Oh no! But what if I’d said as I did?” She sighed and Flo moved the daffodils three inches nearer, hoping that she would notice, but with her elbow on the table she went on: “Give me mi dinner, of course . . . cold potatoes as they don’t want . . . fish . . . boiled, mind you! Boiled,” she repeated as if it was the greatest insult.

Flo stood by and looked at the daffodils in the glass jam-jar and wondered when they would be noticed, only now Ma was looking into the fire. She put her feet on the fender where the black enamel had been worn off showing the bright metal.

“Talked an’ talked an’ never got up till after two,” she went on, but more mildly, as if telling a tale that was done with. “My feet, I don’t know what’s wrong with them; I can’t do what I could,” she added a little pathetically.

“I wish I wasn’t going away,” said Flo.

“Sure, an’ what else could I do but say ‘Yes’ when they was so good to get you the chance?” asked her mother. “Missis wouldn’t have heard . . .”

“Why wouldn’t she let me go an’ do what you do, and you stay home?” Flo demanded. “Then I needn’t . . .”

Ma stiffened all at once and looked up. “Huh, I can do it,” she announced. “We’ll both be makin’; an’ I won’t have you to always be paying out for. How d’you think I do? It’s pay, pay all the time. Hasn’t Ivy come yet?”

“No,” said Flo, and turned to the cupboard by the right of the fireplace and began to take out blue-edged cups and saucers and plates, and to lay them on the table.

“It’s time she’d come; we never know when she’s coming, these days,” said Mrs. Royer. “When I was a girl I had to be in straight from work or they’d want to know the reason. Nowadays, it’s please yourself.”

Flo ducked into the hole under the stairs again and brought the bread out once more and began to cut thinner slices.

“You wouldn’t have a piece of toast, Ma?”

“Toast; you wouldn’t want toast with my teeth.”

Flo put the jam tin out and swilled the teapot. The kettle had just begun to splutter when the back door let in a girl two years older and three inches taller than Flo. Her hair was lighter, but most of it was stuffed into a mob-cap of print, cream with a little pattern of blue moss-roses. Her brown coat had a right-angle tear near the second button, and one of her brown shoes was laced with black tape.

“What-ho, just in time, eh?” And she tossed mob-cap and coat on the dresser end and settled on a chair by her mother, but faced to the table.

“Where’ve you bin?” asked Mrs. Royer.

“What’s this . . . a giddy celebration ’cos Flo’s going?” Ivy asked, looking at the daffodils.

“What’s what?” Mrs. Royer squirmed round and stared. “Eh, now!” she exclaimed. “Wouldn’t your father have liked them?”

“Would ’e?” said Ivy, indifferent. “Where are they from, anyway? You haven’t bin spendin’ on them? They were two-pence, them wild ones. . . . I heard someone askin’. And I bet the others was more.”

“Where did they come from?” demanded Mrs. Royer, as if quite at a loss.

“Mrs. Mawson gave them . . . ’cos I’m going,” said Flo. “I thought you’d have noticed.”

“I’ll take some to-night; they’ll look as if I’m the belle of the ball. Let’s have a drink; I’m as dry as I’d been eatin’ salt,” Ivy said.

“Where you goin’ to-night?” asked Mrs. Royer, sluthering her chair so that she faced partly to the table and partly towards her elder daughter. “You’re always goin’ somewhere; when I was your age . . .”

“I know,” Ivy answered, “but I bet you did, all the same. Anyway, I’m goin’ to Ted’s; you know it’s his sister’s twenty-first. We all give threepence at the works an’ bought a handbag . . . that’s where I’ve been this after’, if you want to know.”

She took a careful suck from the edge of her cup.

“I wish it ’ud been mine. Blue, with gold leaves, an’ a silver clip. A beaut! Three-an’-six.”

“Who chose it?” asked her mother, very interested.

“All of us; well, we all went in.”

“Lucky, she is. When I was twenty-one they didn’t give me any han’-bag. You don’t know you’re born.”

Mrs. Royer fished for a tea-leaf with the tip of her little finger and flicked it on to the rag rug.

“Where was it from?” she asked, her disapproval of modern practices forgotten.

“Walker’s . . . oh, but they had a real bag, Ma. Morocco with a gold chain handle. Three quid!” Ivy rolled her blue eyes. “By God, wait till my twenty-first . . .”

Flo did not speak but she watched her sister’s expressive face and her mother’s slow eating. How many teeth her mother had Flo did not know, but it was not many. Mrs. Royer continually shifted her food from one side to the other trying to get it to where she could deal with it.

“Three quid for a bag! I’d never pay that.” She took a slow drink. “If I had it, I’d buy a costoom as I saw in Dickie’s; green, with a kind of speck, darker than what the rest were.”

“I saw it. Gosh, Ma, but you’d look like a mountaineer,” Ivy exclaimed. “But did you see . . .?”

