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budget, or how to feed workhands on a busy farm; single girls with no idea how to manage a kitchen; two older women who planned to set up a boarding house of their own … Nellie gave everyone attention as she tried to demonstrate how to use the new stove correctly to cook and bake a wide variety of meals.
    The classes filled up quickly. Sometimes when she saw hungry faces she ensured that at the end of class they got to take home any leftover food and ingredients to their families.
    She enjoyed the freedom of the countryside, as well as earning a wage and being self-sufficient. At times her accommodation was rough and not very comfortable, but most of the people she stayed with tried their best to provide her with a fairly clean room of her own and shared their simple meals with her. The countryside may be lush and green, the fields full of crops and animals grazing, but many people she met were poor, barely eking out a living from the soil and land they tended, often living on smallholdings and unable to support their large families, their children forced either to work in the cities or take the boat to Liverpool and London.
    She always appreciated returning home to Temple Villas to her family, friends and comforts, but Nellie had to admit she welcomed getting back to the freedom of rural life and her independence.

Chapter 9
Grace
    GRACE GIFFORD GAZED surreptitiously at her fellow passengers on the tram, trying to gauge if any of them were new students like she was, bound for Dublin’s Metropolitan School of Art. She should have been returning to school in September like the rest of the girls in her class at Alexandra College, but she had somehow managed to persuade Mother and Father to let her continue her studies at the famous art school instead. She had no interest in studying maths or Latin or geography but just wanted to spend all her time painting, drawing and sketching, and now she had the opportunity to do just that.
    Gabriel and Ada had both studied art at the college and Mother always boasted to them of how she had met Father at the evening art classes there. Now it was Grace’s turn.
    She tried to hide her nervousness as she entered the art school building on Kildare Street. In an effort to make herself appear older than sixteen, she had pinned up her long, golden-red hair neatly and wore a dark-green skirt, white blouse and her fitted navy jacket, borrowing a brown leather satchel of Ada’s to hold her pencils and pads. She joined the crowd of students pushing and shoving in the hall as they checked the large noticeboard with the college’s enrolment list, searching for her own name among the Gs.
    A girl from the tram was standing beside her, looking down the columns of names.
    â€˜Gray,’ she said aloud, searching, her long, thin finger running down the sheet. ‘There I am!’ she added triumphantly.
    She blushed suddenly, aware of Grace’s gaze. ‘I’m Hilda Gray,’ she introduced herself.
    Falling into step, Grace and Hilda made their way up flight after flight of stairs. On the second floor there was a large lecture hall and they slid into seats beside each other, chatting as the room filled up. A striking girl called Florence flopped down beside them.
    Richard Henry Willis, who had only recently been appointed head of the School of Art, stood in front of them. A well-respected artist, with a long beard and kind eyes, he made it clear that his tenure would bring some changes to the school.
    â€˜We may be part of the great British tradition of art schools, but to my mind there is no denying the influence of our Gaelic and Celtic heritage, an influence that I hope will now be encouraged and fostered here in the Metropolitan School of Art. We want all our students to develop expertise and knowledge in an area of art which satisfies them creatively and also to gain the technical skills that form the basis of any good working art discipline.’
    Grace paid full