The Singing Winds

by Elizabeth Gill

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Romance

Synopsis

A stark, emotive saga about love and loss in the North of England at the turn of the 20th century. On her father's death, Kate Ferrar is expected to move from London to a mining village in County Durham, to live with an uncle she barely knows. Restricted by the confines of polite society and hungry for education and honest company, she breaks all social rules by taking a job in her uncle's office. There she meets Jon Armstrong, a pit lad, tough, enigmatic and not at all the sort of man Kate should be consorting with. He's also engaged to a local girl Lizzie, while Kate's uncle is plotting a suitable marriage for her. But a sudden and shocking mining disaster almost destroys everything. Both Kate and Lizzie must draw on all their courage to survive, but their delicate position in the village threatens to collapse as disastrously as the mine on which their lives depend.

Release date: June 3, 2014

Publisher: Quercus

Print pages: 424

Sample

The pits are gone now, for the most part. The pit heaps, which in my childhood resembled black mountains, are flattened, are fields. Only the villages remain with their long narrow streets. Many chapels are empty with weeds growing up around the doors for they have long been closed. Some have been sold and converted into houses, others are used for car repair workshops or warehouses. Some of those still open are desperate for money and congregations.

I live in a little pit town very close to where I was born. At least I think of it like that. When I moved here three years ago there was open-cast mining just beyond my house but no pits, though at one time there were three in the small area around my house. Some things haven’t changed. There are allotments here and pigeon crees. Sometimes when I walk my spaniel in the afternoons by the river I can see the pigeons flying round and round their crees, their wings silver in the sunshine against the blue sky. People keep greyhounds and join bands, and there are the pubs and workingmen’s clubs. During the early autumn there are leek shows where proud gardeners show off shiny bright vegetables. Each year in the newspapers there are stories of leek slashing, of secret recipes for watering, to make the leeks exactly the right size for the shows, and during September broth and leek puddings are made.

The town of which I write still exists. It’s a pretty town too, over on the Durham coast, pretty with the kind of emptiness which many of the Durham villages have, a neatness where nothing is disturbed: no pit dirt, no pitmen, no raised voices of a Saturday night, no chapel of a Sunday, no work, no growth. It had three pits in 1880 and three chapels and a church. It had sprung up like a weed from the first few houses until it became a harbour for the export of coal from inland pits, and then one at a time over a period of twenty years the three pits were sunk, houses were built, the trade of the port increased and all the needs of a growing town were met by shopkeepers, tradesmen, anchor manufacturers, brass founders and finishers, iron founders, engineers, even a bottle works. There were three ship-building yards with sail makers, ships chandlers, block and master makers, eight coal fitters. There were fourteen inns and public houses, three breweries. And there were the miners living in houses swiftly built by the mine owners.

Away from the houses there are cliffs to the north and to the south, in places seventy feet high. At intervals there are pleasant sloping grassy banks. A few miles to the north is Sunderland.

Come back with me to the days when the coal industry in Durham was at its height, when the towns which now have boarded up shops and empty streets were busy communities, when the streets of the seaside towns echoed with voices from other countries, to a certain summer afternoon when the shadows were long on the beach and the tide washed the sand just as it had done all that time before and has each day since.

It was a rare hot July day. There was on the beach not even the hint of a breeze and the sun beat down on sand, rocks, shingle, gravel and stone, and on the boy and girl who were the only people who walked there. At least he walked. She skipped.

Lizzie was skipping. She was much too old for skipping, she knew, but it was Friday, the tide was down and the day was bright with sunshine. She didn’t understand how Sam could walk like that, slowly, as if there was no excitement in him. It was the chapel picnic the following week, something to look forward to. What was he so quiet for?

She glanced sideways at him. His mam was proud of him and she wasn’t the only one. Lizzie just had to look at him to be pleased. He was tall and slender and dark, and if his clothes were shabby and had belonged to Alf before him it didn’t matter because he was young and held himself high. All the Armstrongs were like that and Sam was the best of them. There had never been a time in her life, good or bad, when he was not with her. They had lived next-door to each other since before she could remember, had played together in the back lane as children, had run together, laughing, along the beach many times. They had shared secrets in their own special sand dune, made plans in his back yard. He had scorned her anniversary pieces, the little poems she had to learn for Sunday School, taught her to play football, and she had helped him with his letters because Sam didn’t like school and wouldn’t learn.

