s it she was doing, he wondered, that she knew so perfectly he would
disapprove? And then, with the return of the books, the dropping of
Johnnie's education, came the abrupt end of those informal letters. Not
till they ceased, did he realize how large a figure they had come to cut
in his life. Only this morning he had taken them out and read them over,
and decided that the girl who wrote them was worth at least an attempt
toward an explanation and better footing. He had decided not to give her
up. Now she confirmed his worst apprehensions. At his glance, her face
was suffused with a swift, distressed red. She wondered if he yet knew
of her mother's marriage. She dreaded the time when she must tell him.
With an inarticulate murmur she spoke to the little ones, turned her
back and hurried across the bridge.

"Is Johnnie putting those children in the mill?" asked Stoddard half
doubtfully, as his gaze followed them toward the entrance of
the Victory.

"I believe so," returned Lydia, smiling. "We were just speaking of how
good it was that the cotton mills gave an opportunity for even the
smaller ones to help, at work which is within their capacity."

"Johnnie Consadine said that?" inquired Gray, startled. "Why is she
taking them over to the Victory?" And then he answered his own question.
"She knows very well they are below the legal age in Tennessee."

Lydia Sessions trimmed instantly.

"That must be it," she said. "I wondered a little that she seemed not to
want them in the same factory that she is in. But I remember Brother
Hartley said that we are very particular at our mill to hire no young
people below the legal age. That must be it."

Stoddard looked with reprehending yet still incredulous eyes, to where
Johnnie and her small following disappeared within the mill doors.
Johnnie--the girl who had written him that pathetic little letter about
the children in her room, and her growing doubt as to the wholesomeness
of their work; the girl who had read the books he gave her, and fed her
understanding on them till she expressed herself logically and lucidly
on the economic problems of the day--that, for the sake of the few cents
they could earn, she should put the children, whom he knew she loved,
into slavery, seemed to him monstrous beyond belief. Why, if this were
true, what a hypocrite the girl was! As coarse and unfeeling as the rest
of them. Yet she had some shame left; she had blushed to be caught in
the act by