LSummer 1789, follows S1E8

"What's in yours?"

Jago Martin sat on the grass beside Jemima, pointing his own "piece", meat wrapped in pastry towards Jemima's own.

"Lamb," she told him, "And potatoes, carrots. Mrs. Vaughn makes them well. I like the pastry, when I am not in the mine.". Because of the tin, Jemima knew. Ross Poldark felt the need to have to explain this to her as well, however.

There were a lot of things, even self evident things, or ones that could be expected to be known if your employ was inside a metals mine. But Poldark would still take the trouble to tell her that the steps and railings would be damp, or the air might be thin in the 30th level.

"I was right glad to be through the blackstone," Jago went on, stretching out his legs. His hair was dusty from the work. No doubt he would swim in the sea with the others that evening, light and warm as the summer was. "I thought I would be on me stomach down there if the channel got and narrower."

"You got it, and put the charge in. Just gotta get round to the other side and have it lit," Ted Carkeek, on the other side of Jemima leaned past her and addressed Jago. He too was covered in a fine black dust, so Jemima guessed she must, too.

Both youths had been beside her when she had had permission from Poldark to continue south - towards Grace, and they had been on it for nearly two weeks. Jago was laid back, economical of word, like his father.

By contrast, Ted was highly focused on his task, and would talk about what they were doing, or hum, or whistle. They both were happy to take instruction from Jemima with no complaint. A good team

Today, a small charge was going in, to see if they could get past the blackstone again and see if copper was behind it like the last time - Jago took it, hence the crawling. Jemima had a small bag of rocks to analyse, some of it containing small green-blue regions. A breath of copper.

They were up for lunch now, and a refreshing moment in the happy, bright sunshine, the first proper sunny day after Easter, and all life was well in its ascendancy - birds were singing, the rustle of grass told of rabbits. The plants were already blossoming and the sun was holding higher in the sky. How Jemima loved days like this.

There had been progress in March, and Poldark had consented to Jemima continuing south west, because of the success they had already had with copper.

And life was pleasant. Her father was getting more and more patients, and was enjoying tending them, as he tended the plants in the garden of his house. Jemima was still occupying the back washroom, and her experiments were yielding a dull grey metal, the like of which she had never seen.

Humphry had been at school, and Jemima had decided that when it was Whitsun, she would show him what she had discovered and hear his views.

And here, her team were working well, were listening when she tried again and again with samples, collecting evidence as to whether copper would be found where she believed it would be.

But there was a growing problem, which John Withering was wont to tell Jemima - an increase in a bacterial throat infection, cases of which he had attended several times.

There was that, and Jemima's suspicion as to what he was going to do about that, and another disappointment: William Henshawe had withdrawn from her and had taken to addressing her only when he needed to.

Like this morning, a cursory, "Good morning" when before they would exchange words about the day and the work.

So Jemima focused on her own objective, putting behind her the mine captain, married and older than her, out of her mind, and was about to follow Ted back down the mine to continue going from Leisure to Grace when Poldark called her to the office hut.

"Continue with planting the charges, Ted," she told him, bending close to his ear.

"Very good, Miss," he replied, nodding, and Jemima watched two spots of light get smaller and smaller as both men descended the ladder into the gloom.

"Trevorgie mine was abandoned when the owner ran out of money," Poldark told her, when they got to the mine office. Beside him, Enys, who was looking at the papers on the table. Jemima's heart sank.

It wasn't that she didn't like Dwight Enys, but that since the way he had carried out the lung investigation she didn't respect him. He spoke to her as if she had no medical knowledge and always seemed taken aback when she questioned or sought clarification over things, like treatment length or efficacy.

Her father had encouraged to ask questions, question him over things he did, and Jemima could not understand that another of his profession would shirk at such an approach - she was enquiring, not testing him.

She had confided in her father, who has told Jemima to have Enys refer to him - Poldark had agreed, and since then Enys had thankfully kept his distance.

Why was he here now? Coincidence? She nodded to him for a moment out of politeness and then returned her attention to Poldark.

"Trevorgie?". That was back towards the north west, where her original copper was found.

"What do you think?". Poldark asked, a hand drawn map on the desk. Jemima glanced at it. Trevorgie, Leisure and Grace were clearly marked, as were the lower adits at the thirty level. Her heart sank.

