“Gee!” he gasped; “I allus thought you was poor. You must have got a lot of money saved, all right, all right!”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Micky. I shall have about three weeks’ wages and what my uncle gives me—seven dollars—if he gives it to me at all. That’s all I’ve got to start on.”
“Don’t stuff that down me, Priddy!” cried Micky, in great disgust, for he hated to be made sport of. “You can’t bluff yer uncle.”
But nevertheless he published all over the room what I had told him, and thereafter I answered many questions about myself and my plans, and had to spend much energy in rebutting the prevalent suspicion that I was “bluffing the room.”
Then came my last Saturday in the mill—the last day I have ever spent in the mill. I did my work with a great conscience that day. I don’t believe the second hand had to look twice to see if I had done my sweeping well. The spinners had become very friendly, as if my ambition had won respect from them, and even the overseer came to me just before I left the room, took me by the hand, and said: “I wish you the very best of luck, Priddy. Keep to it!”
On Monday morning, at six o’clock, I sat in the train. I had drawn thirteen dollars from the mill, received seven dollars from my uncle, said good-by to my old friends, and paid fifteen dollars and sixty-five cents for a ticket. Aunt Millie, in tears, had kissed me, and had hoped that “I’d do well, very well!” Uncle Stanwood had carried my hand-bag for me to the electric car and had given me good counsel out of his full heart. Now I sat listening to the mill bells and whistles giving their first warning to the workers. “You’ll never call for me again, I hope!” I said to myself as I listened. Then the train started, and I glued my face to the window-pane to catch a last glimpse of the city where for seven years I had been trying to get ahead of machinery and had failed. The train went slowly over the grade crossings. I saw the mill crowds at every street, held back by the gates, waiting deferentially while I, who had been one of them last week, was whirled along towards an education. I saw them as I had walked with them—women in shawls and looking always tired, men in rough clothes and with dirty clay pipes prodded in their mouths, and girls in working aprons, and boys, just as I had been, in overalls and under-shirts. And I was going away from it all, in spite of everything!
One of my friends was an old woman, stone blind. When I had given her my farewell, she had said: “Al, I’ll be at the crossing in front of my house when the train goes by on Monday morning. Look for me. I’ll wave my handkerchief when the train passes, lad, and you’ll know by that sign that I’m sending you off to make something of yourself!”
We came to the outskirts of the city; the mill crowds had been left, and at last a lonely crossing came, the one for which I had been looking. I had the window open. The train was gathering speed, but I saw the black-garbed blind woman, supported by her daughter, standing near the gates, her eyes fixed ahead, and her handkerchief fluttering, fluttering, as we plunged into the country.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.