Read Online Tales of the West Riding by Phyllis Bentley - Free Book Online Page B

forward a new Parliamentary Bill. Lawyers were employed, the Bill was drawn, but at the last moment pronounced wrongly framed. Next session a freshly drawn Bill was at length presented; it passed the Commons but was thrown out by the Lords.
    By this time the commissioners in general, and Mr. Beaumont in particular, were so exhausted by their protracted contention, so maddened by the mere sound of the word Ling, that they justlet the whole matter drop. Some day they must have a meeting and take a decision, but for the present it was wisest, they said, to wait a while, give all the members a chance of cooling down. Besides, as it chanced, this summer brought a drought and the intrusive spring dried up. They sighed thankfully and left Ling alone.
    Meanwhile the centre section of the Ling embankment sank slowly but steadily lower.
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    Rosa of course was not interested in Ling reservoir, except that the tiresome place was connected in her mind with the Booths and so she hated it. What interested her, it seemed, were errands of charity or friendship up or down the valley on both sides of the Yarrow.
    A stone packhorse bridge crossed the little river just above her father’s mansion beneath the hill; on the other side the cobbled lane, before turning sharply up to the main road, was lined by Mr. Beaumont’s new dyehouse. Passing along the lane one would naturally sometimes encounter the dyehouse foreman. This happened one autumn afternoon. In his dirty, rough mill clothes, striped apron and wooden clogs Joe Booth still had an air of refinement and goodwill. He smiled and touched his cap. His hands, stained with blue dye, remained well-shaped and slender. Rosa looked through him coldly and walked on. Her heart beat fast, her cheek flushed, she felt as if she had won some notable victory.
    â€œDoes that dark blue dye stain hands permanently, father?” she enquired that night.
    â€œIndigo? Oh, it wears off,” said her father indifferently. “In time, of course. It takes time.”
    The next time Rosa passed the shed Joe was standing in the doorway talking to a lad; as she approached he broke off their talk abruptly and went in. Rosa was furious.
    â€œAsk Joe Booth to come here at once,” she commanded the lad. He gave her a frightened glance and ran away.
    â€œYou wanted me, Miss Rosa?” said Joe Booth at her elbow.
    How dare he call her by her name! Impertinent! Yet one mustbe fair: all my father’s workpeople know my name, Rosa told herself with a sense of virtue. She smiled; her smile seemed charming; childlike and sweet.
    â€œIs my father in the dyehouse?” she asked. (She knew perfectly well he was not; she had left him asleep by the fire at home.)
    â€œWell, no, I’m sorry, he’s not,” said Joe Booth. “I’m sorry.” He seemed really distressed that he could not produce her father for her. “I could send a lad across to the mill to fetch him,” he offered eagerly.
    â€œNo. It’s no matter. Thank you. I just remembered—something I had forgotten,” said Rosa, laughing, “which I wanted to tell him. It’s no matter.”
    He smiled, enjoying her laughter—she had a pretty laugh. She nodded and passed on.
    That evening Rosa was at her sweetest. She read to her mother, lying in bed upstairs, fetched her father’s slippers, sang to him the old-fashioned ballads he preferred. Her handsome face looked softly happy in the firelight.
    â€œHow many children have the Booths, father?” she asked in an idle tone.
    Her father sat up briskly and showed alarm.
    â€œFor heaven’s sake, Rosa,” he urged, “don’t mention the Booths’ children in front of your mother. Mrs. Booth lost one of them, the next to Joe I think, at birth. It was as your mother returned from a visit of sympathy to Mrs. Booth that she fell down the steps from the hillside to the yard. So any mention of the Booths to her recalls her own