"I think," Jemima told him, carefully, "If there is copper south west, there will be copper south towards Grace, but less towards Trevorgie. And it will be at the fortieth, just as it was when it was first found here behind the blackstone.".

She saw the infinitesimally small glance between the men before Dr. Enys straightened up.

"Tell me, Miss Withering," Enys asked. "How do you know this?"

Jemima flinched. They wouldn't question her if she were a man, Enys, who hated her questions so.

She squashed down the flame in her stomach and pictures the lode, almost as black as the level itself, a face of an almost impenetrable wall, a sheen, differentiating it as the candlelight caught the crystal structure. It would be there, in line with the copper lodge from before.

…because…how did she know this? It wasn't an instinct as such, but -

Jemima turned to look at Poldark. "In coal mines, the levels are - "

"We are not dealing with coal here, Miss Withering. I do appreciate your contribution."

"But - "

It would be there, in the direction of Grace! How could he not perceive that?

And Jemima made up her mind to meet Mr. Trevithick just as soon as she could. Jemima put her hand in her pocket.

"Ted Carkeek blasted the top quarter wall and reached these," she told him. Poldark glanced to Jemima and then held out his hand. Into it, she tipped the six pieces of, potentially, copper ore. They were green enough at any rate.

Jemima watched as Poldark raised his eyebrows, and then bent, allowing them to pour gently onto the map, turning them over and over.

"Where - " he began, and Jemima took a step over to the table, and moved them into the place on the map where they had been found. Due south, in the direction of Wheal Grace.

"Your father has been to see me, and we are to lose you, it seems," Poldark continued, glancing away from the rocks.

"Lose me?"

"Until you return from Shropshire?"

Jemima's mind raced. Oh, yes, alright, her mind told her. Dr. Withering must have spoken to him about the plans he was devising, to stay with the Wedgwoods until the threat of the diphtheria had passed. It was true the mine was an enclosed environment, and the disease was a horrible one.

"Indeed," Jemima replied. So that was that, then. But at least she could secure work with Mr. Wild if he still wanted it, at one of the Ting Tong mines - Wheal Boys sounded the most promising, Jemima had thought, after her first meeting with William Wild, for he had explained that a good deal of both copper and tin had already been discovered, and that particular mine was heading north east, and deep, under the sea, a challenge that appealed to her.

"And when you return," Poldark told him, "You may carry on with the Grace idea. And I hope to have funded it with the untapped Trevorgie lode that we know was left behind."

"Yes, sir," Jemima smiled. It was something. And she made sure when she left that night she said goodbye to everyone, including Henshawe, who nodded and wished her well before striding away from the mine.

Put it out of your mind, Jemima told herself. You were attracted to him; the feeling will fade.

And before the coach came the next morning, Jemima went west from Camborne to Hayle.

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Mr. William Wild was a man short in stature but big of spirit, and even bigger of brains. When Jemima knocked on the door, he welcomed her like a long lost member of his family, asking her of news of Wheal Leisure and of her father, and whether it would be now she would be wanting employment.

"Corse I have got a lot'a potential in Boys," he told her, clapping Jemima on the back. "Do you know, it is so very deep. But, of course, we have the Trevithicks, and the water just flies away!"

Jemima knew what he meant, of course - Mr. Richard Trevithick senior, was the mine captain at the mines and his son, also called Richard, had built a pumping engine of his own design, having taken apart an existing one and adapted it for Providence East, poorly named as it extended north.

She looked over the levers and pistons as it worked, both Wild and Trevithick senior talking over it.

"I was at Darby's, at Coalbrookdale," Jemima told them. "I learned to take one apart and put it back together. We, that is, Murdoch and I, he showed me how to mend a broken one towards Madeley, and I completed the job."

"You?" Trevithick senior asked, laughter in his voice. "You be but a little maid!"

"Do I look like a maid?" Jemima asked him, standing as she was in her trousers and shirt, hair plaited and pinned up. "Do you have one that I could show you?"

"By all means!" replied Wild, heartily, and he took them both to where a younger man, who looked exactly like Trevithick. They had crossed between one building to one in which another machine was set, this time under the level of the ground, its beam rods connecting one end to another sticking out of the ground like the knees of a grasshopper.

"This gel wants to show us how the engine works!" William Wild enthused, and turned to look at Jemima.

