A Family Christmas Read Online Free PDF

exhaustion, a fear that the promised home would not materialise.
    John took out the hard bread and stale cheese. ‘Well,’ he said, trying to keep up their spirits. ‘This is it. Once this has been eaten we should be there. That’s if we calculated properly.’ He hoped to God they would be; the money they had allocated for food on the journey had gone and he didn’t want to dip into the rest of it. ‘So come on, let’s eat and be merry. Then it’s off we go to Millington.’
    ‘There’s a hell of a lot of hills round ’ere.’ Robert moaned.
    ‘The Pennine hills,’ James said. ‘It’s supposed to be a beautiful part of the country.’
    ‘They’re more like mountains. Give me Lincolnshire any day. I don’t know why we had to leave,’ Robert grumbled for the umpteenth time.
    ‘Because we’d nowhere to live – you know that.’ The Greys had lived in a small, rundown cottage on a large private estate. Jonas Grey, their father, had been in the owner’s employ as a gamekeeper. The two elder brothers had both found work in a corn mill, not very highly paid, but constant. Then tragedy had struck the family in the form of a particularly virulant type of influenza. Young Robert had recovered, but Jonas and his dear wife Maria had both died . Of course they had been evicted from the cottage despite pleas from the minister of the church to the affluent but miserly owner. The brothers had been given temporary shelter by the minister, who had passed word amongst his friends and acquaintances about the boys’ plight. Amazingly, the vicar of Millington had heard the story and he and his wife had offered a home to the desperate brothers. The vicar, also chaplain of the steelworks in the town, had sought employment there for James, wheedled a job in the mine for John, and been given a chance for young Robert to further his education as apprentice to a local joiner.
    ‘Well, the sooner we get going the sooner we arrive.’ James rose wearily to his feet. At twenty James felt responsible for his youngest brother Robert and John, the middle one.
    ‘I don’t think I can walk with these on me feet.’ Robert hobbled as best he could. He could feel the scarves already unwinding and his feet hurt more than ever.
    ‘Try and put up with it. We won’t be long before we’re there.’ Neither of the elder brothers mentioned the festering blisters on their own heels. The smoke was nearer now as they entered the field that led over the brow of the hill.
    ‘Would yer just look at that?’ John was the first to see the view. ‘You can see for miles.’
    The distant hill spread in both directions for as far as the eye could see. A reservoir shimmered in the evening glow, reflecting the trees of Sheepdip Wood and beyond that the stark, beautiful Pennine moors stretched upwards to meet the sky. Beneath them the steelworks sprawled alongside the river and what looked like the main street.
    ‘That must be the church we’re heading for,’ John decided, ‘so it looks like downhill all the way from here.’
    ‘Well I’m glad about that.’ Robert brightened up a bit. ‘It looks like a big place.’ He began to feel excited.
    ‘Well compared to our village it definitely is.’
    ‘Will that be the vicarage where we’re going to live? Next to the church.’
    ‘I don’t know, but we shall soon see.’
    ‘I don’t like all these hills though,’ Robert moaned.
    ‘I do. It’s far more interesting than flat country.’
    James agreed. ‘Aye and look how far we can see; it’s beautiful.’
    They were going at a faster pace now – in fact the hill was so steep it was hard to hold back. A herd of cattle came to meet them, mooing a welcome so loud a farmer’s wife came to see what all the fuss was about.
    ‘Good evening, is that Millington down there?’ James enquired.
    ‘It is that, and the place in the distance beyond the dam is Cragstone, though yer can only see’t smoke from chimneys, it being several miles