e."

"I'd like to, certainly, but I don't believe I can eat. My head is
whirling, whirling, just like those dreadful spools. Isn't it terrible?"

"No, I don't think so. I don't notice them now, except to make them say
things. But come along, we have a half-hour nooning. We might have a
whole hour, but most of the hands like to give up part of their
dinner-time every day and then take the afternoon off on Saturday. The
'Supe' doesn't care, so that's the way we get our 'Saturday-half.' I
sometimes wish we worked the other way, but of course we couldn't. If
part stops, the other part has to, 'cause every room depends on some
other room to keep it going."

"Why, I think that's beautiful, don't you? Like a big whole, and all of
us the needed parts."

"No, I don't. I don't see one single beautiful thing about this hateful
old mill. At least, I didn't before this morning, when you came."

Amy looked into Mary's face a moment. Then she stooped and kissed it
gently. Small though Amy herself was, for her age, she was still taller
than her new friend, and felt herself far stronger.

Away in another place Gwendolyn and her mates observed this little
by-play, and one girl remarked:--

"Hmm. That settles _her_ hash. If she's going to take up with that
horrid Mary Reese, there won't anybody go with her. Not a single girl,
and as for the fellows--my!"

To this flirtatious young person to be ignored by "the fellows" meant
the depth of misfortune. Happily, however, Amy had never hear the word
"fellow," as at present applied, and to do anything for the sake of
attracting attention to herself she would have considered the extreme of
vulgarity.

Mary guided her to a quiet corner behind some bales, and filling a tin
cup with water from a faucet, proceeded to open her own luncheon. Then
she watched Amy, who, almost too weary to eat, loitered over the untying
of the dainty parcel Cleena had made up. When she at last did so, and
quietly sorted the contents of the neat box, she was surprised by Mary's
astonished stare.

"What is it, dear? Aren't you hungry?"

"Hungry? I'm starved. But--see the difference. It goes even into our
victuals. Oh dear, there isn't any use!" and, with a bitter sob, the
mill girl tossed aside her own rude parcel of food and dropped her face
in her hands.

Girlhood is swiftly intuitive. The boarding-house lunch which the
hunchback had brought was quite sufficient in quantity, but it was
coarse in extreme,