The Gold of Chickaree

by Susan Warner; Anna Bartlett Warner

'He would see nothing but my cloak.'

'My dear, I'm not so sure. He has wonderful sharp eyes. And you don't wear your cloak like a mill girl.'

'Don't I look like a new hand?' said Hazel laughing.

'And if he should find out, what would he think!' said Mrs.
Bywank.

'He would think you had a cold and couldn't come,' said Wych.
'There's the gig!'and down she ran, slipping out unseen to join
Reo in the darkness.

Riding in an old gig was rather a new experience. The way was still, starlight, and lonely, until they came out into the neighbourhood of the mills. When the lights were visible, and a certain confused buzz of still distant voices gave token of the lively state of the population in the Hollow, Hazel and her faithful attendant left the gig and went forward on foot.

The Charteris mills were silent and dark; the stir was ahead, where a cluster of lights shewed brilliantly through the darkness; and soon Wych Hazel and Reo found themselves in the midst of a moving throng. A large shed, it was hardly better, open to the street and to all comers, was the place of illumination, and the centre of savoury odours which diffused themselves refreshingly over the whole neighbourhood. Coffee, yes certainly Mr. Rollo's coffee and hot buns were on hand there; and truly they began to be on hand more literally among the crowd. Wych Hazel loitered and looked and kept herself out of the lamp shine as well as she could. Men and women were going in and coming out, eating and drinking, talking and jesting; there was a pleasant let-up to business in the Hollow; it looked like a fair, except that there was no buying and selling other than the viands. There were long deal tables in the shed, besieged by the applicants for buns and coffee, and served by women stationed behind the tables. The crowd was orderly, though very lively. Reo's curiosity and admiration were immense; I think he would have tried the buns for himself, if he had not been in close attendance upon his mistress. Women came out from the shed guarding a pile of the hot buns in their hands; others stood by the tables taking their supper; men came out and lounged about talking and eating, with a mug in one hand and a bun in the other. To anybody that knew Morton Hollow it was a pleasant sight. It spoke of a pause from grinding care and imbruting toil; a gleam of hope in the work-a-day routine. The men were all more or less washed and brushed up; for changing their dress there had been no time.

Hazel was afraid to linger too long or scan too closely; she passed on to the mill with the throng, waited near the door until the reader went in, passing so close that Hazel could have touched him. Then she followed and took her place at the end of a form near the door. That was policy.

The reading room was the huge bare apartment where the fire had been laid, and tracked, a few nights before. The rafters still shewed some smoke, and there was a less number of bales piled up at the end of the room than when Hazel had seen it the first time. Lamps hung now from the beams overhead, enough of them to give a fair illumination; for as Rollo explained to her afterwards, he wanted to have a view of his hearers. Their view of him was secured by a well arranged group of burners in that quarter. The audience room was as rough as the audience.

It was a strange experience for the little lady of Chickaree. In the midst of all that crowd of mill hands, with their coarse dresses and unkempt heads and head gear, she was in a part of the world very far from her own. A still, respectful crowd they were, however. Looking beyond and over them, to the circle of lights at the end of the cotton bales, she could just see Dane's head, where he was standing and speaking to some one; then presently he mounted upon his rude rostrum and the light illumined his whole figure.