"Did you live in the country when you were a child?" Hertha asked, interested at once.
"That I did," Kathleen answered.
"Didn't you love it? The sky is so big in the country—you get such miserable smoky patches here—and there are great stretches of earth. You feel like running with your arms thrown out and singing; and while you're feeling the air and the sky and the big things you look down at your feet and see the little spring flowers."
"Is it like that?" asked Kathleen. "Do you know I hardly remember it."
"Did you leave when you were so young?"
"Eleven."
"But, Kathleen——"
"The sky and air and flowers were dear where I lived, they were only for the rich. For a little girl like me, who slaved in the factory from sun to sun, they were luxuries that came Sundays and holidays and that she was too weary to enjoy."
"At work in the factory at eleven?"
"I worked when I was eight. I remember how my teacher looked when she met me one Sunday and asked why I didn't come to school. I told her my mother had put me to work in the cotton mill. 'It's a sin,' she said and the tears in her eyes. And then she went on to tell how I was her best pupil, and my mother must leave me with her. But that was all come of it, just words. Words from her and the mill for me."