The noise, as well as the occupation, forbade all conversation, and the woman and child worked on in silence for three or four hours, until Annie had finished the job of making the two dozen sacks upon which she was engaged.
Then she stopped her machine, covered it, gathered up her pile of sacks, and drew her chair near the stool of the child. Here she began to draw out the basting threads, and fasten loose ends, and put on all those little finishing touches that must be done by hand.
And while she did this she began to question her little guest, with so much tact as well as tenderness that in the course of an hour or a little more time she drew from the confiding child as much of the story of her short life as that child understood and remembered.
When it grew too dark to work any longer, Annie folded up the sacks, which were by that time completely finished, and said:
“Now you stay here while I go and take these things to the store at the corner. You see, I work for that same store where I bought your clothes.”
“Oh, do you? I’m real glad it is so near. And I will help you all I can. Say! I have been some little tiny bit of use, haven’t I?”
“Indeed, you have, my dear,” Annie answered, as she left the room.
The child, pleased at this warm acknowledgment of her services, looked around the room to see what more she could do to help her friend.
She saw threads and fluff scattered about the carpet, and she stooped down and gathered them up and put them in the stove.
Then she looked around again for “new worlds” of usefulness “to conquer,” and she saw Annie’s workbasket on the table in some disorder.