The door of the room in which Samantha lay was open, and in plain view of the hall she lay with a look of pain, feigned or real, on her face. She was a woman past forty—a spinster truly—who had been in the mill since it was first started, and, as she came from a South Carolina mill to the Acme, had, in fact, been in a cotton mill, as she said—“all her life.” For she could not remember when, as a child even, she had not worked in one.
Her chest was sunken, her shoulders stooped, her whole form corded and knotted with the fight against machinery. Her skin, bronzed and sallow, looked not unlike the hard, fine wood-work of the loom, oiled with constant use.
Jud walked in unceremoniously.
“What ails you, Samanthy?” he asked, with feigned kindness.
“Oh, I dunno, Jud, but I've got a powerful hurtin' in my innards.”
“The hurtin' was so bad,” said her mother, “that I had to put a hot rock on her stomach, last night.”
She motioned to a stone lying on the hearth. Jud glanced at it—its size staggered him.
“Good Lord! an' you say you had that thing on her stomach? Why didn't you send her up to the mill an' let us lay a hot steam engine on her?”
“What you been eatin', Samanthy?” he asked suddenly.
“Nuthin', Jud—I aint got no appetite at all!”