The Reverend James Hopkins was sitting at his desk beside the parlour window in the rectory at Rattlesden, composing his sermon for the following day. Or, to be more accurate, trying to think of a text that would comfort his parishioners and give them a sense of worth. The Corn Laws kept the price of corn artificially high, so the land owners’ profits remained steady, but since the peace their labourers’ pay had fallen even lower than ever. Most of his neighbours eked out an existence so bare it was often little better than that of the beasts they tended. So it was difficult to find a good text for them.
When he heard the sound of a carriage grinding round the corner into the drive, he was quite glad to put down his bitten pen and call to Annie that they had company.
Annie Hopkins was sitting in the dining room of their rambling house making the most of the last of the light to mend a tear in her son’s little blue trouser suit. Baby Beau was fourteen months old now and on his feet, staggering into everything, but determined to walk everywhere. Yesterday he’d tumbled into the mud beside the pond on the village green, and that afternoon he’d torn his trousers on a blackthorn.
She finished her work as quickly as she could, calling to James as she sewed, ‘Is it Billy, do you think?’ for she’d recognized the sound of her mother’s pony-cart.
She and James met one another in the panelled hall, just as their guests were climbing out of the cart, and by now it was necessary to light the candles before they opened the front door. In the sudden darkness before their little light, neither of them was able to see who was walking up the path.
‘Is that you, Billy?’ Annie asked, holding her candle aloft.
And John’s voice answered, ‘No, Annie. It’s me. I have come to beg a favour.’
‘Come in, come in,’ the Reverend Hopkins said, stooping towards them to urge them into the house. ‘If it is within our competence you have only to ask.’
And, of course, when the pony had been stabled and Harriet introduced and the story told, it was within their competence.
‘What a misfortune to travel all that way and then to find no one home to welcome you!’ Annie said to Harriet. ‘I will have a room prepared for you this instant. You must be worn out.’
‘I am a great nuisance, I fear,’ Harriet said.
‘Not at all,’ Annie said, hastening to reassure her. ‘You are most welcome and no trouble at all. Johnnie was entirely correct to bring you here. Come with me, my dear, and allow me to introduce you to Pollyanna and the boys.’
‘Have you heard the news?’ the Reverend Hopkins said to John when the two women had left the room. There was a copy of The Times open on his desk, and they both looked towards it as he spoke.
‘No,’ John said. ‘We’ve been travelling all day.’ He’d forgotten all about news and newspapers. How very remiss.
‘Bonaparte has gone back on his word and left Elba with an army of a thousand men.’
It was shattering news, the kind that sold papers in their thousands, and he’d been out of London when it arrived. ‘When did it happen?’ he asked.
‘On 26th February apparently,’ his brother-in-law said, ‘but only reported this morning, it seems.’
‘Is this this morning’s paper?’ John asked, picking it up.
‘It is. I bought it in Bury this afternoon, when I was visiting the Canon.’
‘From Easter’s?’
‘No, I’m, afraid not,’ James admitted. ‘It was on sale in Mr Cole’s bookshop, arrived on the afternoon stage. Easter’s had it too, I’m sure.’
But they should have had it first, John thought. It was the sort of news he ought to have sent out by flyer. His very first opportunity to show how his new system would work, and he’d missed it.
‘May I?’ he asked, unfolding the paper.
‘Pray do. But it makes sober reading, I fear.’
It did.
‘We have hitherto delayed accounts of Bonaparte’s landing on the coast of Provence,’ the paper said, ‘because the telegraphic dispatches which first made it known still communicate no details.
‘Bonaparte left Porto Ferrajo on the 26th February, at nine o’clock in the evening, in extremely calm weather, which lasted until 1st March. He embarked in a brig, and was followed by four other vessels, such as pinks and feluccas, having on board from 1,000 to 1,100 men at most, of whom a few were French, and the rest Poles, Corsicans, Neapolitans, and natives of Elba.
‘The vessels anchored in the road of the Gulf of Juan, near Cannes, on the 1st March, and the troops landed.’
‘He’s been in France for nearly a fortnight,’ John said.
‘He has indeed.’
‘And this is the first we hear of it.’
‘It is.’
‘Then he has not been repulsed or captured, you may depend upon it. If the news was suppressed, it was suppressed for a purpose. They would have waited for him to be rejected. And if he had been, they would have known of it by now.’
