A Mistletoe Kiss by Katie Flynn Read Free Book Online

And I got some squashed fly ones as well since I know they’re your favourites.’
    â€˜No thank you,’ old Mrs Preece said frostily. ‘The tea will do nicely.’
    â€˜Well, I wouldn’t mind a biscuit, since supper won’t be ready for another half-hour,’ Miss Preece remarked. She went over to the larder, fetched the biscuit tin and opened the lid. ‘Are you sure …’ she began, then stopped short, staring wide-eyed at her mother. The tin, which she had filled with ginger nuts and Garibaldi biscuits only the previous day, was empty.
    For a moment, sheer puzzlement kept Miss Preece open-mouthed but silent, then a smile curved her lips. She simply couldn’t help it. Her mother, claiming to be unable to move from her chair, had managed to cross the kitchen, open the pantry door, go inside, and eat not just one or two biscuits, but the whole lot. Unable to prevent herself, she gazed accusingly at the older woman. ‘Mother, did you …’ she began, then stopped short.
    Mrs Preece, without so much as a groan or grumble, had risen to her feet and was making for the door. Over her shoulder she said: ‘I got peckish. Mrs Simpson was late with my lunch … and come to think, I gave her some biscuits for her grandchildren. They’re spendingthe day with her tomorrow so I thought it would be a kindness …’
    â€˜Mother! If you …’ Miss Preece stopped speaking because she was doing so to a firmly closed door.

Chapter Three
    Although the incident with the laundry money had left her somewhat shaken, Hetty would not have dreamed of admitting it to either Miss Preece or Gareth. Gareth would jeer and tell her cousins that she was a little ninny, and the librarian might withdraw her offer to let Hetty use the Reading Room. After all, the librarian had intervened before the three lads had had a chance to do more than thump her on the side of the head. With a couple of boy cousins such blows were by no means unusual, and Hetty had learned to give as good as she got. But her attackers had been unknown to her, and a good deal brawnier than either Bill or Tom – brawnier than Gareth too, come to that – and she had no desire to find herself the object of a vendetta. Large lads who had been vanquished by a middle-aged librarian, and furthermore one with a limp, would not relish the news of their defeat getting around, so might take steps to ensure that their victim did not tale-clat.
    However, Hetty had no illusions about her personal appearance. She was small, plain and unremarkable, so having thought the matter over she decided that she was safe enough. She realised that if she met any of her attackers again she would not know them fromAdam, and was pretty sure they would not know her either. Accordingly, she trotted along beside Gareth, telling him of her day, though with certain omissions, for she supposed, rightly, that he would not understand her urge to join the library or her pleasure when Miss Preece had agreed to let her study the books on the premises and would immediately call her a stupid little swot, or teacher’s pet.
    What he did understand, however, and wanted to talk about, was her grandfather’s barge, the Water Sprite . ‘There ain’t no job I’d enjoy more,’ he said, his greenish-grey eyes wistful instead of mocking. ‘Imagine it! Carryin’ excitin’ cargoes all the way from the Liverpool docks to the other side of them hills … what’s they called?’
    â€˜The Pennines,’ Hetty told him. ‘Not that the cargoes are excitin’, not really. My grandpa takes all sorts, but mostly it’s grain, or wool, though sometimes it’s what they call a mixed cargo. That means calling at all the villages along the way; I like that best. It means a lot of stoppin’ and startin’, and carryin’ stuff up from the canal and into the villages themselves, but you get to know