day, or less smelly, but also she is no less kind.

"I reckon you-all are goin' to make a remarkable spooler," she cheers me
on. "You'll get tired out at first, but then I gets tired, tew, right
along, only it ain't the same _kind_--it's not so _sharp_." Her
distinction is clever.

Across the room at one of the "drawing-in frames" I see the figure of
an unusally pretty girl with curly dark hair. She bends to her job in
front of the frame she runs; it has the effect of tapestry, of that
work with which women of another--oh, of _quite_ another class--amuse
their leisure, with which they kill their time. "Drawing-in,"[8]
although a sitting job, is considered to be a back-breaker. The girls
are ambitious at this work; they make good wages. They sit close to
their frames, bent over, for twelve hours out of the day. This girl
whom I see across the floor of the Excelsior is an object to rest the
eyes upon; she is a beauty. There is not much beauty of any kind or
description in sight. Maggie has noticed her esthetic effect. "You-all
seen that girl; she's suttenly prob'ly am _peart_."

[Footnote 8: A good drawer-in makes $1.25 a day.]

She is a new hand from a distance. This is her first day. What miserable
chance has brought her here? If she stays the mill will claim her body
and soul. The overseer has marked her out; he hovers in the part of the
room where she works. She has colour and her difference to her pale
companions is marked. Excelsior will not leave those roses unwithered. I
can foretell the change as yellow unhealthfulness creeps upon her cheeks
and the red forever goes. There are no red cheeks here, not one. She has
chosen a sitting-down job thinking it easier. I saw her lean back, put
her hands around her waist and rest, or try to, after she has bent four
hours over her close task. I go over to her.

"They say it's awful hard on the eyes, but they tell me, too, that I'll
be a remarkable fine hand."

I saw her apply for work, and saw, too, the man's face as he looked at
her when she asked: "Got any work?"

"We've got plenty of work for a good-looking woman like you," he said
with significance, and took pains to place her within his sight.

The yarn has come in, and I return to my part of the mill; Maggie flies
to her spools and leaves me to seek my distant place far away from her.
I set my work in order; whilst my back is turned some girl possesses
herself of my hand-harness. Mine was a new one, and the on