‘You fear, as I do, that the French people have made him welcome and joined his cause?’
‘I must return to London,’ John said. ‘More news will follow and I must be there to dispatch it.’
‘Tonight?’ James demurred.
‘Tonight,’ John said firmly. His adventure with Miss Sowerby was over. At least for the time being. Now he must return to work.
‘But will your mother not …’
‘My mother was not in town this morning. There was no sign of her at breakfast. Nor when we arrived last night. In fact I have no idea where my mother is.’ He’d been so busy looking after Miss Pettie and Miss Sowerby he hadn’t even bothered to inquire. If she was there she’d be furious at his careless behaviour, and he’d best go back at once to face her and work with her; if she wasn’t, it was an opportunity not to be missed. ‘I will go back to town tonight.’
‘Must you, Johnnie?’ Annie said, when she and Harriet heard what he intended.
But his mind was made up. He was full of energy and wanting to be off at once. ‘I will send the pony-cart for you, Miss Sowerby, early on Wednesday morning. You are in good hands I do assure you.’
‘You will stay for a hot punch?’ James suggested. But even that was impossible.
Within twenty minutes, the pony was back in harness and none too pleased about it, and John Easter was on his way back to Bury.
‘I will write to you,’ he called, as he manoeuvred the cart into the darkening lane.
And Harriet, watching him go, wondered which of them he was talking to, and felt that she had no cause to hope it would be her. And hoped just the same.
London was bristling with rumours, even in the small hours of Sunday morning; people said that the French were flocking to join Napoleon’s army, that the British army was on the move, and there had been a skirmish, but no one knew where, that Wellington was on his way home to England to receive orders. If the country was not already at war with Napoleon, as everybody surmised, it certainly felt as though it was.
The Sunday papers had repeated yesterday’s news and speculated upon it, but there were no further dispatches from France and nothing more was known, according to Mr Walter of The Times who was one of the most reliable newspaper owners in London. And no news from Vienna either, which Mr Walter said he would certainly have expected by now. Most of the ‘Allied Sovereigns’ had been meeting in ‘Congress’ in Vienna ever since the first of November. With Napoleon safe out of the way in Elba, they were supposed to be redesigning the map of Europe, but they’d made very little progress in the last five months and now of course, any work they might have done would be rendered quite useless by the dictator’s return. The British army was still in Brussels, Mr Walter reported, but there was no news of them either. ‘We must bear our souls with patience,’ he said, ‘and wait for what tomorrow brings.’
So John supervised the stamping, dispatched his papers in the usual way and went home to Bedford Square to find his brother. If there was no news yet, so much the better. It gave him the time to prepare for it.
Nan was out of town, so Mrs Pennyfield the housekeeper said. ‘Gone to stay in Hertfordshire, sir, and like to be there a week. We’re to expect her back a’ Friday.’
‘Did she leave an address?’ John asked.
‘Holly Hall, St Albans, sir.’
‘Thank ’ee, Mrs Pennyfield. Is Mr William up?’
‘Rousing sir.’
‘Then I will rouse him further. Would you prepare breakfast and send me up some tea?’
‘To Mr William’s room, sir?’
‘To Mr William’s room.’
For a gentleman who was supposed to be rousing himself Billy was singularly supine.
‘Get up, you lazy dog!’ his brother said amiably, pulling all the covers from the bed.
‘That you Johnnoh?’ Billy said, sitting up slowly and giving his hair a thorough scratching. One side of his face was still marked by creases and he hadn’t opened his eyes.
‘Put a breeze on!’ John said, examining his own unshaven face in the dressing table mirror. ‘We’ve got work to do.’
Billy swung his legs out off the mattress and eased them onto the floor. ‘Wha’zza time?’ he yawned.
‘Time you were up. Napoleon’s landed in France.’
‘That’s old news,’ Billy said, unimpressed by it. ‘Yesterday’s news. Where did you go haring off to with old Miss Pettie?’
‘Took her home. I’ll tell ’ee about it later. Come on, Billy. Look alive. We’ve got a dozen flyers to hire before the afternoon.’
‘You’re never going to take on flyers again,’ Billy said, opening his eyes at the very idea. ‘What’ll Ma say?’
But his brother ignored that. ‘This time,’ he promised, ‘Easter’s are going to be the first with the news, good or bad. I’ve ordered tea and breakfast.’ He fingered the thick stubble on his chin. ‘I must shave, then we’re off.