Now she danced beside him on the beach, just above the slowly spreading waves, but he didn’t look up. He kept his hands in his pockets and his head down and she thought that maybe he was thinking about the pit. She wished that she could talk to him about the picnic but she couldn’t, close as they were. She had to wait until he asked. He always took her, he had done for years, and Lizzie didn’t doubt that he would do so this time but he hadn’t asked her yet and she was getting tired of waiting. Something else troubled her too. She hadn’t a pretty frock to wear.

They left the beach, Lizzie regretfully, looking over her shoulder as she always did, in promise that she would be back. They walked up to the houses. It wasn’t far. Their row was the nearest so they considered the beach their own. They stopped outside Sam’s door and he sat down on the low wall there and picked up a stick from the back lane and banged the stick off his knee. His twin sister, May, came out of the house. She was short and dumpy and pale. She came down the yard and said to Lizzie, ‘My mam’s nearly finished my frock for the picnic. Would you like to come in and see?’

‘That would be nice,’ Lizzie said. ‘Who’s taking you?’

‘Rob Harvey.’

Rob was three years older than May. He was an only child, a hewer who made good money.

‘That’s a feather in your cap,’ Lizzie said.

‘Who’s taking you, Lizzie?’ May asked.

Her insides felt as though somebody had clouted her in the middle and knocked all the breath out of her.

‘What?’ she said.

May looked impatiently at her brother but his head was down.

‘Hasn’t he told you yet?’ And there was satisfaction in May’s brown eyes that she was giving such important information. Sam looked up then, his own eyes narrowed and his mouth compressed.

‘Shut up,’ he said.

‘He’s taking Greta Smith,’ May said, and Sam came to his feet, glaring at her. May ran back up the yard and into the house. Sam didn’t look at Lizzie even though she waited for him to. She waited for him to say that it wasn’t true, and when he didn’t and she had gone on waiting and he had neither looked at her nor moved away, her insides took that bitter blow too and she said, ‘Are you?’

‘Aye.’

‘You could have told me.’

‘I just have done, haven’t I?’

Lizzie could think of nothing to say. When it hadn’t mattered, when she was ten and twelve, he had taken her. Now, when she was coming up fifteen and he was almost sixteen, it mattered. And he was taking Greta Smith. Greta had bonny frocks. She had long fair hair and blue eyes and pearly pink cheeks. Suddenly Lizzie hated her.

‘I took you last year and the year before,’ Sam said. ‘I don’t have to do it every year, do I?’

Lizzie’s cheeks burned.

‘Now what’s up?’ said a voice from the back door, and Jon Armstrong stepped into the yard. Lizzie wished him far enough. Jon was the eldest at nineteen and head of the family since his father had died four years ago. He was taller than most of the pitmen and the only one in the family with blue eyes. Jon’s sarcasm could fell you from halfway up the yard and Lizzie didn’t want him interfering now. Also half the lasses in the village fancied him. Lizzie didn’t, she just wished he would stay out of it. She didn’t even look at him.

‘Nowt,’ Sam said, and Lizzie watched him draw himself up as he spoke, conscious of Jon’s height. ‘I’m just not taking her to the picnic, that’s all. I never said I would.’

Lizzie glared at him.

‘You never said you wouldn’t neither,’ she declared bitterly.

Sam looked sullenly at her.

‘I can take who I want, can’t I?’

‘You could have said,’ Jon put in.

Lizzie’s eyes filled with tears and her face and throat worked so that she had to look down.

‘I’ll take you to the picnic, Lizzie,’ Jon offered.

‘You can’t take Lizzie. All the lads’ll laugh. Anyroad, you said you weren’t going and my mam said she was glad because Mavis Robson’s been hanging around the back lane all week, and the lass from the store

‘Why don’t you go and have your tea?’ Jon said softly and Sam retreated up the yard. Lizzie didn’t look up. Her cheeks burned worse than ever. She wanted to go into her own house and have a good cry but she swallowed hard and stood her ground.

‘I’m not going to no picnic with you, Jon Armstrong,’ she said in a shaky voice. That would learn him, she thought, because any lass in the village would have gone with him.

‘What for?’ he said.

‘’Cos for,’ Lizzie said, and marched out of his yard.

