Molly, my elbow-companion, seems to take up the whole broad seat, she is so big and so pervading; and her close proximity—unwashed, heavy with perspiration as she is, is not conducive to appetite.
She is full of news and chatter and becomes the leading spirit of the meal.
"I reckon you-all never did see anything like the fight to the mill to-day."
She arouses at once the interest of even the dull men opposite, who pause, in the applying of their knives and forks, to hear.
"Amanda Wilcox she dun tol' Ida Jacobs that she'd do her at noon, and Ida she sarst her back. It was all about a sport[5]—Bill James.He's been spo'tin' Ida Jacobs these three weeks, I reckon, and Amanda got crazy over it and 'clared she'd spile her game. And she tol' Ida Jacobs a lie about Bill—sayd he' been spo'tin' her down to the Park on Sunday.
"Well, sir, the whole spinnin'-room was out to see what they-all'd do at noon, and they jest resh'd for each other like's they was crazy; and one man he got between 'em and sayd, 'Now the gyrl what spits over my hand first can begin the fight.'
"They both them spit right, into each other's faces, they did so; and arter that yer couldn't get them apart. Ida Jacobs grabbed Amanda by the ha'r and Amanda hit her plump in the chest with her fist. They was suttenly like to kill each other ef the men hadn't just parted them; it took three men to part 'em."
Her story was much appreciated.
"Ida was dun fer, I can tell ye; she suttenly was. She can't git back to work fer days."
The spinning-room is the toughest room in the mill.