mes,
vainly endeavouring to look grown-up, and to pretend that she was really
the head of the family. "They want to go, and you've done mighty well in
the mill. If it wasn't for my health, I reckon I might go in and try to
learn to weave, myself. But there--I came a-past with Mandy t'other
evenin' when she was out, and the noise of that there factory is enough
for me from the outside--I never could stand to be in it. Looks like
such a racket would drive me plumb crazy."

Pap stared at his bride and clicked his teeth with the gnashing sound
that overawed the others. He drew his shaggy brows in an attempt to look
masterful.

"Well, ef you cain't tend looms, I reckon you can take Mavity's place in
the house here, and let her keep to the weavin' stiddier. She'll just
about lose her job if she has to be out and in so much as she has had to
be with me here of late."

"I will when I can," said Laurella, patronizingly. "Sometimes I get to
feeling just kind of restless and no-account, and can't do a stroke of
work. When I'm that-a-way I go to bed and sleep it off, or get out and
go somewheres that'll take my mind from my troubles. Hit's by far the
best way."

Once more Pap looked at her, and opened and shut his mouth helplessly.
Then he turned sullenly to his stepdaughter, grumbling.

"You hear that! She won't work, and you won't give me your money. The
children have obliged to bring in a little something--that's the way it
looks to me. If the mills on the Tennessee side is too choicy to take
'em--and I know well as you, Johnnie, that they air; their man Connors
told me so--I can hire 'em over at the Victory, on the Georgy side."

The Victory! A mill notorious in the district for its ancient,
unsanitary buildings, its poor management, its bad treatment of its
hands. Yes, it was true that at the Victory you could hire out anything
that could walk and talk. Johnnie caught her breath and hugged the small
pliant body to her breast, feeling with a mighty throb of fierce,
mother-tenderness, the poor little ribs, yet cartilagenous; the
delicate, soft frame for which God and nature demanded time, and chance
to grow and strengthen. Yet she knew if she gave up her wages to Pap she
would be no better off--indeed, she would be helpless in his hands; and
the sum of them would not cover what the children all together
could earn.

"Oh, Lord! To work in the Victory!" she groaned.

"Now, Johnnie," objected her mother, "don't you get me