"Of course, this is our deepest - Dolcoath," Wild went on. The young man turned to look at Jemima, and nodded. Jemima nodded back. He was tall, taller even than her father, with dark hair like her own, and sun-brown skin, his features were heavy, but they suited his frame - a big man for the big engine he had built. And young. He could only be a few years older than Jemima.

"Ah, of course, you are the young lady who is the mine engineer over at Wheal Leisure?" His voice was light, which was unexpected, and he had the voice of someone who had grown up in that part of Cornwall, as if his jaw had seized up after a storm.

"One of them," Jemima replied, smiling. "My father is Sir Francis Bassett's physician. He advised my father to meet Mr. Wild, which I did," she added, as the young man looked back up at her, his mouth fixed in half a smile, and shielding the sun from his eyes.

"This gel says she can fix your engine, can you set her a test, Dick?"

Dick Trevithick did not move for a moment, but then he trod up a few of the steps of the ladder that would take him up to ground level.

"She won't be able to make it work; neither Bull or myself can make it work," he added. "But she can put together the crank."

Jemima looked. At one end was a cog that attached a piece of metal that was attached to a beam overhead. When one end moved it moved the other, and the arm went up and down, operating the pump.

Of course, it wasn't quite right, but she could rebuild the crank arm - it was almost exactly the same as a Watt engine, which was, of course, almost exactly the same as a Newcomen.

"You're trying to rebuild it upside down?" Jemima asked, going down the ladder next to Trevithick. He held out a hand as she went past, had Jemima took it, letting go when she got to the bottom. Dick Trevithick watched her intently.

"You haven't got the end of the crank on right," Jemima told Trevithick Junior, pointing up to the nuts that held on the arm. "You've got…the plate upside down, and the top part of your crank back to front."

"But how did you - " Trevithick interrupted. Jemima turned to look at him.

"I've been around machinery all my life, sir," she told him and, in the moment of silence just afterwards, seized a spanner from the bench beside the engine.

"I can," he told her. Jemima turned, and his eyes met hers. Brown, like his father's, Jemima noticed. She handed the spanner to Dick Trevithick, who picked it up as if it were a feather.

"Let me make this clear, I can do this. But, if you would, Mr. Trevithick, just as I asked.". Jemima took a few steps back and watched Trevithick make the alteration.

Behind her, at ground level, Trevithick senior and William Wild looked on, a slow smile forming on the lips of the latter as Dick Trevithick reassembled the engine.

"Bank the coal, boy!" Wild declared, taking a swift look at Jemima. I want to see if she goes!"

And she did. Not immediately, and there were a few shudders as the pressure in the boiler below the beam began to build pressure.

Then, without warning, a "whoosh" of steam came through the valve and the beam arm shuddered. Then stopped.

Everything stopped: the birds, singing; the tiny chittering of high sumner bugs. Even the minerals themselves ceased their crackle of formation.

Jemima watched. Another whoosh, and the beam moved again, but this time, completed its movement, pulling up the arm that was down in the shaft.

It was Trevithick junior who began to laugh, and then laugh again, before Jemima beaned back at Wild.

"I did say I could," she told him, and the man reached out a hand to help her up the steps. Jemima took it again, ignoring the fact that she climbed longer and narrower ladders than those there in Wheal Leisure's levels. She stood before Wild again, who gave Trevithick senior a glance.

"When can you start, Miss Withering? We would have you today!" Wild glanced to his mine captain and put a hand on his arm.

"Nay, the lass is going home, her father sends her, 'gainst the putrid throat. There be much less of it there."

"Very wise," Trevithick senior told them. "But you should come to us immediately when you return home. We will pay you more than you are getting at Leisure. Come, let me show you the Watt engine again. Your father tells us you know James Watt?"

They walked across to the engine housing, Dick Trevithick walking next to them.

"Oh yes," Jemima told them. "My father and a lot of engineers and manufacturers met most months to discuss matters. Mr. Watt allowed me to go to the Madeley engine with Murdoch and his son when I was eight. He said to me, "Lass, look at it properly."

"Indeed?" Wild asked her, smiling. "Then you should met Bull - he worked in Warwick - is that near to Shropshire?"

"As Devon is to Cornwall," Jemima replied. She glanced across to Dick Trevithick and then up at the engine. Apart from its dimension, which was slightly smaller than the one at Coalbrookdale, it was identical. So whatever Trevithick Junior and Mr. Bull were doing, it shouldn't take much to work out how to make it pump with a new configuration - it was just levers and pistons.