For ten minutes they talked like that while Flo sat quiet. She had not seen the things, though ordinarily she would have joined in, but now she did not feel like it. Then the meal was finished and she began to side. Ivy said she’d help to wash up, only then she went upstairs and apparently forgot. When she came down she had a bundle of clothes on her arm and at once asked where the kettle was.

“I washed up with it, of course,” said Flo.

“You would. What the hell do I do for a wash?” asked Ivy.

She began to change on the rug, stripping to her vest while Mrs. Royer sat and watched and drank more tea and asked her about the sailcloth works.

“Jenny got a needle through her finger . . . put her finger right underneath, the mug.”

“Jenny who . . . not Bob Milsom’s girl?”

“Yes,” said Ivy. “I wish they’d put me on a machine instead of the damn rope job. But they sacked three more to-day, so what a bloody hope . . .”

“What happened to her?” asked Mrs. Royer.

“Oh, pulled the needle right through, so they said, an’ sent her off . . . infirmary, I suppose. She fainted.”

Mrs. Royer said “Oo!” and lifted her hand and stared at it, as though afraid that there might be a steel needle through one of her fingers. “I must tell Mrs. Dower; she knows Milsom’s wife. Went to school together.”

She stirred on her chair. Flo sat on the fender and Ivy in a brown creased cotton petticoat went to the washing-up tin and ran a little cold water into it and dabbed gingerly with her finger tips.

“Uh, I’ll not bother; I’ll get a wash when I get there . . . they’ll have some hot water. Not like this hole.”

Mrs, Royer did not seem to hear.

Ivy dried her fingers and then with the damp place of the grey-looking towel rubbed round her neck. Her dress was a deep red velvet, paler where she sat and where the insides of her elbows rubbed. But it suited her, and when she had brushed her hair, which was fine and stood out with a natural waviness, she had a distinct, though rather untidy, attractiveness.

“I think I’ll come with you,” said Mrs. Royer all at once. “I could do with a bit of a jollification.”

“You . . . you’ll only spoil it. I thought you said you were goin’ to tell Mrs. Dower about Jenny,” said Ivy. “They won’t want you at a twenty-first. And you’ve not had an invite.”

“I don’t suppose Ted’s ma would mind. It’s usually the more the merrier at those doos. I’d see that you didn’t get too gay, then, my girl. You’d do with a . . .”

Flo, who had been hoping that her mother would stay in for their last Saturday night together, was about to add her protest to Ivy’s when the thought occurred to her in time that if her mother learned that both of them were set against her going, there was nothing more likely to make her determine to go.

“Well, I’m off,” Ivy announced. “You can do what you like. But I hope to God you don’t come.”

She snicked the door latch decisively and they heard her steps die away up the pavement.

“She hasn’t taken any of the daffs and I’m glad. I thought you’d like them,” said Flo, to take her mother’s thoughts off the party. “It was good of Mrs. Mawson; I hope Mrs. . . . what is it? Mrs. Nadin’s like her. What a funny name, isn’t it?”

“Who?” asked Mrs. Royer vaguely.

“Nadin, isn’t it? You know, where I’m going . . .”

“Oh, ay. She’ll be all right. They wouldn’t send you if they didn’t know that. Missis said . . .” But the sentence stopped there, as if she had forgotten what it was.

Flo sat on the little three-legged wooden stool on the right by the fire and looked up at her mother’s face which was pink in the glow.

“I don’t know. . . . Mrs. Mawson says it’s just a way of getting girls to go cheap. D’you really . . .?”

“Oh, that’s what she give ’em you for, is it? To upset you,” said Mrs. Royer. “Well, tell her to mind her own business and keep ’er flowers next time.”

“But I’m sure she didn’t. . . . It was just because I’m going,” protested Flo, turning to see the flowers which also were caught by the fire light. The wavering of the flames made the daffodils appear to flicker as if being disturbed by a gentle wind.

“It’s likely,” commented Mrs. Royer scoffingly. “I know Milly Mawson. Ah, well, I think I’ll go and see Mrs. Dower. Fancy Jenny doing that. She must have been careless some’ow. Though I’ve heard tell as them machines is pretty awful.”

With an unexpected gush of energy she got up and turned to the door where her things had been hung.

“Oh, but,” protested Flo. “My things came this morning after you went. I thought you’d stay.”

“What things?”

“Clothes,” said Flo, standing up. “I didn’t want to say while Ivy was here. I was afraid she’d want to borrow . . .”

“Where are they?” asked Mrs. Royer, turning back. “Have they all come? Why didn’t you say?”

“D’you think I might wear them to-morrow? It wouldn’t matter one day beforehand.”

“It’s what they’re for,” said Mrs. Royer. “Course you wear ’em. Where are they?”