‘I’ve got enough to do without hiring flyers,’ Billy said. ‘I’ve got a warehouse to run, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘Come off it, Billy,’ John grinned. ‘You never go down to the warehouse until after breakfast. Sometimes not even then, if Miss Honeywood wants your company for a ride in the park.’
‘Which she very well might this morning, for all you know.’
‘Then you must send her a note pleading pressure of work.’
‘I can’t do that. She’d never forgive me. We’re getting along like a house a’ fire, I’d have you know.’
‘Then if that’s the case she’ll understand. If we can get the next piece of news out to the provincial towns before anyone else, we shall outsell all our rivals and establish a precedent. Don’t you see? It’s the chance of a lifetime.’
Billy groaned. ‘It beats me where you get your energy from,’ he said.
It beat John too when he thought about it. He’d been awake since six the previous morning and had slept very little the night before that, and yet he was charged with energy, fairly bristling with it.
Fatigue caught up with him later that afternoon, when his brother had sent a note to Matilda, after much sighing and protesting, and the necessary flyers had been found and hired and were pledged to be outside the Post Office at half past five the following morning, and he’d written detailed instructions ready to be attached to each and every ream of newspapers. He took a cab home to Bedford Square, aching with exhaustion, gave orders that, no matter what, he was to be woken at half past four the following morning, crept up the stairs like an old man and fell into bed more asleep than awake.
The next morning was rather a disappointment. The flyers were there and ready, the instructions were tied in position, but there was no further news of Napoleon, and no news from Vienna or Brussels either, so although he and Billy got all the Easter papers to Mr Chaplin’s coaches at dazzling speed, it was rather a wasted exercise. Billy said he might as well have stayed in bed as usual.
But on Tuesday there was a new dispatch, and The Times was held up for nearly an hour while it was printed. It came from France and was printed in full by The Times.
‘The unpleasant apprehensions which were pretty universally excited on Friday by the intelligence of Bonaparte’s landing in France, had begun to subside in the course of Saturday and Sunday, but the news of yesterday has revived the first impressions of alarm. It has been asserted on high authority that he entered Lyons on Saturday evening, and was there welcomed by the general populace, many of whom have joined his army, which is now said to number several thousands.’
‘He’ll have been welcomed elsewhere too by this time,’ John said sourly, watching the printers at work.
‘You may depend upon it,’ Mr Walter said, ‘or we should have heard otherwise.’
It was very bad news indeed, John thought, but it would certainly sell, if he could get it to the coaches in time. ‘I will take the first batch with me, now,’ he said, ‘and send for the rest later.’ If only he didn’t have to waste time with all that damned stamping.
It was a frantic morning. John worked harder than he’d ever done in his life, and usually on the run, collecting papers from the printers with the ink still wet and smudging and smearing under his fingers, supervising the stamping, which was abominably slow, loading the flyers in a half-light that showed only too clearly that dawn was under way and that the first of Mr Chaplin’s coaches would be leaving within minutes, and on one panicking occasion running the length of the Strand in search of another flyer because all the ones he’d hired were out on the roads and two more batches of papers were ready to dispatch. But by breakfast time the papers were gone, the coaches caught, the first dispatch completed.
‘We have made a start,’ he said, as he and Billy and the rest of their team sat down at last in Galloway’s Coffee House to eat a well-earned breakfast.
‘Never mind about a start,’ Billy said, laughing. ‘It’s damn nearly finished me. To say nothing of what it’s done to my courtship.’
‘It will be easier tomorrow,’ John said. And in the meantime he would keep his promise and write to Annie and tell her all about it.
He took time off that afternoon to write at length to Annie and to James, and when their letters were completed, he took up his pen again to write another even longer. And this one was to Miss Harriet Sowerby.
Back in Rattlesden Harriet had settled into the Hopkins’ household as easily as if she’d been designed for it. Little Jimmy had insisted on sitting beside her at the breakfast table that Sunday morning and talking to her all through the meal, and, what was more, he’d been allowed to do it, which was a great surprise to her because meals at home were always taken in complete silence.
Here at Rattlesden the breakfast table was a-babble with conversation.