*

It was the first time she had wished that she didn’t live so close to Sam. She saw all his comings and goings. She would have to watch him take Greta Smith to the picnic, watch him go out to call for her. Now she felt worse than before; she ached inside. Sam was always there, like her head and arms and legs were always there, her mother and her home. She could not believe that he could prefer another girl to her. It wasn’t possible. They had done everything together: gone to school, for walks, sat around the fire. His family were hers: Jon and Alf, the middle brother, and May and their mother. She didn’t just like them; she belonged to them and they belonged to her. And even more than that, Sam was special. Left to himself he wasn’t bold like the other lads, he was quiet and gentle and often afraid of things, and she wanted to be with him to help and to share and to be a part of everything he did.

Her own household was small with just one brother, Harold, quiet and not very bright. There was no quarrelling, no loud laughter such as the Armstrong family enjoyed next-door. She knew that her mother thought she and Harold were the wrong way round, that Harold should have been clever at his books and that Lizzie should have been content to stay in the house and help. Her father had been hurt down the pit some time back and shortly afterwards had died. Now they had only one pay coming in and the house was much too quiet for Lizzie’s liking. Often she’d made excuses to go next-door where it was lively. Now she had no excuse. She knew that her mother dreaded the time when Harold would marry but he had never looked at any lass that Lizzie knew of. She prayed that he never would. To feed a wife and bairns as well as a family on one pay would mean hardship such as they had never known.

Lizzie remembered what life had been like when her father worked. There had been money for material for bonny dresses and her mam and dad had laughed a lot. Then the roof fell in, her father was brought home on a handcart, and after that he was ill and died and there was no more pretty material or special things and her mother went around tight-lipped and Lizzie did not like being in the house.

Now there was just day to day. There was nothing but the different housework on the different days and Harold coming quietly back from work on different shifts. He had gone down the pit at twelve as all the lads did, having finished school at nine and gone to the pit head to screen coal until he was older. Lizzie told herself that she was lucky. Next-door Mrs Armstrong and May would have three men coming in so that there would be another meal and another lot of hot water and another change of clothes all the time. But there was nothing to think about now, nothing to look forward to. No picnic. And worse than that, when Lizzie brought the pictures to the front of her mind, she knew that there had been other things she’d been looking forward to as well. There was the idea that Sam might kiss her. She blushed just thinking about it. She had lain in bed lately thinking of that, not sure whether she ought to think of it, so delicious was the thought. That he might court her as a lad did with a lass and that later they might marry and have a bairn and live with the Armstrongs. She would have liked that. She had hugged to herself the thought of living with them. She would have been happy there, married to Sam, having his bairn, helping his mam with the housework. It had been her biggest dream.

She had tried not to go next-door too often; her mam objected and the objections were sharp tongued. Lizzie had heard it said that her mother had gypsy blood. Mrs Harton was small, slight, dark-skinned and black-haired with brown eyes and a quick temper and Lizzie had inherited all these things, but her mam was kind too and Lizzie did not want to hurt her feelings by giving the impression that she cared for the Armstrongs so much and wanted to be with them. Now she would have no more reason to go, no excuse. Apart from Sam Armstrong, there was nothing but socks to darn and clothes to mend and washing and ironing and cleaning and the hated brasses to be polished.

She tried not to think that she and Sam had been children together and were children no more and that they had both changed. She clung to the memories, paddling in the summer, holly gathering in the winter, games at the Christmas party at the chapel, the secrets they had shared in their favourite sand dune. However, there was one thing to be thankful for. Her only decent dress had been let out until it could be let out no more. It was too tight and too short.

She thought of Jon Armstrong in his Sunday best suit and cap. Fancy, if she had said yes to his invitation and had to go in her ordinary frock. Whatever would he have thought? But then, he hadn’t meant it. Part of her wished that he had, part of her wanted to show off such a prize to the other girls, but it was a small part of her. She knew that Jon thought of her just as he thought of May, trotting tame in and out of his house as she did. Could it be that he had felt sorry for her? That made her cross. Maybe that had been the trouble with Sam; he had thought of her the same way, like a sister. Now he wanted to shake her off, like a tree shook off leaves in an autumn wind, shake her off and have her go away. All right then, she would.

She didn’t go round to their house or for walks on the beach for fear of seeing Sam there, for fear that he should be with Greta Smith. She stayed at home and got on with her work. But she had to tell her mam.

