Counting on Grace by Elizabeth Winthrop

Author:Elizabeth Winthrop
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Young Adult, Historical, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), Childrens
ISBN: 9780307518224
Publisher: Yearling
Published: 2006-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

18

THE GROUP PICTURE

Mamère cuffs me on the head when she finds I didn't go blind. I barely feel it, but there is no reason to hit me. I was just doing what French Johnny and Mr. Hine told me to do.

When Mr. Hine says he only has a couple more pictures to take, French Johnny tells him to pack up his equipment and move on out. It was the flash and the smoke that scared French Johnny the most. Fire can gobble up a mill in no time ‘cause there's so much to burn. All that cotton dust in the air and the threads whirling around just waiting for some little spark to light on them.

And suddenly, like things clicking into place in the back of my brain, I remember Mr. Wilson getting on the train that morning. So French Johnny was in charge and he's the one who let in Mr. Hine. And if the mill had burned down when Mr. Wilson was away then fat French Johnny was going to be in a big barrel of trouble.

“That man is fou, complètement fou,” mutters Mamère.

I stop in my tracks to tell her the good news.

“Mr. Hine is boarding with us tonight. He knows he's got to pay before he eats.”

“Well, that'll make up some of the money he stole from our paycheck fooling with you,” she says.

Here is the big surprise. “It'll make up more than you think, Mamère,” I say. “I told him he had to pay a dollar and he said fine. He'd be there.”

She stares at me with a little look that says, Well, Grace, sometimes maybe I can count on you. She don't say it out loud, but her face says it. At least that's what I decide to think.

When Arthur passes me in the row, he says, “I was right, wasn't I? He's the one.”

“He wants to get all the kids together after work. To take a picture. You tell them?”

“Where?”

I have to think fast. “Around the front side between the big door and the little hill.” The mill owners are the only ones who ever use that front door.

Arthur nods and moves away quick when his mother waves to him.

It ain't till later when I am catching up with my doffing that I think of something terrible. If Arthur is right about Mr. Hine being the answer to the letter, then that committee might shut down the mill and we won't have jobs no more. And this Mr. Hine is spending the night in our house, in Pépé's bed. What if he tells Mamère what he's trying to do?

He won't tell Mamère. He'll just make secret notes in his little book.

Yes, he will. He'll tell her and she'll order him out of the house.

So what? Long as we got his dollar who cares about Mr. Hine?

But I like him. I want to talk to him more. I want to see if he'll give me a notebook to write in. And what if he tells Mamère about the letter?

Who cares about the letter? It was signed with that long word.

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