He greeted his womenfolk who were hovering in the hall and followed them into the dining room. After two hours of hard work at the mill Randolph was ready for a hearty meal, and considered he had earned it; porridge and cream on the table, kidneys and bacon waiting under a silver cover on the sideboard and plenty of hot buttered toast and orange marmalade. That his mill hands – over a hundred men, women and children – might have had as keen appetites as his own but had to be content with a hunk of coarse bread brought from home was a thought that did not for one moment enter his head. Glancing at his sister Chloe, presiding over the teapot at the other end of the table in her brown bombazine dress and white net morning cap, Randolph felt irritated by her flow of trivialities and thought it little wonder she had never found herself a husband. Like most of the Hardaker family, Chloe was tall and big boned, but instead of making an impressive figure she merely looked ungainly. Now, in her middle age, she was the archetype of a prudish, sour old maid.