‘We’ll have to think what you’re going to wear for the picnic, our Lizzie,’ she said. ‘Your dress won’t let out no more. I’ve got some material …’

‘It doesn’t matter, Mam, I’m not going.’

They were in her bedroom. She and Harold were lucky like that; they had a bedroom each, her mam slept downstairs.

‘Not going?’ Her mother looked at her from quick dark eyes. ‘It’s not because of the dress, is it?’

‘Sam’s not taking me. He’s going with Greta Smith.’

Her mother was offended for her, Lizzie could see.

‘Well, that’s a fine way to carry on, I must say!’

‘It’s up to him, Mam.’

‘What about the other lads?’

‘Nobody asked me. They wouldn’t, would they? I’ve always gone with Sam. I thought he would take me, as usual.’

She saw Sam in the lane the next day as he came off the foreshift. She would have ducked into her yard but he saw her too and came across.

‘Who’s taking you to the picnic then?’

Lizzie said nothing, she was so hurt. She wished that she could have told him somebody was.

‘Nobody’s taking you, are they?’ he insisted. ‘And do you know what for? Because you’re too clever, that’s what for. All the lads wanted Greta.’

Lizzie looked hard into his brown eyes, her ready temper flaring.

‘And is that what you wanted?’ she said fiercely. ‘What all the lads wanted? You’re daft, that’s what you are, Sam Armstrong.’

She thought that he would hit her, as he had done when they had fought as children, but Alf and Jon, for once on the same shift, were coming down the lane for their dinner.

‘Had your gob, our Sam, and ho way in,’ Jon ordered.

And when Sam stood, glaring, his eldest brother’s black fist descended on the back of his collar and hauled him up the yard. Sam twisted, shouting, fists clenched, but Jon only fended him off, threatening, ‘You do and I’ll bray you.’

Sam twisted free and ran away up the lane. Alf turned at the gate. Jon lingered. The blue eyes seemed very bright in his black face, and then he turned and followed Alf in at the gate and up the yard towards the smell of meat and potatoes which was wafting from the open kitchen door.

*

Lizzie’s mother made the dress anyway. It was a dull brown colour which Lizzie thought looked worse against her dark hair and eyes, but her mother was pleased because it fit and because there was plenty to let out across the seams and in the hem so Lizzie pretended that she thought the dress pretty. A new dress was more than plenty of lasses had though she was sure they all had a lad to take them to the picnic. May asked her in again to see her own new dress for the picnic and Mrs Armstrong greeted Lizzie warmly.

Lizzie liked Sam’s mother. She was a very big woman, a good cook, and fond of all her family in an affectionate way which was rare in the village. It was rumoured that her family had been Cornish, arriving here when people from other parts of the country came to work in the pits. There was no trace of this in her speech but she had privately told Lizzie that Sam’s father’s family had thought she was not good enough for their son and there had been trouble between the two families for a long time.

Now she said, ‘And just where do you think you’ve been? You don’t have to stop coming, you know, just because you’ve fallen out with our Sam. I’ve heard all about it. He’s getting a bit too big for his boots is that one. He has no call to be nasty. He’s not too big to feel the flat of my hand.’

May proudly showed the new dress. It had lace at the collar and was a pretty blue. Lizzie dutifully admired it.

She knew that Mrs Armstrong had got it secondhand from a stall on the market but the material was good. It must once have belonged to somebody much better off than them. Originally it had had a bustle. Now it was sleek and smooth but not too fitted, cleverly reshaped to suit May’s plump figure.

‘Have you found a lad to take you to the picnic yet?’ May asked.

‘She’s going with me,’ Jon said quietly from the chair beside the window. He was reading a book and had not even lifted his head when Lizzie came in. She saw his mother looking at him in surprise and May’s eyes widened.

‘You’re never,’ she said.

Mrs Armstrong laughed.

‘I wouldn’t go to the foot of the stairs with him if I was you, Lizzie.’

‘I’m not,’ Lizzie said.

‘Oh, go on,’ May urged. ‘That would fettle our Sam and Greta Smith.’

‘No.’

‘Does your mam know our Jon’s asked you?’ Mrs Armstrong said.

‘I never told her.’

Jon put down the book, which Lizzie couldn’t see the title of and got up.

‘So tell her,’ he said.

‘No. And anyroad, I haven’t got a frock to wear.’

