She knew what he really needed was three square meals a day, which was something they could not afford.
“Perhaps when the new Earl comes back,” she had said to old Martha, who was the only servant left in the Vicarage, “he will realise that the wages have to be raised, to keep up with the rising prices and Papa just cannot manage on his stipend!”
“If ’e don’t come back till the end of the war,” Martha replied, “then we’ll be in our graves with no one to mourn us! It’s that ‘Boney’, that’s who it is!”
It was true, Shenda thought, that Napoleon Bonaparte was to blame for everything that had happened in Arrowhead.
It was Boney’ who made two men come home wounded, one without a leg, the other minus an arm and ‘Boney’ who had emptied the larder at the Vicarage.
‘If I cannot ask Papa for he