‘Did you sleep warmly?’ Annie wanted to know. ‘This old place is a proper rabbit warren. The wind blows in through the walls quite terribly sometimes.’ But her tone was mild. She didn’t seem to be complaining about it.
Harriet assured them that she’d slept very well indeed and added that she thought the rectory was a beautiful house. ‘So old!’
‘It has stood here for three hundred years,’ the Reverend Hopkins told her, ‘but never so happily occupied as it is now, I think. Is that not so, my love?’
But at that point Mrs Chiddum, their cook, came bustling in with a dish of bread and milk for baby Beau, who was bouncing in his high chair with excitement at the smell of it. And that brought another amazing revelation.
‘If he don’t have his bread and milk first,’ Annie Hopkins confided, spooning the soggy mixture into her baby’s eager mouth, ‘he won’t eat a thing, will you my chicken? Not his nice coddled egg, nor his nice flaked fish, not a thing.’
And they see no sin in it, Harriet thought, looking from Annie’s smiling face to her husband’s approving one. They don’t force the child. They let him eat what he likes. And the baby crowed and held the spoon and called for more.
‘Will he eat his fish now?’ she asked, intrigued, when the little bowl was scraped clean.
‘Why bless us, of course he will,’ Annie said. ‘Won’t you, my lambkin?’
‘I eatin’ my fish,’ Jimmy said proudly, holding up his plate to show her the progress he was making.
‘And a fine good boy you’ll grow in consequence,’ his father told him. ‘I must walk across to church now, Annie my love, or I shall not be ready for the service.’
They are the gentlest, kindest people Harriet had ever met. She watched as the clergyman stooped to kiss his wife and little Jimmy and to submit, oh so patiently and lovingly, to having his face patted by Beau’s sticky hands.
And she was touched to feel that she was allowed to be one of them, as she and Annie and the two children stood beside the draughty window to watch him as he went stooping along the garden path towards the holm oak and the wicket gate that led to the churchyard. He was so gentle and so diffident, and such a contrast to the unforgiving asperity of her own father.
‘Oh! Oh!’ Annie said suddenly, putting her hand to her mouth. ‘He’s forgotten his muffler again, the dear man, and his chest is in no fit state to do without it. Look after the little ones, my dear. I shan’t be a minute.’
She was off out of the room in a second, her feet skimming across the uneven flagstones as though they were winged. There was no doubt of her affection or her concern. Harriet watched with a lump rising in her throat while her hostess ran down the garden path in the sunshine to catch her absent-minded husband in her arms and wind the muffler he’d forgotten about his neck and send him on his way to church with another kiss. To love so and be so loved, she thought. What a blissful thing it must be.
And, as she discovered later that morning, his church was just like he was, gentle and welcoming and unassuming. She sat between Annie and the nursemaid, Pollyanna, in the third box pew, at a respectful distance from the grand party from the Manor House, with Jimmy cuddled on her knee, and listened to the first Sunday service she’d ever heard outside her own fierce chapel, and was amazed at it.
For a start the Reverend Hopkins didn’t boom a text at his congregation, he read them a story, the tale of the Good Samaritan, and he read it simply and quietly, pausing from time to time to smile at his poor parishioners or to give them a chance to cough or to settle more comfortably in their wooden pews. And then he set his great Bible aside and began a most extraordinary sermon.
Harriet was used to sermons and she didn’t enjoy them, although of course she would never have admitted it, and especially not to her mother or the preacher who were the two people who lectured her most frequently. But she paid as little attention to them as she could, for they were always the same, telling her that she was a grievous sinner and would be punished for her sins with torture and hellfire as sure as night followed day. And even if she didn’t believe them it was upsetting to hear such things.
But the Reverend Hopkins was a preacher of quite another persuasion. He talked to his congregation, and the God he spoke about was a gentle deity, a God who forgave sins and answered honest prayers, just as He’d answered hers in the King’s Bath, a God who actually seemed to want his creation to be kind to one another.
Jimmy was sucking his thumb, lulled by his father’s voice and baby Beau was asleep in his mother’s arms. It is all so simple and easy and loving here, Harriet thought, looking at the communion table with its plain green cloth and the wooden crucifix set so simply upon it, flanked by its two glowing candles. You sleep when you are tired and you wake with the daylight, you feed your babies with the food they like to eat, you welcome strangers into your home when they have nowhere else to go, and you do not preach. For this man wasn’t telling anybody what to do, he was simply talking about the need for ‘mutual help and comfort’ and the unsought rewards of kindness.
