“Does your mother work at a factory?”
“She had done. She died o’er three years ago now. Which is why I were sent to work. Father wanted to keep Mary in her schooling.”
“I’m sorry,” Margaret said quietly.
“And now that I’m ill, Mary will need to find work. She’s not o’er bright, but she can work hard when put to a task.”
“You’ve been working in the mills for three years. How old are you?” Margaret asked.
“Nineteen this past month.”
“I too, am nineteen,” Margaret answered with a sad smile as she looked on Bessy’s pale face.
“Tell me where yo’re from. I’m tired of thinking on this place,” Bessy requested, leaning back in the bed.
“I’m from the South. My father was a vicar in a country hamlet of beautiful gardens, and fields and forests.”
“It sounds heavenly,” Bessy said. “I wished I could go there now, and get away from all this brick and smoke and fighting,”she added with a long sigh. “What brought you to Milton? I’d never have left such a place as you described.”
“My father had a change of conscience and decided to leave the Church to teach the classics to such as might want to learn them,” Margaret answered, looking down at her hands.
“There is lots of learning here, to be sure. Father goes to lectures and such whenever he can. And many of us who work in the mills can read. And those that can’t, Father tells them of their rights. Father is a Union leader. For all his rough ways, he’s got a heart to help others. He bands the mill workers together to fight against the masters for better wages.”
“Why cannot the masters and workers come to terms? Does your father not meet with the masters?” Margaret asked sincerely, her brow creased with confusion.
Bessy looked at her strangely and then laughed, which quickly turned into a fit of coughing.
Margaret petted Bessy’s shoulders and back, then smoothed her arms until the fit was over.
When she had recovered, Bessy replied, “Yo’ve no notion of how it is. Masters set the rules and that’s the way of it.”
“But are all the masters the same?” Margaret asked.
Bessy studied Margaret with a growing suspicion. “How is it yo’ came to see Thornton’s mill? Do yo’ have some connection?”
“No…I mean…yes,” she stuttered. “Mr. Thornton takes lessons from my father,” she answered, hoping Bessy could not see the warmth coming to her face.
Bessy grinned. “I saw the way he looked at yo’ that day—“
“Whatever do you mean?” Margaret protested. Mary snorted from across the room.
“Ah, come now! There’s no shame in admitting it. Every girl in Milton would give their right arm to catch Thornton’s eye! There’s many that has put their plans on him. Violet Grayson is one of ’em, they say.”
“They’d be chasing him for his money, I suppose?” Margaret asked, still bewildered that a manufacturer could be the highest prize in town. It would never be so in London.
Bessy cast a sidelong glance at her sister, and they both erupted into chortling laughter. Calming herself quickly, so as not to begin coughing again, Bessy studied Margaret as if she were some foreign creature. “The money ain’t bad, to be sure, but he’s not one to make yo’r eyes sore either!”
Margaret blushed at their teasing, silently realizing that the man who had asked her to marry him was sought after as a handsome bachelor.
“Yo’d know he’s the best of the lot if yo’d see the rest of them that are masters,” Bessy added. Mary nodded her agreement.
“I know I’m very new here,” Margaret began. “And perhaps it will seem strange to you, but a manufacturer is not thought of so highly in more genteel places in England.” Here, Margaret’s voice twisted into a tone of disdain. “I have a strong distaste for those whose primary aim is to make money for themselves. I’m certain he never thinks about the privileges that must have enabled him to hold such a position over others.”
“Ah, but yo’ don’t know him! They say he worked his way up to his role as Master,” Bessy countered, and then leaned forward with a mischievous grin. “Rumor has it that there’s some dark secret about his past,” Bessy said in a whisper.
She leaned back against her pillows again, satisfied to see Margaret’s expression blanch.
“Makes him even more mysterious, I should say!” Bessy declared, darting her gaze to see her sister smile.
