ould see it whenever he wished.

"An' your job?" she quavered.

"I ain't never goin' to work again."

"My God, Johnny!" she wailed, "don't say that!"

What he had said was blasphemy to her. As a mother who hears her child
deny God, was Johnny's mother shocked by his words.

"What's got into you, anyway?" she demanded, with a lame attempt at
imperativeness.

"Figures," he answered. "Jes' figures. I've ben doin' a lot of figurin'
this week, an' it's most surprisin'."

"I don't see what that's got to do with it," she sniffled.

Johnny smiled patiently, and his mother was aware of a distinct shock at
the persistent absence of his peevishness and irritability.

"I'll show you," he said. "I'm plum' tired out. What makes me tired?
Moves. I've ben movin' ever since I was born. I'm tired of movin', an' I
ain't goin' to move any more. Remember when I worked in the glass-house?
I used to do three hundred dozen a day. Now I reckon I made about ten
different moves to each bottle. That's thirty-six thousan' moves a day.
Ten days, three hundred an' sixty thousan' moves. One month, one million
an' eighty thousan' moves. Chuck out the eighty thousan'"--he spoke with
the complacent beneficence of a philanthropist--"chuck out the eighty
thousan', that leaves a million moves a month--twelve million moves a
year.

"At the looms I'm movin' twic'st as much. That makes twenty-five million
moves a year, an' it seems to me I've ben a movin' that way 'most a
million years.

"Now this week I ain't moved at all. I ain't made one move in hours an'
hours. I tell you it was swell, jes' settin' there, hours an' hours,
an' doin' nothin'. I ain't never ben happy before. I never had any time.
I've ben movin' all the time. That ain't no way to be happy. An' I ain't
going to do it any more. I'm jes' goin' to set, an' set, an' rest, an'
rest, and then rest some more."

"But what's goin' to come of Will an' the children?" she asked
despairingly.

"That's it, 'Will an' the children,'" he repeated.

But there was no bitterness in his voice. He had long known his mother's
ambition for the younger boy, but the thought of it no longer rankled.
Nothing mattered any more. Not even that.

"I know, ma, what you've ben plannin' for Will--keepin' him in school to
make a book-keeper out of him. But it ain't no use, I've quit. He's got
to go to work."

"An' after I have brung you up the way I have," she wept, starting to
cover her head with the apron