ating the cotton-mill situation in his own fashion. To do
this as he conceived it should be done, he had hired himself to the
Hardwick Spinning Company in an office position which gave him a fair
outlook on the business, and put him in complete touch with the
practical side of it; yet the facts of the case made the situation
evident to those under him as well as his peers. Whatever convictions
and opinions he was maturing in this year with the Hardwicks, he kept to
himself; but he was supposed to hold some socialistic ideas, and Lydia
Sessions, James Hardwick's sister-in-law, made her devoir to these by
engaging zealously in semi-charitable enterprises among the mill-girls.
He was a passionate individualist. The word seems unduly fiery when one
remembers the smiling, insouciant manner of his divergences from the
conventional type; yet he was inveterately himself, and not some
schoolmaster's or tailor's or barber's version of Gray Stoddard; and in
this, though Johnnie did not know it, lay the strength of his charm
for her.

The moments passed unheeded after he came into her field of vision, and
she watched him for some time, busy at his morning's work. It took her
breath when he raised his eyes suddenly and their glances encountered.
He plainly recognized her at once, and nodded a cheerful greeting. After
a while he got up and came out into the hall, his hands full of papers,
evidently on his way to one of the other offices. He paused beside the
bench and spoke to her.

"Waiting for the room boss? Are they going to put you on this morning?"
he asked pleasantly.

"Yes, I'm a-going to get a chance to work right away," she smiled up at
him. "Ain't it fine?"

The smile that answered hers held something pitying, yet it was a pity
that did not hurt or offend.

"Yes--I'm sure it's fine, if you think so," said Stoddard, half
reluctantly. Then his eye caught the broken pink blossom which Johnnie
had pinned to the front of her bodice. "What's that?" he asked. "It
looks like an orchid."

He was instantly apologetic for the word; but Johnnie detached the
flower from her dress and held it toward him.

"It is," she assented. "It's an orchid; and the little yellow flower
that we-all call the whippoorwill shoe is an orchid, too."

Stoddard thrust his papers into his coat pocket and took the blossom in
his hand.

"That's the pink moccasin flower," Johnnie told him. "They don't bloom
in the valley at all, and they're not very