Free The Daring Ladies of Lowell by Kate Alcott Page A

But she would do it again; if she and the others didn’t stand up for one another, who would? She braced herself: perhaps now she was about to be discreetly ushered out of the mill.
    “Miss Barrow, I’m here to ask for your cooperation in satisfying concerns you and your coworkers seem to have about working here,” he began.
    “Cooperation?”
    “Yes. We believe—our family—that there are ways to resolve some of these issues and would like to discuss them with you.” He paused. The girl looked dumbfounded. Perhaps she wasn’t as quick as she had seemed last night; he wasn’t saying anything astounding, surely. He couldn’t help noting how her dark hair was looped upward in soft, casual curves, then swept into a topknot, exposing a long and graceful neck. Not a fashionable style, if his sister’s tastes were any guide. But quite attractive.
    “Mr. Fiske, I am not sure what you want from me.”
    “Your presence, Miss Barrow. At a—meeting.”
    “What kind of a meeting?”
    “To discuss—” He took a deep breath. “I wonder if you will oblige us by coming to dinner at our family home on Beacon Hill next Wednesday. We want to give you the larger picture of what the future is for the cotton mill in America.”
    “And you want from me the smaller picture of what the present is for those of us who work here.”
    “Yes, that’s it.” There was nothing wrong with this woman’s brain.
    Alice stared at him. There was a flush on his cheeks—was he actually discomfited by her? What an extraordinary invitation. What could she say? What
should
she say? There was, of course, only one possible response.
    “Well, then. I accept.”
    “Excellent.” Samuel was already pulling on his leather gloves, a look of relief on his face. “I will arrange for a carriage to pick you up midday Wednesday and bring you to Boston.”
    She hesitated. “Mr. Fiske, what if that man who threatened Delia comes back?”
    “I don’t think you have to worry about him. The foreman got his name and checked him out with the police. He’s no suffering husband and father, he’s served jail time for starving his horses and breaking a few noses in various bar fights. He goes back to jail if he tries anything here again.”
    “H e invited you to
Boston
? To the Fiske
home
?” The girls around the dining room table looked at Alice, mouths agape. She pushed away her plate with its unappetizing meat loaf, wondering about its faintly pungent smell. Good thing she had held off telling her friends until dinner. The news would have swept through the mill in half an hour, and she still wasn’t sure what she had agreed to.
    She nodded, passing a cookie to Ellie, who sat in her mother’s lap, exhausted, blue eyes fogging over with sleep. If Samuel Fiske could be trusted, there would be no more need for subterfuge, no more pretending she was Delia’s little sister—not at the boardinghouse, anyhow. Mrs. Holloway had initially bridled when she heard the story, a look of alarm on her face. “I’m not risking my job for this,” she muttered.
    “But my dear Mrs. Holloway, if Samuel Fiske saw nothing out of place, why should you?” Lovey asked. “You weren’t there. What could possibly connect you to today’s events?”
    Mrs. Holloway puzzled that out quickly. “It’s true, I see nothing different,” she said with a rare smile. “It’s the same as always.”
    “Very perceptive of you, Mrs. Holloway.” Lovey beamed.
    Alice watched Ellie eat the cookie, still working to get her bearings. “I don’t know what it is that they think I can tell them,” she said. “I’m no representative for the mill girls, or anybody else.”
    “Tell them about Mama losing her hair,” Ellie said, her eyes flying wide open. “Tell them they should make safer machines. That nice man today will help.”
    And would it be so? It sounded so simple, voiced by a child. That was the deception of simplicity, of course. Most adults scorned it.
    T he weather had