"
Look a-hyar, got any of your scrappin's on writin' hyar? Ef you don't mind anybody's messin' with your things, bring your scrappin's to me an' I'll soon tell you ef you can write a book er not," she whispered to me encouragingly, confidentially, a whisper reaching farther in the mills than a loud sound.
I thanked her and said: "Do you think that you'd know?"
"Well, I guess I would!" she said confidently. "I ain't read all my life sense I was eight years old not to know good writin' from bad. Can you-all sing?"
"No."
"Play sweet music?"
"No."
"I jest love it." She enthuses. "Every Saturday afternoon I take of a music teacher on the gee-tar. It costs me a quarter."
I could see the scene: a shanty room, the tall, awkward figure bending over her instrument; the type that the teacher made, the ambition, the eagerness—all of which qualities we are so willing to deny to the slaves of toil.
"They ain't much flowers here in Granton," she said again. "'Tain't no use to try to have even a few geraneums; it's so dry; ain't no yards nor gardens, nuther."