Coton

Coton is presented through two possible homes: the vicarage where Verity Lockett makes a family with Edgar Lockett, and a cottage offered to Sunday Small as a place to live while keeping it clean and tidy. The village links domestic hope to the characters’ vulnerable working lives: one home marks a marriage and new child, while the other comes with an arrangement Sunday does not want.

Setting and domestic prospects

Verity has spent years in a rented room in Henry Street, but expects that to change when she marries Edgar and moves to his vicarage in Coton. Her route to that household has run through service and work: orphaned in her late teens, she was a governess in a large house outside Nuneaton before becoming a teacher to the girls in the workhouse. She met Edgar while helping at Sunday school. Their marriage offers her a home without severing her connection to the children; Edgar is willing for her to continue volunteering at the workhouse for a few hours each week.

The vicarage household

The vicarage appears as a warm domestic interior when Lady Lavinia Huntley visits its sunny morning room to admire Verity’s newborn daughter. Verity stands beside a lace-trimmed crib and describes the baby as good, crying only when she needs feeding or changing. Edgar, by contrast, would gladly hold his daughter all day, though Verity notes that he wishes she were awake more. The scene gives Coton a household already shaped by marriage, parenthood, and care, while Lady Lavinia’s near-tearful response underscores the emotional weight the baby holds for her.

The cottage and Sunday’s refusal

A cottage for sale in Coton is later proposed as a future retirement home for an unnamed man. Before retiring, he suggests that Sunday could live there and keep it clean and tidy in return for payment. Sunday suspects that the offer carries an ulterior personal expectation, though she does not voice that suspicion; she instead declines politely, saying she is content with the position Lady Lavinia has found for her. The man scowls and thrusts a small brown-paper package towards her. The cottage therefore remains an offer, not an established home for Sunday, and its proposed security is complicated by the unequal terms behind it.