Nan looked up at the sign on the board outside Mr Aikman’s shop. She’d overheard Mrs Lawd complaining to Mr Aikman about it, and already knew the gist of the message. She backed up a little to study it – though 12 years of age she was as small as a ten year-old and it was tacked up high. She spelled out the words: ‘Girls & Boys Wanted.’  Cold Spring Woolen Mill was hiring new boys and girls for pieceners, strippers, slubbers and bobbin carriers. Nan didn’t know what any of those jobs were, but the sign said the mill would train them. Boys could earn 60¢ a day, girls 40¢. She did the sum on her fingers. Forty cents a day would mean $2.40 a week; that was a lot of money. Of course, a skilled girl or boy would earn more, but 40¢ was better than nothing, and the mill couldn’t be worse than working on the Lawd’s farm. She was the only girl on the farm, besides Mrs Lawd, of course.  She had been their skivvy for two years, working her fingers raw from cock-crow to sunset, often ...