Glad you liked it. Here's some more, with original text by EBD in blue - that's if I can work out how to use the groovy new palette thing!
‘It’s nothing, really. Just some bother I got into outside the labour exchange.’ Dick laughed wryly. ‘Some labour exchange: none of those fellows has worked for a good few months. Not their fault I suppose when you think about it, but young Carstairs was there, looking for work as an errand-boy. He’s been there every day, Madge, front of the queue. He’s only fourteen, and he has a mother and three young sisters depending on him. I couldn’t stand by and watch those others – big fellows – jump the queue again. It’s desperation, Madge, it does dreadful thing to a man’. And he sighed deeply, with that frown that Madge was coming to know and dislike. Maybe she had been wrong not to take him into her confidence earlier, but she had wanted to be confident that her ideas for the future had a decent chance of working.
'For myself, I can put up with it, take things as they come. But if only I knew what to do with you girls!’ said Dick in worried tones.
‘Oh, you needn’t worry about us!’ replied Madge. She got up from her seat in front of the rapidly cooling fireplace and faced her brother. ‘Dear old Dick! You really mustn’t worry about Joey and me. We shall be all right! Listen to me. I've been considering our future. There's no money coming in: you can’t get work unless you’re prepared to join the Greater German Unity Party, and that’s quite out of the question. So last night I thought and thought after I had gone to bed; and honestly I think my plan’s the only one possible.’
‘Oh for Heaven’s sake, cut all that!’ groaned her brother. ‘What do you want to do?’
‘Start a school,’ was the sufficiently startling reply.
‘Start a school!’ He stared at her. ‘My good girl, that sort of thing requires permission from the Authorities – which is something you are never likely to get.’
‘Yes, I know that as well as you do!’ retorted his sister. ‘At least, it does in England, or anywhere else in Greater Germany, come to that. But I wasn’t thinking of England.’
‘Then where were you thinking of?’ he demanded, not unreasonably. ‘Ireland? Shouldn’t advise that! You might wake up one morning to find the Reds had overrun the place.’
‘Of course not! I’ve got some sense! And if you’d only dry up and listen, you’d hear what I have in mind! What I’ve thought of is this. You know how, since the War, they’ve been sending people, English people like us, to America? Land is cheap there since the collapse of the dollar, they say that English people are welcome, really welcome there, and the Authorities would be only too glad to get rid of you by paying your passage.’ Madge’s tone was serious. ‘There’s nothing here for us now, Dick. England is set fair to become an impoverished outpost of the German Empire. At least that’s what everyone’s saying. Don’t tell me the fellows outside the Labour Exchange don’t talk about it all the time. Well, the Germans don’t care for America. We could use the last of the money we made from Pretty Maids – thank Heavens we sold it in time – to buy passage for Joey and me, and I’ve heard of a house in Vermont where we could go. A big house. And, Dick, I could set up a school there. I simply know I could make it work. Just imagine it. They say the climate there would be just the thing for Joey - it’s cold in winter, but it’s a dry cold, just the thing for a child with a weak chest. Oh, Dick, I don’t think I could stand another winter like this, and suppose, just suppose, we didn’t pull Joey through.’
Madge gave a strangled sob.
‘Now just steady on a moment, old girl.’ Dick leaned forward, interested in spite of himself, hope beginning to dawn in his eyes.
‘This sounds like quite a plan. But it’s an awful undertaking to run a school. And where would you get the pupils from? Not to mention staff, and school furniture, and, well, I don’t know, but all the things you need for a girls’ school. I take it you do mean a girls’ school, Madge, old fruit? You’re not thinking of going in for one of these new co-educational Prefecture schools that Joey would have to go to if she were well enough?’
Madge smiled weakly. ‘I’ve been thinking about it a lot, Dick. And I’ve talked it over already, with that nice French lady who lives upstairs. You know, Mademoiselle Lepattre who escaped from her home near Paris after the capital fell, with her little niece, Simone. They were all that remained of that family. They would come with us. Mademoiselle Lepattre would teach French, and look after the girls, and Simone would be a pupil. She’s a lovely child, dreadfully scarred by her wartime experiences of course, and inclined to be sentimental, but that’s no surprise after all she’s been through. I’m sure the settled routine of a school in Vermont away from all this – all this – squalor – would improve her no end.’ And Madge flung a hand out, indicating the dirt of the two rooms in which the three of them now lived, and where she fought a losing battle against the rats, the grime, the germs and the decay.
‘But, Madge, there has to be more than that to starting a school. For one thing, you'll need the odd paying pupil or two.’
‘I know of one child I could have for the asking. Young Grizel.’
‘Grizel? Grizel Cochrane? Madge, have you gone quite mad, old thing?’ And Dick contemplated their landlords, the Cochranes, a couple with whom they had never been on the friendliest of terms, and who had managed to do well out of the War. When the fighting ended and the prefecture of Devonshire was set up, the Cochranes had co-operated with the enemy, and were now being well rewarded.
‘I mean it Dick. What kind of a future will they have here, known as collaborators and hated by everyone? Just think of that poor child, the time she must be having at school. It was Mrs Cochrane who gave me the idea of moving to America. She’s thinking of it herself, and she wants a new start for the family and for Grizel. After all, it can’t be long until the socialists bag the whole of Europe, and what future then for the Cochranes and their kind? And there’ll be others, Dick, I know there will be others.’
‘Well, it still sounds like a mad scheme to me, Madge. I wouldn't have agreed to the idea if you had consulted me. As it is, I suppose I must say "yes". Heaven knows we need to do something. Look, it’ll soon be light. Why don’t I fill the water pail, stoke up the fire and you make some tea. Then I’ll see about booking a passage to Vermont.’
And Dick suited the action to the word.
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) I don't think it's archived anywhere, and in any case I wanted to make some changes to the first bit, so I'm starting again from the beginning. 
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That was unexpected. it's nice to see Mrs Cochrane - apparently - trying to be a good step-mother to Grizel and think of her too (though we know she liked to put on a face in public, so whether she actually was is another matter)
It wasn't her fault!
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