These days it was a common thing for Marion to follow Lily while she did her work for some part of the day, and Lily found it comforting, although at first she’d worried it would bring her trouble. She’d confessed to Marion, “I do like speaking with you, but I’m feart your mother might not like it. I don’t wish to be dismissed the way the lass before me was.”

Marion had promised her there was no chance of that. “I’d not allow it. And besides, you’re nothing like her. She was sent away because she was with child.”

Lily had been shocked. “With child?”

“By the apprentice. Not the one who works for Father now—the one before this. He was sent away as well. But my mother will no longer let me spend time in the shop. She says that all apprentices, however nice their manners and their speech, aren’t to be trusted.”

Lily, with a frown, had asked, “How old was she? The lass afore me?”

“Fourteen. I’ll be thirteen on my birthday,” Marion had said. “How old are you?”

She’d felt the gap of age. “I’m nearly ten.”

“I’d not have guessed. You look ages with me.” And with Marion’s cheerful reply, Lily had relaxed.

From that day, they had been often together—so much so that Nanse had remarked she had two helpers now, and not one.

Mrs. Bell, being close by and hearing the comment, agreed, but when Nanse looked embarrassed and ducked her head, Mrs. Bell said, “All is well, Nanse. It’s good to hear Marion talking so lively. If Lily can still do her work, and both lasses are happy, then it does no harm.”

Mr. Bell was apparently of the same mind.

As he leaned over now to inspect Lily’s work on the cutlery, he rested one hand on her shoulder as he did on Marion’s, as though he would include her in the family. “That is fine work. From the way you have those shining, we will see if they do not fly off my shelves before the week is out.” Furtively he glanced around, then from his pocket he produced a piece of paper wrapped around some lumps of sugar candy. “Here, such work deserves reward,” he told them. “But you’re not to tell your mother, Marion. Nor Nanse, else they would lecture me for ruining your teeth.” He winked, and left them.

Lily could not mind the last time she’d had such a treat as sugar candy. Popping one small piece into her mouth, she savored its dissolving sweetness. She told Marion, “Your father’s kind.”

“He does like giving presents.”

Lily deeply missed her own father.

That night when all the house had fallen silent, and the cinders had been raked upon the kitchen hearth and she was lying in the pallet bed with Nanse asleep beside her, Lily missed her father so intensely that she pressed her fingers to her forehead, as if somehow by that action she might feel his kiss there once again, to make her dreams the sweeter.