Free Shining Threads by Audrey Howard Page A

other mills in the valley. Besides the decent working conditions in their mills the Greenwood family had built a school and all those who worked here, into
the second generation now, could read and write, were well set up, healthy and cheerful, with none of the deformities which were to be found in the mill where Will presently worked. That was one of
the reasons he wanted to leave it and be decently employed without the dreadful necessity of trying to get a day’s work from operatives who were underpaid, underfed and exploited by the
unscrupulous owner.
    The repeal in 1846 of the hated Corn Laws, which had made rents high and living low, had alleviated matters somewhat for the lower classes as the price of bread came down, but there was still
hunger, disease, squalor, long hours and hard labour in most textile mills. There were still strikes in which strikers’ families starved and men, maddened by despair, ran amok, smashing,
killing. But the ‘hungry forties’, as they were calling them, were surely done with now as trade boomed, mills prospered and unemployment was on the decline. The cotton towns, though
they were for the most part a hideous, unplanned sprawl of delapidated cottages, broken pavements, rutted tracks and open drains, would surely improve with the Greenwood family’s living
example of how things might be done. A decent day’s work would be rewarded with a decent wage.
    ‘You’re after the job in the spinning room?’
    ‘Aye, sir. I want to work decent and . . . well, where I am now . . . it’s not to my liking, but if you’re . . . I can come back . . .’
    ‘No . . . no, come up, Broadbent, and we’ll talk about it.’ Charlie Greenwood turned to his niece who still held his arm. ‘You’d best be off home, sweetheart. Nay,
don’t pull your lip at me, lass. You shouldn’t be here in the first place, you know that.’ He smiled affectionately, then without allowing her to speak again turned away and,
indicating to Will to follow him up, began to climb the stairs.
    He was on the top road which led from Crossfold to Edgeclough where he had lodgings, when she rose from the spiky bushes of gorse which lined the track and amongst which she had been sitting,
coming, it seemed to him in that moment, from the very ground beneath his feet.
    It was almost noon and the sun fell directly on the glossy cape of her dark hair which had escaped the chenille net. The beauty of it caught his breath, then his irritation, at himself for being
so affected by it and at her for her foolhardiness in being here, alone, sharpened his voice.
    ‘Good God, Tessa Harrison, what the devil are you doing up here by yourself? Don’t you know there are all manner of ruffians on these moors? Have you no sense? And what is your
family thinking of to allow it?’
    She shook her head and shrugged as though to ask what that could possibly have to do with him.
    ‘Did you get the job?’
    ‘Why should you care?’ His voice was set and closed.
    She smiled and he felt his heart lurch against his breastbone; then he turned away so that she might not see his face. It appeared that she bore him no ill-will for what had happened in the
yard, indeed, now that it was over and done with, she found it amusing. She had a quick, hot temper, her smile said, but she was not one to harbour a grudge nor to sulk over it, as many women
would, and her refreshing candour moved him in some strange way.
    ‘It’s nothing to me, really,’ she answered lightly. ‘Just put it down to curiosity. There were fifteen applicants, you know. I wondered what you had that they
hadn’t.’
    ‘And have you decided?’
    ‘I was hoping you would tell me. ’
    He sighed and turned back to her. ‘Don’t you think you had better get on your horse and go home as your uncle suggested?’
    ‘I rarely do as people suggest, as you must have noticed.’ She lifted her autocratic head then grinned impishly and he could not help but smile