The Miner’s Girl by Maggie Hope Page A

in one of the comfortable leather armchairs before the fire smoking his first cigar of the day.
    ‘Morning, Father,’ said Tom. ‘I thought it would be your coffee time. I’ve told Polly to bring another cup.’
    ‘Where have you been? Have you been out all night with that . . . that pit lass I saw you riding round Bishop Auckland with yesterday for anyone to see?’ Miles growled without any preliminary greeting. He had been mulling the scene from the day before over in his mind and got angrier every time he thought of it. ‘Don’t you realise we are known in this town and have a position to keep up?’
    Tom blinked. He couldn’t remember seeing his father in the town. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘What did you say?’
    ‘You heard me well enough,’ snapped Miles. ‘There you were driving round the market place in Auckland inthe trap with a miner’s brat beside you. And you don’t come in ’til this time of the morning. You’re a disgrace, sir, a disgrace.’
    There was a knock at the door and Polly came in with a cup and saucer. ‘Will I pour, sir?’ she asked, looking at Tom, but it was Miles who answered.
    ‘That will be all, Polly,’ he said. ‘Close the door behind you.’
    ‘Yes sir.’
    She went out to tell Cook the master was in a right temper, fit to burst his boiler. They’d best keep out of his way, she reckoned.
    When she had gone, Tom took time to pour coffee and sit down in the armchair opposite his father’s. He crossed his legs and took a sip of the dark-brown liquid, murmuring appreciatively. Meanwhile, Miles was becoming redder in the face.
    ‘Well?’ he barked.
    ‘First of all, Father, I was not out all night with anyone. I was asleep in my own bed upstairs. And I have just returned from Oaklands, the workhouse hospital in Auckland where I have a duty to attend the inmates who are old or infirm or both.’
    ‘Hmm. Well, thank God for that,’ snapped Miles. ‘Now about this girl—’
    ‘Yes, what about her, Father?’ Tom was calm, his voice cold.
    ‘What were you doing riding about through the market place with her in the trap? Our family has a name to keep up, what are you doing associating with someone like her?’
    ‘How do you know what I was doing yesterday afternoon?’ Tom countered.
    ‘What does that matter? As it happens Miss Porritt and I were just coming out of the Queen’s Hotel when you came riding past, bold as brass, the pair of you.’
    ‘Oh, Miss Porritt,’ said Tom as though that explained a lot of things to him. As of course it did. His father would not want Miss Porritt to see his son associating with the lower classes.
    ‘Yes, Miss Porritt. How do you suppose it looked to her?’
    ‘Does it matter?’
    ‘It does, I am thinking of asking Miss Porritt to marry me. It does not help when she sees my son keeping low company.’
    ‘Merry Trent is a patient of mine!’ said Tom. ‘She works at the hospital and I was giving her a lift. She is in trouble and needs help, she is barely sixteen and lives alone with her brother in one of those broken-down old houses at Old Pit, and he has disappeared.’
    The fact that his father did not reply immediately escaped Tom for the minute. He was thinking that Merry would have to move from Old Pit; she couldn’t stay there on her own, not unless Ben came back. Perhaps heshould try to get her lodgings near the hospital, for the moment anyway.
    Miles had had a shock. He hadn’t realised the girl in the trap was that boy’s brother. Or thought she was at least. Wouldn’t the baby who had been in the house that awful night have been the woman’s granddaughter? What a flaming tangle everything was. Why hadn’t he gone back to Old Pit himself since it happened? At least he would have known what was going on and done something about it sooner. As it was, he had avoided the place for thirteen years. Why hadn’t the woman told him she was pregnant in the beginning? He could have paid her to go away, though to be