THE WHIPPER-IN

When the mill opened the next day, there was work for Jud Carpenter.
He came in and approached the superintendent's desk briskly.

"Well, suh, hu' many to-day?" he asked.

Kingsley looked over his list of absentees.

"Four, and two of them spinners. Carpenter, you must go at once and
see about it. They are playing off, I am sure."

"Lem'me see the list, suh,"--and he ran his eye over the names.

"Bud Billings--plague his old crotchety head--. He kno's that
machine's got to run, whether no. Narthin's the matter with him--bet
a dollar his wife licked him last night an' he's mad about it."

"That will do us no good," said Kingsley--"what he is mad about. That
machine must be started at once. The others you can see afterwards."

Carpenter jerked his slouch hat down over his eyes and went quickly
out.

In half an hour he was back again. His hat was off, his face was red,
his shaggy eyebrows quivered with angry determination, as, with one
hand in the collar of the frightened Bud, he pulled the slubber into
the superintendent's presence.

Following her husband came Mrs. Billings--a small, bony, wiry,
black-eyed woman, with a firmly set mouth and a perpetual
thunder-cloud on her brow--perhaps the shadow of her coarse,
crow-black hair.

While Jud dragged him, she carried a stick and prodded Bud in the
rear. Nor was she chary in abuse.

Jerked into the superintendent's presence, Bud's scared eyes darted
here and there as if looking for a door to break through, and all the
time they were silently protesting. His hands, too, joined in the
protest; one of them wagged beseechingly behind appealing to his
spouse to desist--the other went through the same motion in front
begging Jud Carpenter for mercy.

But not a word did he utter--not even a grunt did he make.

They halted as quickly as they entered. Bud's eyes sought the
ceiling, the window, the floor,--anywhere but straight ahead of him.

His wife walked up to the superintendent's desk--she was hot and
flushed. Her small black eyes, one of which was cocked cynically,
flashed fire, her coarse hair fell across her forehead, or was
plastered to her head with perspiration.

It was pathetic to look at Bud, with his deep-set, scared eyes.
Kingsley had never heard him speak a word, nor had he even been able
to catch his eye. But he was the best slubber in the mill--tireless,
pain-staking. His place could not be filled.

Bud was really a good-natured