"Well let's hope there is less enmity between us and the Devoners," Wild told her. Does a river divide those two counties?"

"A coal seams does," Jemima glanced towards the Dolcoath engine, when Dick Trevithick, who had been silent, suddenly turned his head.

"Here's Bull now, father," he told Richard Trevithick senior.

"Ah, Bull," William Wild continued, glancing at the man, much lither and not quite as tall as Dick Trevithick, but with similar tanned skin and black hair. "Ah, Mr. Bull, I am glad you are here. Meet Miss Withering, she is considering a job with us."

"Indeed?". The man narrowed his eyes and peered at her, and similarly, Jemima analysed Edward Bull's face.

"Do I know you, sir?" Jemima asked. "Were you there at Mr. Abraham Darby's opening of the New Pit? Near Shrewsbury?"

Bull didn't answer immediately, even though four pairs of eyes were on him. But then eventually he smiled.

"I was indeed, ma'am, but that must have been…at least, seven…eight years ago?"

"Then you must know my father, John Withering? And my uncle, William Withering?"

"The man who did something clever with foxgloves?" Bull qualified. "But yes, of course I - ". He broke off and narrowed his eyes again. "Surely…you're not…little Jemmy?" Little Jemmy bowed her head.

"But you were - seven or eight years old - oh my word, you were precocious, telling Mr. Darby what you thought of his iron!"

"He did ask me. And I did say. It was a good start but could be better. I'd like to know how," she added, "I think his furnaces needs to be hotter. And even driving off the damp, and turning the coal to coke, I don't think it's enough to make thicker steel, one that could be used for longer bridges, or some sort of steam carriage like - "

" - like Murdoch made!" Edward Bull finished, delight in his voice.

"You have mentioned a Murdoch before," Wild turned to Jemima.

"Murdoch?" Bull echoed, "William Murdoch?" Jemima nodded.

"Well bless me! "The very same!". Bull concluded.

"Yes," Jemima nodded. "I know him well, or I knew him, at home."

"From Scotland," Bull went on, in his genial, happy manner. "Walked all the way to Birmingham for a job with Watt on recommendation of a mutual friend, Boswell. Dedication, what do you think?". He beamed at them all. " Of course, you know Murdoch, sir?".

When Richard Trevithick looked blank, Dick Trevithick put in, "So we do, father, he was our neighbour for a time when all the mines were installing Boulton and Watt engines."

He glanced over to the Dolcoath engine and Jemima sensed a disappointment in him.

"But ours…don't work."

"Yet!" Bull declared, mightily. "She will work soon, of that I am convinced."

"Especially with you beside us," Dick Trevithick finished. "That is - "

"That is, you are welcome, Miss Withering, daughter of our people.". Wild grinned again and clapped her on the shoulder.

"Cornish people?" That is, she was Cornish-born, but Jemima really didn't think of herself as anything other than of the Midlands of England, as the daughter of John Withering.

"Engineers!". Wild laughed again and nodded to Trevithick. "Until you return, Miss Withering?"

"Yes, sir," Jemima replied, then watched the mine owner and his mine captain leave, in the direction of Good Fortune, beyond Whelan Boys, to the west.

"Do say will you come, Miss Withering," enthused Edward Bull. Dick Trevithick rested his big, wide eyes onto her face.

A shard of guilt entered Jemima's stomach. Here, she would be listened to, welcomed, with her people, as Wild had said, engineers. And they would value her knowledge of mining and metals.

Yet…

Yet there was copper to be found, copper which was where she had said it was, Jemima knew. She could sense she was right. But Poldark wanted proof. But...even with proof he had shown he wouldn't always listen to reason.

"When I return I can say for sure, Mr Bull.". She smiled at him and nodded, and he bowed his head. "Mr Trevithick," she nodded.

"Miss Withering."

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Jemima walked across the dry grass that covered the hillside, on her way from Hayle to the where the coach could take her to Bristol for the night. Underfoot was feeling warmth and she paused, looking for the London road: a coach from Penzance would travel up it and she would need to wait beside the collection point.

As she walked Jemima thought of what she had written in the letters to both Davies and Humphry, both now in Bristol, Davies with his law practice and Humphry working in Thomas Beddoes' Institute, thßat she was leaving to go home, to protect her health, but that she would be back, and wanted to know everything each one was doing, and she too would write to them.

