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One of the editors of the "Operatives' Magazine" had gone to Arkansas with a mill-girl who had worked beside her among the looms. They were at an Indian mission to the Cherokees and Choctaws. I seemed to breathe the air of that far Southwest, in a spray of yellow jessamine which one of those friends sent me, pressed in a letter.
Other Bronte shrines have engaged us, Guiseley, where Patrick Bronte was married and Neilson worked as a mill-girl; the lowly Thornton home, where Charlotte was born; the cottage where she visited Harriet Martineau; the school where she found Caroline Helstone and Rose and Jessy Yorke; the Fieldhead, Lowood, and Thornfield of her tales; the Villette where she knew her hero; but it is the bleak Haworth hilltop where the Brontes wrote the wonderful books and lived the pathetic lives that most attracts and longest holds our steps.
The school-master went down on his hands and knees, on which a big lad, with his hands in his trouser-pockets, guffawed. "What's he up to now?" he asked. "Thee may haud thee tongue if thee can do nought," said a mill-girl who had come up. "I reckon he knows what he's efter better nor thee." She had pushed to the front, and was crouched upon the edge, and seemed very much excited.
She showed herself; blushing, hesitating, offering a nosegay of wild flowers. My mother whispered to me I thanked the little mill-girl, and gave her a kiss. Did I feel the child's breath, in my day-dream, still fluttering on my cheek? Was I conscious of her touch? I started, trembled, returned reluctantly to my present self. A visible hand touched my arm.
Presently they passed by Westmoreland, and from Alice's window a light shone far out into the golden tinged leaves of the beeches near. Travis glanced up at it. Then at the pretty mill-girl by his side: "A star and a satellite!" he smiled to himself. It was growing late when the old preacher left Westmoreland and rode leisurely back toward the cabin on Sand Mountain.
In the morning she entered the mill hoping it might fall on and destroy her. At night she went home to a drunken father and a little sister who needed, in her childish sorrow, all the pity and care of the elder one. And one night her father, being more brutal than ever, had called out as Helen came in: "Come in, my mill-girl!"
My second sister, Charlotte, was born in 1858 and married, when I was thirteen, the present Lord Ribblesdale, in 1877. She was the only member of the family except my brother Edward Glenconner who was tall. My mother attributed this and her good looks to her wet-nurse, Janet Mercer, a mill-girl at Innerleithen, noted for her height and beauty.
"Oh, yes," said Tessa, becoming at once very much excited; "she, Amanda, I mean, married the most elegant count, and he took her to his castle, and she had pearls and diamonds and silks and satins, and never had to do a thing all the rest of her life; and only think, Katie, she was a mill-girl in the beginning, just like us." The sentence finished with a sigh.
Hexter," murmured the mortified Miss Sessions, glancing uneasily toward the mill-girl contingent which was listening eagerly, and then at the speaker of the day, "I am sure Mrs. Archbold will agree with me that it would be a gross, material idea to aspire after blouses and such-like, when the poor child needs er other things so much more."
Spreading his legs and arms he now lay flat upon the poles, peering towards the hole as if to try if he could see anything of the drowning man. It was only for an instant, then he rolled over on to the rotten ice, smashed through, and sank more suddenly than the skater had done. The mill-girl jumped up with a wild cry and rushed to the water, but John Binder pulled her back as he had pulled me.
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