Free Shining Threads by Audrey Howard Page B

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    ‘That’s true, and yes, I got it. I start next Monday. Nice chap, Mr Greenwood.’
    ‘I know. We all are in the Greenwood family.’
    ‘Really?’ His smile was rueful now and he raised his eyebrows.
    ‘Mm. Though I’m not related by blood, of course.’
    ‘Oh, aye. How’s that then!’ He found himself responding to her completely natural manner. It seemed not to occur to her that they had met for the first time only that morning,
or even that he was to be employed in the family mill. She found him intriguing. He interested her and so she satisfied that interest in the only way she knew how. She asked questions regardless of
his station in life, or hers.
    ‘My mother was adopted. She has no idea where she came from.’ She sat down on a sun-warmed rock indicating that he should sit beside her and again it seemed an entirely natural thing
to do.
    ‘Oh, aye.’ His eyes were very soft as he studied this amazing girl who could in one moment be a bold-faced minx, and the next almost demure. He hesitated for a moment as though
debating with himself on whether to speak, then:
    ‘I was t’same,’ he said quietly.
    ‘The same?’
    ‘Aye. Came with a cartload of others to Abbotts when I was no more than a nipper and I’ve bin there ever since. Mind you, I was a strong lad. God knows where I’d come from but
wherever it was they’d fed me well, so I survived. I think that’s why I love these hills so well, this moorland . . .’
    ‘Why, Mr Broadbent?’ She was quite enthralled and again he was bewildered by the mercurial changes in her moods. He felt a thrill go through him to have captured her complete
attention, then a surge of irritation at feeling it, but he went on nevertheless for it was delightful to have those incredible eyes gazing so earnestly into his.
    ‘Because we were shut up so much. It wasn’t until I was a man grown that I could please myself, you see, then I discovered all this.’ He waved a hand in the general direction
of the great sweeping moorland which lay all about them and her own eyes followed the gesture. ‘When I was a child I spent my Sundays, first at church where the millmaster’s wife seemed
to think it her duty to send me and my companions, then cleaning the machines on which the following day we were to labour. We had no time for tramping the moors, I can tell thee, even if it had
been allowed, which it wasn’t, or we’d the strength, which we hadn’t. Apprentices, as we were called, were not well fed, Miss Harrison, and we had to be in the loomgate or
jennygate from five in’t morning until eight at night. It was a long time for a child.’
    ‘You seem to have done well on it, Mr Broadbent.’ It was not meant as a criticism, merely a statement of fact. Her eyes ran over his broad shoulders and the long strength of his
limbs and as they did so they narrowed approvingly and she felt a not unpleasant flutter in the vicinity of her throat as the pulse there quickened. He really was a most unusual man with his
strong, good-humoured face, his lazy, slanting smile. He had a way of talking, articulate and open, and though now and again he fell back into the way of speech of the working man he appeared to
be, he was what she supposed would be called well educated. He was looking at her now in that gleaming, speculative way which she recognised, despite her youth, as the admiration of a man for a
woman. He liked her, she could tell that, despite the battle they had fought in the mill yard. And that was another thing. Not many men would have had the daring – which she admired –
to stand up to her in that way.
    ‘Aye, well . . .’ He grinned disarmingly and she leaned closer to him, her eyes filled with her curiosity. ‘If you promise not to send for the nearest constable I’ll tell
you how I came to thrive where others didn’t.’
    ‘Oh, please.’ She hitched herself even closer and he wondered at the trust and confidence of this girl. Though he