She wished now that she’d waited a bit longer before taking on a third loom, even if the manufacturing side of her business was doing well. It was the retail part which troubled her. Charlie was perking up, insisting on getting out and about more as the pain subsided a little and Polly was glad about that. But the responsibility of being the main bread winner in the family still lay heavy upon her. After a quick sandwich lunch, the first of several young girls answering the advertisement for spool setters began to arrive and she went to interview them. This took an hour of her valuable time and even when she’d set two girls on, neither of them much over thirteen since they’d just left school, Polly wished with all her heart that Lucy too would come into the business. She would have made more of the job than the pair put together. What an old stick-in-the-mud Tom was, to be sure. Should she have a word with him herself? she wondered. Charlie was against the idea. ‘So how would you speak to him, as his employer or his mother-in-law?