She looked up at the three bright rows of assembled saints, glowing red and blue and purple and gold in the great east window beyond the communion table, and saw that in the space above them a figure of Christ was depicted in solitary glory, His hands upraised in blessing. And the face of the Christ made her heart leap in her chest. It was such a tender face, such a sad, tolerant, compassionate, understanding face. And she wondered whether she and her parents had been worshipping a different God all these years, and felt that it was very likely, and knew, beyond any doubt, that if she were given a choice it would be this living Christ she would prefer to follow.
The next two days passed in the same quiet mood of contentment. She helped to feed the boys, and took them for walks about the village and was allowed to tuck them into bed at night, and in the afternoons she helped Annie with her sewing until dinner, and when the meal was done and the candles were lit, she and Annie and her ‘dear James’ played cards beside the fire. It was a blessed existence, and when Mrs Easter’s pony-cart arrived to fetch her on Wednesday morning she couldn’t hide her disappointment that her visit was over.
‘You must come again, my dear,’ Annie said, kissing her goodbye most lovingly. ‘Drive her carefully, young Tom.’
Young Tom was recognizably Mr Thistlethwaite’s son. He had the same untidy hair and the same brown eyes and the same wide mouth. But he wasn’t as quick-witted as his father. ‘Lawks-a-mercy,’ he said. ‘I got letters for to give to ’ee an’ I clean forgot all about ’em.’ He was fishing three letters out of his trouser pocket, bending them considerably in the process. ‘Come by the night mail, Mrs ’Opkins, mum,’ he said, handing them across. ‘Pa said to deliver ’em.’
‘One for each of us, my dear,’ Annie said, putting Harriet’s into her lap. ‘Dear John. He kept his word, you see. Now promise me that you will come again.’
‘I will. I will. Indeed I will,’ Harriet said, breathless with surprise and pleasure. To think that he had written to her too!
But she waited until the pony-cart was out in the lane and had ambled downhill through the village before she opened her letter. She needed to be as private as possible before she read what he had to say to her.
It was a polite letter and very formal, hoping that she had taken no harm from her long journey and that her stay at Rattlesden would prove happy and comfortable. He was sorry, he said, that he had not been able to stay at Rattlesden himself, howsomever it was just as well that he returned to London when he did, for the news from France was very grave.
Then he spent two paragraphs telling her all about it, but assuring her that Wellington would soon defeat the upstart and that she was not to worry that the French would be lurking in dark corners again to afright her. ‘I do not forget what you told me at the Victory Ball, you see.’
Then, at the very foot of the page, he wrote something that brought a blush to her cheeks even in the cold air blowing past her on that early morning ride.
‘I trust I may take an opportunity to call upon you, when I return to Bury, and that I may consider myself your respectful friend, John Henry Easter.’
She read it through three times before she could convince herself that she wasn’t imagining it. Then she folded the letter carefully and, after a moment’s hesitation, tucked it inside the bodice of her gown. If she put it in her carpetbag, her mother would see it and insist on reading it, and for the first time in her life she had a secret she wanted to hide. A secret she had every right to hide, for Mr Easter had written to her, not to her mother. The paper scratched her skin, as prickly as a conscience. But it was her letter and hers it would remain.
Back in Churchgate Street her mother had been home for nearly half an hour and was already furiously at work with broom and duster.
‘Mercy on us!’ she said crossly when Harriet knocked at the door. ‘What brings you back so soon?’
‘Miss Pettie took a faint in the baths, Mama,’ Harriet said, ‘and wanted to come home.’
Mrs Sowerby was instantly and happily scathing. ‘So you made a poor job of it, after all,’ she sneered. ‘I can’t say I’m surprised. I never imagined you would be the slightest use to the poor lady. What must she be thinking of us now!’
‘She said she was uncommon glad of my company,’ Harriet said, defending herself. ‘She called me a kindly nurse.’ The remembered compliment was warming even in the chill of her mother’s parlour.
Mrs Sowerby put aside her broom and turned to direct the full force of her disapproval upon her daughter. ‘Hoity-toity!’ she said. ‘More to the point, what were you doing, pray, to allow her to be taken ill in the first place? Tell me that!’
‘Nothing, Mama. Truly,’ Harriet stammered, thrown into confusion by the vehemence of the attack.
