Connie not moving, abrupt, alert. “What Manchester man?”

“One Norman told me about.”

“Norman didn’t tell you a thing. He doesn’t know a thing. There’s nothing to know.”

“Said there was a man behind why you were so willing to come back up here.”

Connie snorted. “I was ready I expect. Sick of that town. Sick of that old mill.”

“No man then? No Manchester man?”

Her legs still crossed, her hands cupped over the upper knee. Eyebrows raised. “Not worth the telling.”

“You fall in love?”

“I thought.”

“So?”

Connie stood from the chair and went back to the sofa and took up her knitting. Leah sat watching her. The needles flared and cracked against each other. Leah sat with her mending loose in her lap. A short time passed. The long blue and purple winter dusk was gaining. Other-times, Leah would have risen and lighted the lamps. Now she only sat, letting the pale window light suffice. Connie worked until she came to a pause, counted out stitches and then began to finger out loops, backing up. Finished with that she held her needles flat in her lap atop the infant blanket and said, “First day in that mill was the most terrifying thing you can imagine. The racket of it. The size. The machines. All the people. I was determined not to be the country girl I was. I worked so hard at it. I think it was three months before I took a breath I didn’t think about. I worked so hard at not being a country girl that I didn’t even see him coming. I believe he had my number before I even knew he existed. Jack. Jack Lavin. He was a lovely man. I should’ve noticed that. He took me out. The opera house. Sunday picnics. Such a gentleman. Found out where I was from and got me talking all about it. Began talking about coming back here and opening a shop of our own. As if each one of us doing the same thing over and over a thousand times a day made us experts about clothing, dry goods. Brought me a cup of ice cream one afternoon and I got all the way to the bottom when I found the ring in it and Jack up against me breathing in my ear about how there would be a better one as soon as he could afford, how this was just a token thing against what he intended. Well it had me in a swoon I tell you. June evening. We walked out through the town to the old cemetery and by then it was dark but oh so warm. We lay out there among the dead until the dew came down and he brought me back to my boardinghouse wrapped up in his coat. And we did that for three-four weeks. I got so worried but he assured me everything was all right. Nothing to worry about. Well, I don’t know why but I was fortunate. After five days of his not showing up I skipped my lunch, so sick already to my stomach, and walked down through the lengths of the mill buildings until I got to the rooms of the looms where he worked and found a foreman. Oh, Jack, he said. Jack married that Quebec girl and went off with her to the Gaspé where her people had a bakery. Said Jack told him he’d grown up in a bakery and knew bread like the back of his hand. Foreman said to me, You was lucky dearie, them Frenchies aren’t gonna know what hit em when Jack Lavin breezes in and out of the old Gaspé. Might likely leave some flour behind but whatever cash and coin they stuffed in cans under the hearth will grow feet like that. And he snapped his fingers. I said I was just asking for a friend. He put his hand on my shoulder and said to tell my friend she was a lucky girl. So I went back to work with the sweat pouring off me and sweat like that two weeks until my monthly came. Just another dumb-cluck girl I guess. Like I said, Not worth the telling.”