“Are you one of the mill girls?”
“Night shift?”
She nodded.
“But it’s late—it’s after eight o’clock. Why didn’t you go home with the rest?”
The child hesitated. Her eyes swerved from his gaze. She looked as if she wanted to run away.
“Come, come,” he urged kindly. “Answer me. I won’t hurt you. I may help you. Let us go around here where the wind doesn’t blow so.” And he led the way to the sheltered side of the building. “Now tell us all about it. Why didn’t you go home with the rest?”
“I did start to, sir, but I was so tired, an’—an’ I coughed so, I stopped to rest. It was nice an’ cool out here, an’ I was so hot in there.” She jerked her thumb toward the mill.
“Yes, yes, I know,” he said hastily; and his lips set into stern lines as he thought of the hundreds of other little girls that found the raw morning “nice and cool” after the hot, moist air of the mills.
“But don’t you see,” he protested earnestly, “that that’s the very time you mustn’t stop and rest? You take cold, and that’s what makes you cough. You shouldn’t be——” he stopped abruptly. “What’s your name?” he asked.