Chapter 3As the weeks passed, I couldn’t help my increasingly low mood, and the more I tried to rally my spirits, the more morose I became. Being early summer, our whole family was occupied with the productive growing season, and when I wasn’t tending to the flourishing crops, I was helping my mother and sisters in the garden with any heavy work. I tried to remain cheerful during my active days, and patient with my father in the evenings as we endlessly discussed the details of the fleece yield, and speculated nervously about the growing fields of barley earmarked for sale to the brewery, both hoping for a good year with sufficient money to put aside and reinvest in next year’s crops.
During this time, my family enjoyed the occasional distraction of Sir Harry’s soirées as we were ushered
