MILL

In the warping shed Mercy Gale plied her work. It was a separate
building adjoining the stores at Bridetown Mill and, like them,
impregnated with the distinctive, fat smell of flax and hemp. Under
dusty rafters and on a floor of stone the huge warping reels stood. They
were light, open frameworks that rose from floor to ceiling and turned
upon steel rods. Hither came the full bobbins from the spinning machines
to be wound off. Two dozen of the bobbins hung together on a flat frame
or 'creel' and through eyes and slots the yarn ran through a 'hake,'
which deftly crossed the strands so that they ran smoothly and freely.
The bake box rose and fell and lapped the yarn in perfect spirals round
the warping reels as they revolved. The length of a reel of twine varies
in different places and countries; but at Bridetown, a Dorset reel was
always measured, and it represented twenty-one thousand, six hundred
yards.

Mercy Gale was chaining the warp off the reels in great massive coils
which would presently depart to be polished and finished at Bridport.
All its multiple forms sprang from the simple yarn. It would turn into
shop and parcel twines; fishing twines for deep sea lines and nets; and
by processes of reduplication, swell to cords and shroud laid ropes,
hawsers and mighty cables.

A little figure filled the door of the shed and Estelle Waldron
appeared. She shook hands and greeted the worker with friendship, for
Estelle was now free of the Mill and greatly prided herself on
personally knowing everybody within them.

"Good morning, Mercy," she said. "I've come to see Nancy Buckler."

"Good morning, miss. I know. She's going to run in at dinner time to
sing you her song."

"It's a wonderful song, I believe," declared Estelle, "and very, very
old. Her grandfather taught it to her before he died, and I want to
write it down. Do you like poetry, Mercy?"

"Can't say as I do," confessed the warper. She was a fair, tall girl. "I
like novels," she added. "I love stories, but I haven't got much use for
rhymes."

"Stories about what?" asked Estelle. "I have a sort of an idea to start
a library, if I can persuade my father to let me. I believe I could get
some books from friends to make a beginning."

"Stories about adventure," declared Mercy. "Most of the girls like love
stories; but I don't care so much about them. I like stories where big
things happen in history."

"So do I; and then you know you're reading ab