building standing
high on its green slope.

"The hospital!" echoed Mandy, with a half-terrified glance over her
shoulder. "Yes, ef you want to be shipped out of town in a box for the
student doctors to cut up, I reckon the hospital is a good place. It's
just like everything else the rich swells does--it's for their profit,
not for our'n. They was a lot of big talk when they built that thar
hospital, and every one of us was axed to give something for beds and
such. We was told that if we got hurt in the mill we could go thar free,
and if we fell sick they'd doctor us for little or nothin'. They can
afford it--considerin' the prices they git for dead bodies, I reckon."

"Now, Mandy, you don't believe any such as that," remonstrated Johnnie,
with a half-smile.

"Believe it--I know it to be true!" Mandy stuck to her point stubbornly.
"Thar was Lura Dawson; her folks was comin' down to git the body and
bury hit, and when they got here the hospital folks couldn't tell 'em
whar to look--no, they couldn't. Atlas Dawson 'lows he'll git even with
'em if it takes him the rest of his natural life. His wife was a
Bushares and her whole tribe is out agin the hospital folks and the mill
folks down here. I reckon you live too far up in the mountains to hear
the talk, but some of these swells had better look out."

As the long, hot days followed each other, Johnnie noticed how Mandy
failed. Her hand was forever at her side, where she had a stitch-like
pain, that she called "a jumpin' misery." Even broad, seasoned Mavity
Bence grew pallid and gaunt. Only Pap Himes thrived. His trouble was
rheumatism, and the hot days were his best. Of evenings he would sit on
the porch in his broad, rush-bottomed chair, the big yellow cat on his
knees, and smoke his pipe and, if he cared to do so, banter unkindly
with the girls on the steps. Early in the season as it was, the upstairs
rooms were terribly hot; and sometimes the poor creatures sat or lay on
the porch till well past midnight. Across the gulch were songs and the
strumming of banjos or guitars, where the young fellows at the inn
waked late.

The rich people on top of the hill were beginning to make their
preparations to flit to the seashore or mountains. Lydia Sessions left
for two weeks, promising to return in June, and the Uplift work drooped,
neglected. There seems to be an understanding that people do not need
uplifting so much during hot weather. Gray Stoddard was faithful in the