In this interesting novel Mrs Molesworth takes on the voice of a clever talented working-glass young woman. Martha Heatherdale, aged twenty-one, has just left her first position as the children of the affluent Wyngate family (with their oodles of trade money) have all grown up. She has recovered a little from the death of her fiancée – ‘it was hard to bear, and it changed all my life for me. I never could bring myself to think of another.’ But should she stay a little longer with her mother and father in their cottage or go out into service once more?

Then she sees the children of the Penrose family who are staying in the village with Mrs Nutfold (who takes in lodgers at Bramble Cottage) and disapproves of their unpleasant nurse. Martha’s response to the shortness of Nurse Sharp is telling and professional, ‘No one should be a nurse, or have to do with children, mother, who doesn’t right down love them in her heart.’ This is her vocation and career. There is Elizabeth (Bess), Lalage (Lally) and Baby and their disabled cousin Francis (he has ‘the rheumatics in his poor leg’ ).

Nurse Sharp had all along ‘not been meaning to stay longer than suited her own convenience.’ Hearing of a better job she went off at once abandoning the children. Mrs Nutfold calls in Martha to help and she willingly agrees. When their exasperated mother Lady Penrose eventually arrives, seeing the confidence between children and nurse, she offers Martha the vacant position. It is accepted with only a modicum of hesitation.

Mr Heatherdale is against the acceptance as he was sorry for Martha ‘to leave so soon and go so far’. The Penrose property is in Cornwall. Mrs Heatherdale is all for the acceptance. Low wages do not matter because what matters are ‘A good home and simple ways among real gentlefolk’. The Wyngates were nice, but their vast fortune was tainted by its origins. The children she approves too, as they ‘are good children and not silly spoilt things, and straightforward and well-bred’. Martha has already realised from simple observation that they are also in need of help and support – Lally needs to brighten up and orphan Francis is always, and rather oddly, treated dismissively by his aunt Lady Penrose.

There is a slight mystery about the family as Lady Penrose warns ‘we have a large country place that has belonged to the family for many hundreds of years; but we are obliged to live plainly and the place is rather lonely.’ Overworked in helping her husband Sir Hulbert get on and tired of trying to make ends meet in the shabby genteel ways of the poor gentry, Lady Penrose exclaims ‘Oh dear! what a contrary world it seems.’

Looking back in retrospect and from retirement, as Mrs Molesworth ventriloquises, Nurse Heatherdale tells of the children’s emotional development, her importance to their happy growing up and shares whatever happened to the old Penrose fortune of long ago.