What had she got in Shropshire that her two friends both didn't have in Cornwall? Limestone fossils from Stourbridge, Wellington, Dudley - the navigationals were always digging those up. Something from Dr. Darwin? Jemima could pay.

There was the road, the afternoon sun was making its rough surface stand out against the green of the grass.

A noise behind her of the cracking of a stick made her start. Jemima turned and, to her surprise, it was Dick Trevithick. For a big man he ran fast.

Jemima stopped and waited for him to catch up with her.

"Can…can I see you again Miss Withering? Regarding the engine?"

Jemima said nothing for a moment, and then smiled at the young man, whose face was dearly hoping for an answer in the positive.

"Yes, certainly, when I come back, I'll come and work with you on the engine."

It was out before Jemima had a chance for her mind to catch up with it. Mrs Wedgwood had written that she could stay, and if her father was worried about the diphtheria then Jemima had resolved to take her leaving seriously.

"I will be back in the summer, when the diseases are less."

"And - ". Trevithick broke off. "To work with Watt…Boulton…". He clearly held the Midlands engineers in high esteem. But Jemima had grown up in the company of these people, and she respected them rather than being dazzled by them.

"Yes," she nodded. "My father's friends.". And she resolved to add this silent giant of a young man to her list of correspondents, if she had decided she was going to be working with them.

"Goodbye then," Trevithick said to her, and turned, striding over the undulating ground in the direction of Hayle. Jemima watched him go.

"...and I have met a very interesting young man, who works for Mr. Wild at one of the Ting Tong mines…"

Jemima added these lines to her letters to Davies and Giddy. She would post them in Bristol, which grieved her a little that she couldn't stop to see them.

But she has promised her father. And besides, they would be in Cornwall in the summer, and she would have learned a lot of new things of which they could discuss: being with the Lunar Men, Jemima wouldn't be able to avoid it.

And to a different workplace?

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"You'll come? It'll be outside - your father wouldn't object to that?"

Dear Thomas, Jemima thought, the Wedgwoods' youngest son, who reminded her of Humphry.

They had been invited to a summer party down at Banbury with relatives of his mother, who knew the Earl Gower, owner of the Trentham estate, a huge stately home beside the river.

Granville Levenson-Gower had recently had the house rebuilt in the style of Buckingham House in London and Capability Brown had re-landscaped his parkland. Much was though of Trentham and its owner and to be invited was an honour indeed.

"As long as your mother says I can," Jemima told him, which she hoped she would not. She had brought no suitable wear with her, not that she owned much in the first place.

But Mrs. Wedgwood told Jemima that she wouldn't hear of her being left behind and told her elder daughter Susannah to bring something for Jemima to wear.

Which is why Jemima Withering put on a pale blue silk gown which fitted no-one else, had had her hair curled and was sitting in a carriage for the short ride from Burslem to Trentham with Mrs Wedgwood, the two daughters, with Thomas opposite.

Thomas was playing the "fingers" game with Jemima that they had devised on long nights as their parents talked in one anothers' dining rooms - it was a kind of commentary signal code that told if you liked the conversation, or you didn't, or you thought the speaker intelligent or foolish. Right now, as Mrs. Wedgwood spoke about what "fashionable ladies would be wearing in London, Thomas had crossed his index finger over the other and curled it around, making Jemima want to laugh: it was the sign for "boring".

But he was giving the sign for "interesting" when Jemima fell into conversation with a man who was known to Mr. Wedgwoods, and said that he knew someone who knew about coal.

"Why thank you, Mr. Brindley. Do you have an address where I might write to this Mr. Smith?"

"James, please!" he exclaimed, and Jemima thought afterwards how much he didn't resemble the image of the James Brindley, canal pioneer, that she had had in her mind. Another Midlands engineer, in whose company she was eminently comfortable.

"There is no need to write to Mr. Smith, he is lodging with me and is here this evening - William!" Brindley called, energetically.

A man turned, drink in hand, at the entrance to the door that led out to the lake of the Trentham estate. Brindley raised his own glass and beckoned him over.

"Miss Withering here has a keenness for coal mines. Do tell her what you have devised!"

The man seemed reluctant at first, and Jemima told him of her time in the bell pit mines belonging to the Marquis of Anglesey at Cannock and the layered mines belonging to the Earl of Dudley at Wolverhampton.

