Spilt Milk Read Online Free PDF

small book from his knapsack. ‘Is that right? Tell me, can you read?’
    Nellie looked at the book’s title.
    ‘
Birds of the British Isles
.’
    ‘Good. Take it and read it. Swallows do not hibernate in leaf mould. Now, will you sit down with me, seeing as you have borrowed my book?’
    ‘All right,’ she said, grinning, finding a place among the buttercups and thistles. She put the book in her pocket. ‘But not for long. I have work to do.’
    ‘Not for long suits me fine,’ he said, smiling at her.
    Joe liked to talk. He said words never cost anybody anything. He was a traveller. Passing through on foot, looking for work. He came from a place in the north. A seaside town with brightly painted houses and so many seagulls the air was filled night and day with their calls.
    ‘They sound like crying babies,’ he said. ‘A terrible sound. Crying babies. I couldn’t get away from there quick enough.’
    He’d been a traveller since he left home aged fourteen. It was a good enough life. There were many like him on the road. He pointed to the earth track worn by the cows who wandered the same way each day, up to the farm to be milked and then back out to graze. He never wanted to walk the same road twice. Time wore out your shoe leather no matter what, and a travelling life was better than one spent walking over the same paths, the same fields, until the day you died.
    Nellie stole a look at him. His trousers were too short, his thin ankles poking out of them. His shirt was mended and neatly patched at the elbows. She would have liked to ask who had done the mending for him. His face was tanned and fresh with youth, his nose straight, a well-shaped mouth with a moustache hiding his top lip. His dark hair receded at the temples. A black felt hatwas on the grass beside him. It had a collection of blue jay feathers stuck in the band. She reached out and touched the feathers, hoping he wouldn’t notice her curiosity.
    ‘This is a fine meal,’ he said, peeling a hard-boiled egg. ‘Last farm I worked at we got what the pigs refused to eat. They gave us bread you’d break a tooth on.’
    ‘Everybody likes Mrs Langham’s picnics. Old Hang’em – I mean Mr Langham – is the meanest beggar you ever clapped eyes on, but she’s a decent sort. She’d give away Langham’s boots if she thought somebody needed them more than him.’
    ‘Sounds like he needs to watch where he leaves them then,’ said Joe, and Nellie laughed. She was surprised by how pleasurable their conversation was.
    In his knapsack was a sketchbook and a roll of papers. He was a self-taught artist, making a record of the countryside as he travelled. He unrolled a watercolour of a big house surrounded by trees. It was a place not far away. Hymes Court. Nellie knew it vaguely.
    ‘I’ve plenty left to learn,’ he said, studying his painting closely, poring over it. ‘And you, Miss?’ he looked up. ‘What about you? What do you like to do?’
    She cleared her throat. ‘My name is Eleanor Marsh. My sister calls me Nellie. I’m a good worker, ask Mr Langham.’
    ‘I’m sure you are. But what do you like to do? Do you have a pastime, a passion?’
    ‘A
passion
?’
    She was not sure she had ever spoken that word out loud. She told him she loved to swim. It was the finest feeling she knew.
    A breeze picked up and rustled the leaves in the poplar trees. Nellie felt cool air against her face and saw the hairs rising on Joe’s wrists. The day was golden with sunlight. Was it possible she was in love? Could it happen this fast? But Vivian’s romance novels were full of people who met at the top of a page and were in love a paragraph later. Why shouldn’t she fall in love the same way?
    Joe smiled and got to his feet, brushing eggshell off his waistcoat. His glance journeyed over her shoulder, and Nellie turned her head.
    Vivian, with the small hands and feet of a woman not made for farm work, hurried towards them. A heat haze blurred in front of