A Mistletoe Kiss by Katie Flynn

the Echo or the Yorkshire Post .
    Now, she looked hopefully at Harry as they reached the towpath. ‘Well?’ she said rather impatiently when he did not immediately answer. ‘I’m warning you, Harry, if you won’t agree I’m going to tell Gran and Gramps just what you did, so you can choose: you can either learn to read and write, or take the consequences of getting me in such a pickle,’cos I shan’t be much good to anyone for days and days, with my face all swolled up like a balloon.’
    She half expected to Harry to argue and waspleasantly surprised when he gave her a lopsided grin and nodded his head vigorously. ‘I’ll do me best to learn,’ he said gruffly. ‘Tell you what, I’ll teach you a bit about the engine an’ all – it’s a National and not such a bad old thing – provided you don’t try an’ take my job away.’ He spat on his hand, then held it out. ‘Shall we shake on it?’
    They shook as they reached the towpath and began to hurry along it in the wake of the Sprite . ‘It’s a pity about the milk,’ Hetty panted as her companion broke into a run. ‘But it can’t be helped and I’m sure Gran will forgive us when she sees our wasp stings.’
    Hetty was right; Gran fussed round them with blue-bag and a soothing remedy and scarcely bothered about the lost milk. ‘Your poor little face, Hetty my love,’ she cooed, placing cold compresses on her granddaughter’s burning cheeks and brow. ‘Why, Harry, you must have run like the wind to avoid the sort of stings young Hetty has suffered.’
    â€˜I did,’ Harry admitted. ‘And I’m real sorry about the milk, Miz Hesketh, but we was eager to gerrout o’ the way o’ the wasps, and me legs is longer than young Hetty’s here.’
    Gran agreed with this, and if Hetty occasionally saw her giving Harry a rather quizzical glance she said nothing and seemed to heartily approve when Hetty explained that she and Harry meant to take a look at the newspapers when they had a spare moment. Hetty had harboured secret doubts that Harry would find reading easy, but she was wrong. He was a good deal brighter than he appeared and was soon picking outwords, then sentences, then whole paragraphs, and when they reached Leeds Gramps went ashore and came back with a number of books which he had got from the tuppenny box in St Ann Street, thinking they might prove of interest both to his engineer, as he persisted in calling Harry, and to his granddaughter.
    After this, Hetty began to enjoy her time on the Water Sprite , now that she and Harry were no longer at loggerheads. She knew that they were not pals, exactly, still regarding each other too warily for that, but there were times when Harry was explaining something about the engine, or they were exploring the countryside together, when they got on pretty well. She knew Harry was jealous of the warm relationship between her and her grandparents, but understood that the contrast between the Heskeths’ affection for her and the Collinses’ for Harry must be painful to the boy. However, despite such feelings, he taught her as much as he could about the engine and she did her best to absorb the information, while always quick to assure Harry that she did not mean to do him out of a job by using her new knowledge except in an emergency.
    The reading was a different matter, for once Harry was reasonably proficient he scarcely needed her help at all, save when he came across long words whose meanings he did not understand. Quite often, Hetty did not understand them either and was glad to borrow the Heskeths’ dictionary, so they both became more knowledgeable as a result.
    Despite Harry’s having been on the Leeds andLiverpool canal for most of his life, he had little knowledge of the countryside beyond the towpath itself and some of the fields nearest at hand. Though he