Sarah’s look spoke volumes of her disappointment, of her despair that Alice was following the path that so many of the village girls before her had trodden.
‘Will he marry you?’ she asked.
Alice shook her head.
‘Cannot or will not?’ snapped Sarah, and she seemed almost on the point of striking Alice, who shrank back and shook her head again, mutely.
Her eyes had filled with tears, so she was startled when Sarah reached out and gave her a fierce, rough hug.
‘Well, I hope you’ve known kindness, not cruelty.’ Sarah sighed. ‘It’s a sorry business, but what’s done is done and we have to make the best of it. You must leave the mill and, now that I’m feeling better, we’ll get by on what my work brings in. Ella is old enough to take your place at the mill, and you must expect to go back when the baby is grown.’
Ella. Alice felt pierced to the heart. She had always held on to a fantasy that none of the rest of the family would have to follow her into the mill, without really thinking about how this might be achieved. Now she had brought down on Ella the very thing that she had so wished to prevent. An unwelcome thought surfaced, and no matter how hard Alice tried to block it out, it persisted. ‘Williams,’ a voice whispered in her head. ‘Williams and Ella.’ Ella had only just turned thirteen, so she was eligible for mill work, but the thought of any man taking a predatory interest in her struck a chill to Alice’s heart. She reasoned with herself that Ella looked young, and her attitude to life was definitely that of a child. But Alice could even now recognise the hint of a blossoming from girlhood to womanhood, and it looked as though Ella would be striking in appearance as she grew up. Not beautiful: the Bancroft girls would never be called that, but they had strong features, slender limbs and delicate hands – all the better for mill work, Alice thought in despair. Although it was obvious that Ella and Alice were sisters, their curly, flowing hair marking them out instantly as related, Ella had a dreamy demeanour in contrast to Alice’s busy, sharp mind. Her family teased Ella that she must be a woodland sprite who’d adopted their home as hers. When she came back after vanishing for hours on end amongst the woods and fields, she always seemed vague and puzzled as to where she had been and what she’d been doing.
‘Ella’s away with the fairies again,’ was a common refrain in the Bancroft household, but Alice had a very real fear that the mill would crush her restless spirit, and that Williams would prey on her fragility.
‘If only I’d thought to teach Ella to read and write, to train her to take over from me as a teacher,’ thought Alice, filled with despair. It was too late to remedy this now. Alice had never imagined that she would find herself in such a situation and, although her whole being shrank from accepting it, she resolved to work for as long as she could. In the meantime, perhaps she could think of something that would save Ella from a future in the mill?