"No, I don't think so. I don't notice them now, except to make them say things. But come along, we have a half-hour nooning. We might have a whole hour, but most of the hands like to give up part of their dinner-time every day and then take the afternoon off on Saturday. The 'Supe' doesn't care, so that's the way we get our 'Saturday-half.' I sometimes wish we worked the other way, but of course we couldn't. If part stops, the other part has to, 'cause every room depends on some other room to keep it going."
"Why, I think that's beautiful, don't you? Like a big whole, and all of us the needed parts."
"No, I don't. I don't see one single beautiful thing about this hateful old mill. At least, I didn't before this morning, when you came."
Amy looked into Mary's face a moment. Then she stooped and kissed it gently. Small though Amy herself was, for her age, she was still taller than her new friend, and felt herself far stronger.
Away in another place Gwendolyn and her mates observed this little by-play, and one girl remarked:—
"Hmm. That settles her hash. If she's going to take up with that horrid Mary Reese, there won't anybody go with her. Not a single girl, and as for the fellows—my!"
To this flirtatious young person to be ignored by "the fellows" meant the depth of misfortune. Happily, however, Amy had never hear the word "fellow," as at present applied, and to do anything for the sake of attracting attention to herself she would have considered the extreme of vulgarity.
Mary guided her to a quiet corner behind some bales, and filling a tin cup with water from a faucet, proceeded to open her own luncheon. Then she watched Amy, who, almost too weary to eat, loitered over the untying of the dainty parcel Cleena had made up. When she at last did so, and quietly sorted the contents of the neat box, she was surprised by Mary's astonished stare.
"What is it, dear? Aren't you hungry?"