‘Come now,’ her mother said implacably. ‘Do not lie to me, miss, for I know when you lie. You were careless were you not? You have a careless disposition. I have often had cause to chastise you for it. Admit!’ And she glanced at the chastening rod hanging beside the unlit fire.
‘No, no indeed, Mama,’ Harriet said, fear fluttering in her chest. ‘I did my very best endeavour, truly. I do not believe I was careless. It was not my intention.’
‘Then how did Miss Pettie come to take a faint? Answer me that.’
‘’Twas the heat of the bath, Mama. Mr Easter said so.’
‘Mr Easter?’ her mother said, quite stopped in her tracks by the mention of the name. ‘Mr Easter the newsagent?’ But he was the wealthiest young man in town. ‘So you’re on speaking terms with the Easters now, is that it?’ She was confused by this information, torn between pride in the acquaintance, and aggravation that her daughter should have been given importance by it.
‘We met at the Victory Ball, Mama,’ Harriet explained, keeping her face very still and as expressionless as she could. ‘He chanced to be in Bath. Miss Pettie said his presence was the greatest good fortune.’
‘Aye, so it may have been. For her,’ Mrs Sowerby said grimly. ‘For a young girl with absolutely no prospects, absolutely no prospects, mark me, ’tis quite another matter, let me tell ’ee. I suppose he paid you pretty compliments to turn your silly head.’
‘No indeed, Mama. He joined us so as to care for Miss Pettie.’
‘Joined you?’ Mrs Sowerby asked, and her tone was horrible.
‘He escorted us home, Mama,’ Harriet faltered, feeling impelled to explain.
‘Ho, did he?’ her mother said, rigid with righteous indignation. ‘Well of course he did, you silly girl. We all know about rich young men like him. That’s just the sort of thing he would do. You keep well out of his way, my girl. Men like Mr Easter are dangerous, let me tell ’ee. They ruin poor girls. Ruin them as soon as look at ’em. It is always the way. Have nothing more to do with him, do you hear?’
It was horribly unfair. ‘He was uncommon kind to – to Miss Pettie,’ Harriet said, defending him, but as meekly as she could. This was too cruel. Was she really not to see him again?
Her mother raised her voice and her eyebrows immediately. ‘Do you argue with me, child? Do you pretend to know better than your own mother?’
Harriet retreated at once. ‘No, no Mama,’ she said. ‘Of course not.’ Cruel or not her mother had to be obeyed.
‘And so I should think,’ Mrs Sowerby said, mollified by the ease and speed of her victory. ‘Then you will do as you are told, will you not?’
‘Yes, Mama.’ What else could she say? Perhaps she could find a way round it?
‘Very well,’ Mrs Sowerby said, using her broom again with renewed vigour. ‘Let us return to our duties and hear no more about it. You are back now so you’d best get to work. There’s a fire needs lighting and then you can scour that doorstep. I’ve never seen it in such a filthy state. From the look of it, half the world has been treading upon it during these last few days. I turn my back for five minutes and this is what I get, you see. I’m sure I never trod on anybody else’s doorstep in all my born days. Oh there’s no justice in the world. Well, don’t just stand there. What are you waiting for?’
As Harriet went wearily off to fetch the bucket and rake out the fire, Mr Easter’s letter shifted and scratched inside her bodice. And for a fleeting second, she was comforted because she had such a secret.
Mr Easter himself was as hard at work as she was. Early on Thursday morning news came through from France that the French army had deserted their new King Louis XVIII en masse and gone over to their old emperor. This time The Times printed twice its usual number of papers and John used twice his usual number of fourpenny flyers, and the energy expended at the Post Office that morning was enough, according to Billy, ‘to haul a thousand coaches’.
‘Mama will be home tomorrow,’ he said. ‘She’ll be surprised at all this. I can’t imagine what she’ll say.’
But John didn’t care what she said. He already knew that he had made his point. He’d had two letters that very morning from his shopkeepers in Ipswich and Reading. Their sales had nearly doubled, they said, ‘thanks to the prompt arrival of the papers, some hours ahead of all other shops in the area’. Now they were suggesting that their daily orders should be doubled to keep pace, ‘whilst the bad news lasts’.
‘What d’you think she’ll say when she knows what you’ve been doing?’ Billy insisted.
But she knew already.