‘What’s that then, your petticoat?’

‘Jon!’ Mrs Armstrong said.

‘Lasses!’ he teased. ‘Always going on about frocks. Who cares?’

‘I do,’ Lizzie said, finding the courage to look at him and wishing that she hadn’t. Those blue eyes were full of amusement and made her face hot.

‘Well, you’d better get your mam told ’cos I’m coming round for you,’ he said.

*

It was easy for him to say but Lizzie didn’t know how to tell her mother. She looked for a good time and finally, just the day before, she managed to get the words out.

‘Jon’s taking me to the picnic, Mam.’

Her mother was baking. She wiped her floury hands and looked even more surprised than Jon’s family had. And no wonder, thought Lizzie.

‘What, Edie’s Jon? What did he ask you for?’

‘I don’t know. Because Sam didn’t.’

Her mother frowned.

‘The lad’s too old for you, Lizzie, and though he’s been good to his mother he’s not a good lad. He drinks and swears and fights. Are you sure?’

‘He’s coming for me at two o’clock. He said so.’

‘Does his mother know?’

‘Please, Mam. I’m just like May to him.’

‘I suppose so then, if you really want to.’

*

Going to the chapel picnic with the best-looking lad in the village brought Lizzie a rare kind of pleasure which even her awful brown frock did not lessen. There were not many special days like this one. There was the chapel Christmas party, and for the little ones the anniversary where they said their piece. There were weekly Bible classes to which the older ones went mainly so that the lads and lasses could meet up afterwards. There was also the occasional day trip, but the annual picnic was special to Lizzie because she did not think any place could be better than home and it had been the one day in the year when Sam had – apparently unwittingly it seemed to her now – demonstrated to everyone that he was hers.

The day was fine and bright, it being July, and though she had slept badly and was nervous, Lizzie was glad to be there with Jon because his brother looked across and scowled. She also knew very well that several of the other girls were looking across with envy and plenty of others were choosing not to look at all.

Greta Smith had the prettiest dress. It was pink and white and didn’t suit her, Lizzie thought. The pink bows looked daft.

The picnic ground had been the same for years - away across the sand dunes and around into the cove where it was sheltered. One or two adults from the chapel went to make sure that everybody behaved as they should but kept close to the younger ones. Lizzie should have enjoyed the freedom of being with Jon and no grown-ups watching but she didn’t because he was the wrong lad. She didn’t know what to say to him, and when finally they sat down in the warm grass she concentrated on spreading out the food which her mother had carefully wrapped. Sam and Greta were not far away and she glanced across.

‘Stop looking at him,’ Jon advised.

‘I’m not. It’s her frock I’m looking at,’ Lizzie lied.

‘There’s nowt between his lugs but fresh air.’

‘That’s not true,’ Lizzie began warmly, and then looked up and saw his eyes laughing. She bit her lip. ‘Have a pasty,’ she said.

Jon ate and said nothing more. She wasn’t surprised. Her mother’s baking was always light and good, but today Lizzie couldn’t eat.

They went walking on the beach. She didn’t think she would ever love anywhere quite as much: the cry of the herring gulls, the swish of the summer waves, the firmness of the baked sand, the spiky grass of the sand dunes, and the never-to-be-forgotten smell of the waves and the grass that was home.

Lizzie kept some way from Jon, aware that it was him beside her and not Sam, bigger than Sam, bolder and more in touch with things. Yet because he was not Sam, she was not happy. They walked back to the top of the dunes, just the two of them, crossing over some way to see a pond where he had said ducks would be swimming, and there in the warmth of a small hollow found Sam and Greta with faces pressed together, kissing inexpertly but with enthusiasm. Lizzie watched them for a second or two and then turned away. She couldn’t cry in front of Jon. She walked on further down the dunes and towards the pond. There she sat down in the grass and scanned the expanse of water. It was empty, and there was nobody in sight.

‘There are no ducks,’ she said as Jon sat down beside her.

‘No, I know.’

Lizzie looked at him, not sure now, and she thought that the look in his eyes was not the kind of look that you went to chapel with.

‘They come in later, in the dusk.’

‘But you said …’ Lizzie protested, even as he tilted her chin with one effortless finger.

‘Did I?’

