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she had a bit of a problem with Jimmy. She had taken the children up on deck one day and whilst standing there looking out towards the golden shores of southern France in the distance, her charges busy chasing each other around the deck excitedly, she was approached by the steerage overseer.
    â€œSo what’s a nice girl like you trailin’ across the ocean with a load of children in tow?” He had asked with fetid breath, not really interested in her answer, but he had to say something to get her attention.
    â€œOh, I’m taking them across to Adelaide, where they’ll find domestic work with some of the settlers.”
    â€œAnd yerself?”
    â€œI have the choice of going back to Ireland and perhaps escorting a few more lucky girls to seek a better life like these will have, or I can find myself a position as a children’s nurse. The nuns have very kindly given me a letter of recommendation.”
    â€œAnd what do yer think yer’ll be doin’ then?”
    â€œI can’t say. I’ll wait until I get there, probably get a job as a nursemaid for a couple of years.”
    â€œYou could come with me.” He lowered his voice, as if he thought a spy might be listening.“I’ll be jumping ship when we get there. I’m off to the gold fields in Victoria. I’ve heard you can make a fortune there.”
    â€œI don’t think so. I’ll be quite happy earning a living in other ways.”
    Jimmy leered at her as she had walked into his trap quite innocently. “I can arrange me cabin mate to go for a walk one night and you and me could see some action in me hammock. How about it? I could leave the hatch open tonight.”
    Being a Catholic girl, brought up by nuns and at one time considering becoming a novice herself, it had taken a while to understand his meaning, at first thinking he was offering her better accommodation with him and the crew. Of course to do that would be unthinkable and she was about to thank him and reject his offer, when the meaning of his words caused her to pause. She looked shocked and felt anger. Had he not been in the position he was in, she would have slapped the smirk from his face.
Who did he think she was, some sort of hussy, giving her favours to any horrid man?
She called for the children, gathering them together under a protective wing and turned on her heel, enraged.

Chapter Six
    As the ship continued on, the sea breezes pushing the billowing sails along the coast of Portugal and into the Atlantic on its way to one of the Canary Isles, life aboard the
Umpherston
settled into a routine. The weather was balmy and the cabin passengers took to sitting in wooden chairs that had been placed along the starboard side. Their days, when they were not resting in their cabins, were spent chatting, eating and playing some sort of deck game with a hoop, that the doctor appeared to have invented.
    Sir Rodney, Lady Harriet and Clarence took measures to see for themselves how the makeshift school progressed, seeing that they’d had a hand in its creation. At first, parents were reluctant to have their children schooled in lettering and numbers, seeing it as a waste of time. Labourers and domestics did not have scholars for offspring, they muttered between themselves when the idea was first mooted by Mr. Colmayne at mess time one day but Lady Harriet, brisk and bluff, with a vision of how the colony could progress in the future, said attendance would have to be compulsory as the teacher was being paid. It soon appeared that the table, normally used for meals and recreation by the older steerage passengers, would not have been a popular place for the children to have their schooling, so the saloon where the cabin class had their supper, was pressed into service for a couple of hours each day.
    *
    It was a few days later when the
Umpherston
sailed into the harbour of one of the Canary Isles. The cabin passengers, up on deck to view the doughty