At this, the young man brightened and the conversation warmed. Soon, it became a bright and lively as William Smith told Jemima Withering of his theory of stratification.

She told him of the samples of copper ore and told him her similar thoughts.

"It's obvious to me that there are layers in these copper deposits, and the deposits of ironstone and this blackstone, I can see it, I have been in many a mine.

"In a mine?"

"I have worked as mine surveyor for nearly three years.". At this, Smith stopped and took a step back, looking at her up and down.

"I was sent up-country to avoid an outbreak of diptheria. I am living at the Wedgwoods'. But yes.".

And she pulled out of her dress pocket the fossils from Dudley mine, which she offered to the young man. He held them carefully in his hand then pulled out a small glass lens, moving his hand so they tilted in the evening sunlight.

"...limestone, yes, yes…and a type of bivalve…?"

"So Dr. Darwin believes," Jemima confirmed. The Darwins had visited the Wedgwoods a month before and she had had a long discussion with the doctor about the ancient creatures within them.

"They were fifty fathoms down, rather deep. But an adit in the direction of Kingswinford meant that we could get to the same rock from the ground. I did wonder how these got here."

"Animals have died," Smith said, vaguely.

"Yes," agreed Jemima. "But…these are from coral sea beds. I have bought these - " and Jemima showed him fossils she had been given by Erasmus Darwin, "Which came from south sea islands, traded as money is traded."

"A similar animal?" Smith wondered.

"What do you think, Thomas?" Jemima asked, noticing him standing a little further off. William Smith glanced up and nodded to Wedgwood junior.

"I think," Thomas Wedgwood began, looking at the rocks in Jemima's hand. He had seen them plenty of times before, as he and Jemima had marauded around Etruria on the wet April days that they had had.

But now he effected to look at them as if he had never seen them before, because he didn't like that his friend was so engaged in conversation with this man.

"I think…that some of these animals must have lived a long time ago…and…perhaps ones that are even older would be buried deep down."

Thomas looked up to William Smith, with a look of absolute innocence on his face. But if the man suspected anything, he didn't show it. Instead, he smiled at Thomas and said, "Then you might like to see my map."

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It was called, "Stratification" and William Smith took Jemima and Thomas to the withdrawing room and spread out his hand drawn, hand coloured map, showing them what he meant.

Seven years of hard work around his job as a mine surveyor in Somerset - and at the mention, Jemima immediately thought to Humphry and Davies and made a mental note to write to them of this - and William Smith had devised a theory that rock was made of layers, like an onion skin, but, unlike an onion, they were slowly moving.

"So it would be straightforward to predict where minerals would be - in line, or in a variety of patterns?" Smith looked at Jemima for a moment and she went on to say that she must be using this theory without knowing it.

They would write, in the future, although Smith would not take up her offer of visiting her.

But Jemima also extended it to Thomas Wedgwood, on her last day in Burslem, after Josiah Wedgwood received a letter from John Withering saying that he felt it was safe for her to come back.

"I would dearly like that, Jemima!" Thomas enthused. But before she left, he took her to one side.

"When you spoke to Smith, you invited him to see "our rocks"."

"Yes?" She asked, as one of the servants put her small bag into the coach.

"You said, "Then you should come to Cornwall, Camborne, Master Wedgwood here will vouch we are most hospitable, the. You can survey our rocks…". Jemima shook her head, and Thomas took a step towards her.

"You said our rocks, not theirs, or Cornwall's: are we losing you, Jemima?". Jemima smiled, and clapped her friend on the shoulder.

"No, of course not!" she exclaimed. "When I am Of Age, I will be coming back. I want to be a coal mining engineer, Poldark's reference will be enough, as will Wild's."

But she felt guilty, already she felt out of step with her land, her Black Country.

Pp

"Would you be kind enough to send me anything I can add to it?" Smith has asked. "I would take your offer up to visit if an opportunity arises."

Thomas would visit, as would Murdoch. And Wedgwood, who gave Jemima a letter to give to her father.

"Be sure to, it is important," Josiah Wedgwood insisted, and Jemima assured him she would. It would turn out to be a copy of Erasmus Darwin's "Zoonomia", a gift to an impoverished friend.

It was to come back into Jemima's life at a time in the future, but now, at this point, with Jemima feeling sad about leaving the Black Country and uncertain about her life back in Cornwall, it sat benignly in its brown paper wrapping.

To Cornwall, in the summer. And a decision to be made.