‘I’m very well, sir,’ I said.
‘Are you crying, child?’
I said I was not, that it was just the air full of cotton dust that made my eyes water. He nodded. ‘I think you have just come from your father,’ he said.
‘No,’ I replied, perhaps a little too quickly, for he smiled grimly and said ‘No?’ in a questioning way, as if he didn’t believe me. He offered me his handkerchief.
‘It was made a long way from here,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid we produce nothing so fine at Stanley.’
But we were paid by the piece and I had already been away from my looms for too long.
‘Mr Mackenzie,’ I said, using the backs of my hands rather than his handkerchief to wipe my eyes, ‘please let me get back.’
‘You tell that father of yours I’m watching him,’ he said, suddenly stern.
‘Yes, Mr Mackenzie,’ I said. But I