She watched his eyes close amid a thick dark sweep of lashes and then he was near and his mouth was close against hers. Lizzie had often, and sinfully, she thought, imagined Sam’s mouth on hers and had heard the other girls talking of kissing. She had even sometimes pressed her lips to her bare arm to try and imagine what it was like, but her imagination had not taken her half the way to here. No one had touched her like this, not even Sam. Nobody had ever embraced or hit her except during childish squabbles. There had been no kind of physical contact. Even now Jon did not touch her with his hands, as though he sensed that an embrace would be regarded as a kind of invasion. There was nothing but his mouth on hers and that very, very carefully, in the knowledge, she thought later, that she had not been kissed before. It was merely skin to skin, nothing but a soft breath, like the wind across sand. There was nothing clumsy or greedy or inexpert, and Lizzie knew in those seconds that although he treated her so gently, she was not a child now to Jon Armstrong, she was a woman, and wondered for how long he had seen her that way and why it had taken her until now to realise it for herself. He put his fingers under her chin as her eyes closed and her lips parted and gradually his hand gentled its way to her cheek as he kissed her long and slowly.

Lizzie was not even aware by then that he was not Sam. Her mouth began to return the pressure and her fingertips grew bold and edged towards him, touching the front of his shirt where his jacket was open. She had not thought that a man’s body was so hard and solid but beneath the crisp clean shirt there was warmth and the kind of muscle which betrayed that Jon Armstrong had not idled away his time in the depths of the Victoria pit. She let the kiss go on and on and gradually it deepened and her lips parted further and her hands began to slide up towards his shoulders and Jon put his other arm about her waist. She tilted up her face more and more until his arm came up from her waist to hold her there and Lizzie became aware of every inch of her body as he gathered the softness of her against him and then some instinct made her press the heel of her hand against his chest in resistance and he sighed and loosed her.

The magic broke. She looked at him and he was not Sam.

‘You brought me here on purpose for that, didn’t you?’ she said.

Jon said nothing. He looked at her and Lizzie found herself unable to look away.

‘And you didn’t like it?’ he said.

She didn’t like the way he said that, all sarcastic.

‘It was just a kiss,’ he said.

That made it worse, it being ‘just’ something. Lizzie got up.

‘I suppose you think I like you,’ she said. ‘I suppose you think all the girls like you and you can do what you want.’

‘Lizzie—’

‘Well, I don’t like you, so there.’

Jon smiled.

‘I’ll live,’ he said.

Lizzie turned around and walked away and was very glad when he didn’t follow her.



Kate blinked hard as she looked out over the square. On the pavement not far away a tabby cat was rolling in the sunshine and at the far end of the street two women were standing talking. Her eyes were so sore from crying and not sleeping that she could scarcely focus and the black dress, hastily made and ill-fitting, was tight under the arms and around the waist and it was too hot for a summer’s day.

‘So,’ her uncle said behind her, ‘have you decided what you’re going to do?’

‘What can I do?’ She turned around as she spoke and saw then for the first time how like her father he was and her heart ached. It was a week now since her father had slumped forward over the dinner table and died. He was dead and buried and she was alone except for her Uncle George who had come down to London from the north to be with her. She didn’t know him well, she didn’t want to. All she wanted was to go back to the day before her father had died, before her world collapsed.

‘You can come and live with us,’ her Uncle George said now.

‘I’ve lived in London all my life.’

‘But you can’t stay here. What would you do?’ Kate thought that he looked embarrassed, she knew that he disliked having discussions with a young woman. ‘Your father had no money. There’s nothing for you,’ he persisted.

Kate already knew that, she was even a little irritated that he should say it. Her father had been an unworldly man who owned nothing and cared to own nothing. In fact he did not believe in ownership. She parted her lips to tell her uncle this and then closed them again. He would not understand. Her father had not believed in possessions, he had believed in the education of the mind.

‘I could be a governess,’ she said.

Her uncle looked shocked.

‘You’re very young,’ he said, ‘I think you must let me decide what’s best. Your aunt is fond of you, even though you don’t know each other well. You know that we have no children. We’ll do our best to make you happy in time. You won’t be alone.’

Kate wanted to be alone; it was the only thing she did want now that her father was dead. It was true that a governess’s post was not ideal for her. She could not be happy trying to instil knowledge in small stupid minds, and putting up with the humiliation of being a servant.

Her uncle joined her at the window. He was a kind man, she thought. At that moment