“Why—what—” began Helen, surprised.
“Oh, it ain't nothin',” she said trying to be cheerful—“I'll soon get over this ... out in the air. I'm weak now and I think it makes me nervous an' skeery.... I'll throw it off that quick,” she snapped her fingers—“out in the open air again—out on the little farm.” She was silent, as if trying to turn the subject, but she went back to it again. “You don't know how I've longed for this—to get away from the mill. It's day in an' day out here an' shut up like a convict. It ain't natural—it can't be—it ain't nature. If anybody thinks it is, let 'em look at them little things over on the other side,” and she nodded toward the main room. “Why, them little tots work twelve hours a day an' sometimes mo'. Who ever heard of children workin' at all befo' these things come into the country? Now, I've no objection to 'em, only that they ought to work grown folks an' not children. They may kill me if they can,” she laughed,—“I am grown, an' can stan' it, but I can't bear to think of 'em killin' my little brothers an' sisters—they're entitled to live until they get grown anyway.”
She stopped to cough and to show Helen how to untangle some threads.
“Oh, but they can't hurt me,” she laughed, as if ashamed of her cough; “this is bothersome, but it won't last long after I get out on the little farm.”
She stopped talking and fell to her work, and for two hours she showed Helen just how to draw the threads through, to shift the machine, to untangle the tangled threads.
It was nearly time to go home when Travis came to see how Helen was progressing. He came up behind the two girls and stood looking at them work. When they looked up Maggie started and reddened and Helen saw her tighten her thin lips in a peculiar way while the blood flew from them, leaving a thin white oval ring in the red that flushed her face.
“You are doing finely,” he said to Helen—“you will make a swift drawer-in.” He stooped over and whispered: “Such fingers and hands would draw in anything—even hearts.”
Helen blushed and looked quickly at Maggie, over whose face the pinched look had come again, but Maggie was busy at her machine.
“I remember when I came here five years ago,” went on Maggie after Travis had left, “I was so proud an' happy. I was healthy an' well an' so happy to think I cu'd make a livin' for the home-folks—for daddy an' the little ones. Oh, they would put them in the mill, but I said no, I'll work my fingers off first. Let 'em play an' grow. Yes, they've lived on what I have made for five years—daddy down on his back, too, an' the children jus' growin', an' now they are big enough and strong enough to he'p me run the little farm—instead”—she said after a pause—“instead of bein' dead an' buried, killed in the mill. That was five years ago—five years”—she coughed and looked out of the window reflectively.
“Daddy—poor daddy—he couldn't help the tree fallin' on his back an' cripplin' him; an' little Buddy, well, he was born weakly, so I done it all. Oh, I am not braggin' an' I ain't complainin', I'm so proud to do it.”