The Silver Touch Read Online Free PDF Page A

halted abruptly with a sense of deep shock. John Bateman was holding her drawing of the cat and studying it intently. ‘That belongs to me!’ She made an involuntary rush down the steps as if she would have snatched it from him.
    He looked up from the drawing, his expression intrigued, his eyes narrowed. ‘You’re extremely talented. This is a fine drawing. I assume you’re self-taught?’
    She was trembling in the aftermath of shock, but there washed over her an intense joy that he liked what she had done. It was like a benediction, his approval a balm, sweeping away the rejection and scorn she had always expected others to pour upon her efforts. Her mother had always praised them, but that had been different altogether, part of the security of home, an extension of herself.
    ‘Yes, I am.’ She felt unusually vulnerable. ‘I have always liked to sketch but I have little time these days.’
    ‘That’s a pity.’ He handed the drawing back to her. ‘Do you have the watch-chain?’
    ‘No. Jack is out and his wife doesn’t know where it is. I’m to deliver it to you tomorrow at Master Harwood’s workshop.’ She noted that he smiled again upon hearing her words as if inwardly he was as pleased as she was that they were to have another meeting, and shortly, too.
    ‘Do you know where the workshop is?’ he enquired. ‘No? It’s easy to find.’ He gave her clear and precise directions. It was in Cripplegate, not far from St Giles’s Church. Many goldsmiths had workshops there, it being common practice for those of one craft to set up in close proximity.
    ‘Are you going to do the repair?’
    ‘I expect so.’
    ‘Then I’ll ask for you.’
    He nodded, those river-blue eyes dwelling on her.
    ‘Please do that, Miss Needham. Now I’ll bid good day to you. I have to get back to work.’
    ‘Good day, Mr Bateman.’
    She watched him stride across the cobbles to reach the gate. There he paused to look back at her with a wave. The hinges screeched as the gate swung closed after him. She stood lost in her own happy thoughts until Martha, shouting from an upper window, caused her to go scuttling back indoors.
    Her one fear that evening was that Master Harwood would come into the tavern and then Jack would hand over the watch-chain to him directly, curtailing all chances of her expedition the following day. Fortunately Master Harwood did not appear and during the clearing up in the taproom at the evening’s end, Hester seized an opening to tell Jack about John Bateman’s call.
    ‘I know the lad,’ Jack said, turning chairs upside down on the tables ready for the sweeping out of the old spittle-soiled sawdust and the spreading of the new. ‘John Bateman is Harwood’s senior apprentice. He comes of good Staffordshire stock but has no money. It’s the familiar story of gentlefolk impoverished by the gambling of previous generations. Both his parents died young and he was reared by his grandfather who paid for his education at Westminster School and settled him in his present apprenticeship, which was the limit of what the old fellow could do, being almost in penury himself.’
    She was surprised to have learned so much in a short time, even though Jack was typical of most landlords in being affable and talkative with a fount of information gathered about people and events far beyond the range of their own taproom bars. ‘Did Master Harwood tell you all this?’ It struck her as odd that a master craftsman, even in his cups, should discuss a humble apprentice during a social hour.
    ‘He did. About six or seven months ago when his daughter became betrothed to young Bateman.’
    ‘Betrothed!’ She was wiping beer rings from the oaken surface of the bar and swung round to look towards him, her face dismayed. Not only had she waited on Caroline Harwood during supper parties and knew her to be good-looking in a cool, elegant way, but by repute Master Harwood’s daughter was educated and well read, having been