'No, they don't,' I replied,' but white women work there.'
'White wimmin work thar!' chimed in the hitherto speechless beauty, showing a set of teeth of the exact color of her skin,—yaller. 'What du the' du?'
'Some of them attend in stores, some set type, some teach school, and some work in factories.'
'Du tell! Dress nice, and make money?'
'Yes,' I replied, 'they make money, and dress like fine ladies; in fact, are fine ladies. I know one young woman, of about your age, that had to get her own education, who earns a thousand dollars a year by teaching, and I've heard of many factory-girls who support their parents, and lay up a great deal of money, by working in the mills.'
'Wal!' replied the young woman, with a contemptuous curl of her matchless upper lip; 'schule-marms ain't fine ladies; fine ladies don't work; only niggers does that har. I reckon I'd ruther be 'spectable than work for a livin'.'
I could but think how magnificently the lips of some of our glorious Yankee girls would have curled had they heard that remark, and seen the poor girl that made it, with her torn, worn, greasy dress; her bare, dirty legs and feet, and her arms, neck, and face so thickly encrusted with a layer of clayey mud that there was danger of hydrophobia if she went near a wash-tub. Restraining my involuntary disgust, I replied,—
'We at the North think work is respectable. We do not look down on a man or a woman for earning their daily bread. We all work.'
'Yas, and that's the why ye'r all sech cowards,' said the old woman.
'Cowards!' I said; 'who tells you that?'