Somehow, the trip back through the snow seemed a lot less bothersome. In fact, Pansy practically skipped back across the kitchen yard and bumped smack into Gertie, who was on her way out the door with a coal scuttle in each hand.

“Here! What’s your bleeding hurry?”

Gertie’s scowl was fierce, and Pansy grabbed one of the coal scuttles. “Sorry. I was in a rush to help you, wasn’t I.”

“Yeah, not bloody likely. You just saw Samuel, didn’t you.”

Pansy blushed. “How did you know?”

“You got that soppy look on your face again, that’s how.” Gertie stomped across the yard to the coal shed, leaving Pansy to trail behind her.

Feeling sorry for her friend, Pansy followed her into the dark, musty shed. It was hard to be without someone to love, especially at Christmastime. She ought to know, she’d been through enough Christmases to know what it was like.

She’d watched couples kissing under the mistletoe, or standing close together at the carol-singing ceremony. She’d overheard whispers and shared laughter in the corridors. It had made the loneliness all the more painful.

How lucky she was to have Samuel. Someday, she silently vowed, Gertie would have that companionship again. It would be her Christmas wish for her friend. She’d do her level best to see that it came true.

“I have to go into town to see my dressmaker,” Cecily told Samuel when he answered the summons to her office later.

“Yes, m’m. That’s the house on Larch Lane, right?”

Cecily picked up her gloves and drew them on. “Actually, Miss Pauline Richards is out of town at present. We will be visiting her assistant, Miss Blanchard, and since her place of residence is quite close to the house where Jimmy Taylor’s family lives, I thought we would pay the bereaved family a courtesy visit.”