Flo opened the door in the end wall by the fireplace and ran up the closed-in stairs to the bedroom where the three of them had to sleep in one bed. The box was under the bed at her own side by the window and all the time that Ivy had been up she had been nervous. But the box was as she had left it with the string in a loose bow. She carried it gently as though the contents were brittle, and lowered it on to the table in the manner of putting down a tray. Mrs. Royer stood by while the bow was pulled, the lid taken off, and the tissue paper was put back. On top with arms folded was the neatest costume jacket that Flo had seen. It was blue serge with narrow red braid on the collar, reveres and cuffs. She picked it up by the shoulders and held it over her bust, too eager for her mother to see how it suited her even to have time to put it on.

“Isn’t it lovely?” she exclaimed, turning sideways to get the best light.

Mrs. Royer stared, and then reached for the cuff to feel the soft ribbed texture, and finally she stroked it, unable to take her hand away.

“You’ve never had anythin’ like that,” she managed to say at last, as if only just getting her breath.

Flo laughed and looked down again.

“Does it fit?” asked Mrs. Royer suddenly.

Flo began to get into it, but her thick tartan frock was a nuisance.

“I’ve got to let you see everything; I must take my frock off,” she explained, stopping unexpectedly.

She tried to drag her frock off without undoing the belt, and had to let it down and start over again. Her green petticoat was off in a jiff and then her flannel knickers and she reached into the box and drew out new knickers and a petticoat of pale blue cotton.

“My word!” ejaculated Mrs. Royer.

“There’s vests. Two of everything,” said Flo, beginning to step into the costume skirt. It was tight at the waist, but she held her breath while she got the two hooks into the eyes. She smoothed the creases in front and drew her open hands down from her waist behind and was delighted by the close feel of it. “But only one blouse,” she murmured with the slightest hint of regret. She dropped the blouse quickly over her head. It was of buff cotton with a print design of small red and blue triangles to match the suit braiding.

“Fancy that!” said Mrs. Royer. “My! Didn’t I tell you?”

The jacket slipped on easily. Flo left the front open, but buttoned the belt.

“What more d’you want?” demanded Mrs. Royer.

Flo slowly turned and walked stiffly and sedately the six paces which the room allowed, then abruptly she swooped back.

“There’s shoes, too; I forgot! Brogues.”

Also there were two pairs of stockings, but they were black, thick cashmere, so that she did not mention them because she thought that she looked better in her own which were grey cotton.

“My word,” repeated Mrs. Royer, “I never thought they’d do you like that. When Missis told me, I thought it ’ud be somethin’ not worth having.”

“I bet Ivy’ll be jealous,” said Flo.

She looked down at herself in front and tried to look over her shoulder to see what it was like at the back. “It does fit, doesn’t it?”

“Like you’d been measured.”

“It isn’t a bit tight?”

“You look like a real lady,” said Mrs. Royer. “Fancy them fitting you up like that. Eh, everybody’ll wonder what’s happened . . . we’ve had a fortune or somethin’,” and she chuckled and suddenly remembered Mrs. Dower. “You must come. She won’t believe if I just tell her. But if you’re there . . .”

“You’d have thought they’d have sent a hat,” said Flo.

“Yes; haven’t they?”

“That’s all that came,” Flo nodded at the box.

“Eh, but there should be; I remember Missis sayin’ . . .” Mrs. Royer felt clumsily among the tissue paper and uttered a triumphant,” Here y’are; fancy missin’ that,” and she brought from underneath where it had been lying flat, a navy-blue knitted hat something like a turban. It suited Flo; she felt as well dressed as she imagined any queen could feel. She took off its nail the square of pitted glass that was kept by the window, and holding it in both hands, tilted her head first one way then the other to see how she would appear to passers-by on either side.

“Now, you do look a little lady,” said her mother gushingly. “You see, but for me you’d have missed it. Suppose it had been thrown away . . .”

“Oh, I wouldn’t have done that!” exclaimed Flo. “Isn’t it . . .,” she didn’t want to say “natty” again, because she had already used it three times, therefore she ended with “neat?”

“It might have growed on you, it’s that much as it should be,” agreed her mother. “Let me try.”

But on her round skull with streaky hair hanging all round like cobwebs the turban made her look “like nothin’ on earth”, as she said, and she dragged it off and gave it back. “It don’t look like the same when you have it on,” she said, quite relieved that she had not spoilt it. “My word, what’ll Mrs. Dower an’ Sal Fairburn, an’ Old Poll say . . . an’ Sarah Ann? Huh, it was Sarah as told me as I’d no right to send you away. Let me get my things on.”

She bustled to the door and plucked her hat and coat off the nail as if there were a fire and she had to escape.

“What, keep them on and go with you?” asked Flo. “I . . . I’m not washed or anything.”

“Who’ll know with you with them things on?” demanded Mrs. Royer, leading to the front door.

Flo followed, hesitant yet thrilled; and the daffodils forgotten in the firelight, seemed to shake their heads.