Jack of Hearts by Marjorie Farrell Page B

always diminished after a long carriage ride.
    “Was your visit successful, Anne?” she asked when her employer came down to the table.
    “I think it was. I managed to get to see the sorting shed as well as the looms, even though Joseph wanted to rush me in and out. I announced the Christmas bonus, and most people seemed pleased…” Anne’s voice trailed off.
    “But?”
    “It is one thing to add up the price of raw wool and the cost of steam. It is quite another to walk the floor and not be able to hear yourself think! I never realized how noisy the looms are. And yet people seemed satisfied. Or at least, not dissatisfied,” she added. “Many of them didn’t seem to have any reaction to my visit. I couldn’t tell whether they appreciated it or not.”
    “And the accident?”
    “I must confess it is difficult to watch small children feeding the carding machines, but the safety precautions are made clear to them. The child who was injured evidently forgot to roll her sleeve up, and it got caught in the rollers.”
    Sarah shuddered involuntarily. “It is hard for a small child to remember or even understand such precautions, though.”
    “Yes, that occurred to me, too. But without the children’s wages, most families wouldn’t survive, would they?”
    * * * *
    Anne went to bed early and Sarah stayed up watching the fire in the parlor as it died down from flames to glowing orange coals and then began to go out. What would it be like to send your six-year-old off to a mill? she wondered. Or to hear that your daughter’s hand had been crushed in the machinery?
    Years ago, when she realized she would be forced to hire herself out, when it became clear that despite her education and gentle birth, she would never enjoy any of the privileges associated with either, Sarah had felt very sorry for herself. Although the self-pity had diminished over the years, there were times even now when a wave of it would wash over her, leaving her feeling bereft of hope and joy. Then she would remind herself how lucky she had been. She was treated more like a friend than an employee. Her duties were very light, and she lived in virtual luxury in a beautiful house with plenty of food. And she was well clothed, she thought, fingering her dark blue kerseymere gown.
    She had never given much thought before to where wool cloth came from, which was ironic, since she was employed by one of the largest manufacturers in Yorkshire. For all intents and purposes, her clothes came from the shops in Leeds. They would visit the draper two or three times a year and exclaim over his fine wools and muslins and lawns, never once wondering as bolt after bolt was placed in front of them who had woven the cloth, or even, indeed, if it could have been produced in one of the Heriot mills.
    Tonight, however, she wondered. Had a child been injured in producing the lovely blue wool she was wearing? She loved this dress. It made her eyes look darker and bluer, it was comfortable and fashionable at the same time. But once upon a time before it became cloth, this wool had been fleece and had been fed into a carding machine by six- or seven-year-old hands.
    But children worked all over England, Sarah told herself. If not in factories, then in mines or in chimneys. She remembered the chimney sweep who had come in just before they left London. His boy was a wizened little creature who scrambled his way up the chimney as though the devil were after him. As she recalled his master’s face, she wondered if the devil had indeed gotten after him. Sarah sighed as she scattered the coals. Families needed to live. She was helping her mother in both the house and the garden by the time she was six. It was the way things were. But as she made her way up the stairs, she wondered why the phrase “the way things were” always seemed to refer to the hardest aspects of human life and those associated with the poor.
     

Chapter Seven
     
    “Tha see t’bitch, Ned? I saw her