“Eh?” the man asked, cupping a hand about his ear. “What’s that?”
“Sir E—that is, I was told I might speak to Abel Wilkins about a position here,” Theodore said, raising his voice once more.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” He jerked his head toward the rear of the cavernous room. “You’ll find him back there, in the foreman’s office. He’s not the foreman, mind; that would be his son-in-law, Tommy Crenshaw. But Tommy’s gone to London—something about a new hand—lost his own years ago, you know—and so Wilkins is acting foreman until he gets back.”
Theodore could only consider this a good thing, as he vaguely recalled an earlier visit to Ethan and Helen during which he’d been introduced to Tommy and his wife—this man Wilkins’s daughter, he supposed—at church. Church! Good God! Would the vicar remember him?
Aloud, Theo merely thanked the man and made his way down the aisle and into another room (this one filled with yet another kind of machine that emitted a high-pitched whine) until he reached the rear of the building. One corner had been walled off to form a small room, with unglazed windows cut into its walls to allow anyone inside to look out into the mill itself—and anyone in the mill to look inside the office, where a man sat behind a desk, leaning back in his chair with his feet propped up amongst the papers stacked neatly on the surface of the desk. Despite the fact that he might have shouted for the fellow’s attention, Theodore knocked on the door and waited for the man, presumably Mr. Wilkins, to admit him. Not that Wilkins (assuming it was he) appeared in any hurry to do so. He sat upright and spat a wad of tobacco into a spittoon, then heaved himself to his feet and crossed the small room, disappearing from Theodore’s line of sight for a moment before reappearing as he opened the door.
“Well?” he asked, looking Theodore up and down with an expression of suspicion not unmixed with hostility. “What d’you want?”
“Wilkins?” Theodore responded. “Abel Wilkins?”
The foreman—no, acting foreman—folded beefy arms across his chest and leaned against the doorjamb. “What if I am?”
“Ethan—that is, Sir Ethan Brundy offered me a position in the mill.” It hadn’t happened exactly that way, of course, but that was all the explanation Theodore intended to give. “He told me to present myself to a man named Wilkins.”
“That’s Mr. Wilkins to you,” the older man retorted, having apparently taken Theodore in instant dislike. He looked about him for the spittoon and, finding it absent, spat on the floor instead. “And you are?”
“Tisdale. Theodore Tisdale,” said Theo, offering his hand.
Mr. Wilkins looked a bit taken aback by this gesture, but took the proffered hand. “ ‘Theodore,’ is it? Lily-white hands won’t look like that for long,” he predicted grimly. “So, I’m supposed to find a place for you, eh? Oh, all right then, come along.”
He strode back the way Theodore had come, leaving the younger man to keep up—or not. Stopping at last before the machines Theodore had seen upon first entering the mill, he raised his voice to be heard over the noise issuing from them. “You can start here. Tom here will show you the ropes.”
He jerked his head in the direction of the fellow manning the nearest machine, a middle-aged man with a ruddy complexion and a cheerful disposition, as evidenced by the way he whistled as he went about his task of feeding thread into the machine. “Tom, this here’s Tisdale. Thee-o-dore Tisdale,” he added, making a mockery of a name which, Theodore had to admit, sounded rather too grandiose for his present surroundings.
“How do you do?” Theodore started to offer his hand, then realized Tom’s hands were occupied, and settled for giving the man a nod. “But please, call me Theo.” He had no desire to assume the title by which he’d been known at first Eton and then Oxford, but neither did he wish to be called by his nursery sobriquet of “Teddy.”
Tom nodded back. “Pleased to meet you, Theo. I’ll take it from here, Mr. Wilkins,” he added to the other man.
The acting foreman turned and left them, presumably to return to the office. Tom, watching him go, observed, “Wilkins don’t much like you.”
“It would appear not,” Theo concurred.
“Got any idea why?”
Theo shook his head. “None. If I offered some insult, it was not intentional, I assure you.”
“Never you mind,” Tom said with a shrug. “With Wilkins, it don’t take much. Still, I’d watch my back, if I was you. It’s not what you’d call healthy to get on his bad side.”
“Meaning?” prompted Theo.
“Never mind,” Tom said again, casting a furtive glance ’round, as if he feared Wilkins might be eavesdropping. In quite another tone, he added, “Now, first thing, you’d best get rid of that neck-wipe.”
“What, my cravat?” Theo asked, his hand going instinctively to the strip of limp white linen knotted about his neck. It had been difficult achieving even this inferior result with an unstarched neckcloth. He wasn’t sure another attempt—and one, moreover, without the aid of a mirror—would be any more successful. He was about to say so when he realized that not one of the men within his immediate line of vision wore a neckcloth at all. Instead, the collars of their shirts were open, each one displaying a bare “V” of flesh that already glistened with perspiration even though the day’s work had scarcely begun.
“Too great a risk of it being grabbed and pulled into the loom. Trust me,” Tom added darkly, “you don’t want that to happen.”
Theo did not have to be told twice. Suppressing a shudder at the grisly possibility raised by Tom’s warning, he untied the floppy knot and stuffed the strip of cloth into the waistband of his breeches—in the back, where it would be safe from the hungry maw of the power loom. He might look a bit ridiculous—rather as if he had a tail—but surely this
