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a real home bird—and I don’t mind telling you that I believe in putting myself out to keep things cosy for him, just like when we was first married.’
    ‘Oh, I’m sure you do!’
    ‘Yes, but that’s not what I wanted to tell you about, Miss Hewitt, and you must be thinking me just a gossiping old woman wasting your time. Maybe you’ll laugh when you hear what I do want to say, but, though Elvira and me have been poorly all this long voyage almost, we still have eyes in our heads. Now I know that your fine relations will do all they can for you, Miss Hewitt, but Elvira and me has talked about things and come to a certain conclusion. We see that you are a young, single lady come to a strange and often cruel land. You have no way of knowing how things will turn out for you while you are here. Of course you have no intention of separating from your relatives, we know, and we hope they are as kind to you as you deserve, which no doubt they are, but there’s all kinds of sicknesses and misadventures out here, Miss Hewitt, which you wouldn’t hardly credit. Why, I’ve known as many fine young men and women cut off in the flower of their days as would fill a fat book. God forbid that this should happen to any of you, but it might, Miss Hewitt, it might. And this isn’t a country in which any young lady should be left alone, which is why Elvira and me want you to know that you can count on us, and the Major of course, for any sort of help you might ever need. Any sort of help!’
    Here Mrs Wilkins heaved herself forward, and seized my hand.
    ‘You are a real Christian young woman, Miss Hewitt, and just between the three of us, Elvira and me doesn’t think a great deal of that hoity-toity young cousin of yours, who uses you like a lady’s maid and orders you about just because she has a husband, and money too, no doubt, and you haven’t! Yes, of course you must deny it, dearie, and that’s only proper seeing as how she is your cousin, but I can see otherwise. Now I’m not saying anything, mind, not suggesting nothing, but if it so happened that some time you wanted to go home without her, maybe, or she fell ill and died say, and you couldn’t properly stay alone with the young gentleman, or if anything happened to make you need more money than you had, well then I want you to remember Gwendoline Wilkins.’
    Embarrassment and chagrin fought for precedence in my mind as Mrs Wilkins’s pudgy moist hand clasped mine tenderly, and her boot-button eyes regarded me earnestly from under the fringe of orange curls. I had thought all my secrets so safely kept, and yet somehow this coarse, kind and acute woman had discovered them. A change had indeed taken place in Emily since her marriage; I had observed it with some surprise at first—are we not all surprised to see the people we love grow up and grow away from us? Emily had always been petted and spoiled and I had never thought twice of her habit of ‘ordering me around’, as Mrs Wilkins had put it. In the early days at Mount Bellew I had complied with her petty dictations as the rest of the family had, and now it was habit. Less easy to forgive were the condescending airs she had assumed towards me since becoming a wife, her sometimes deliberate lack of consideration when requiring some service from me, and a tone of voice nicely blended to convey contempt and irritation. I had put it down to the headiness of her new state in life, not wishing to think her capable of considering me inferior because I was dependent, but during the voyage it had become increasingly clear that, whatever my status might have been when I left home, my position in my cousin’s household was likely to become that of a superior domestic rather than a favoured friend. If I allowed it to! There had been times when I was genuinely hurt by her attitude; when I wished I had not allowed myself to be overruled by my relatives, and that I had persevered in my intention of obtaining a post as