is clean. I draw a breath of gratitude.

"Mrs. Jones?"

"Yes, this is Jones' bo'din'-house."

The old woman has a comb in her hand; she has "jest ben com'in' Letty's
hair." Letty smiles delightedly.

"This yere's the child of the lady upstairs. The mother's a pore sick
thing." Mrs. Jones bends the stiffness of sixty-eight years over the
stranger's child. "And grandmaw keeps Letty clean, don't she, Letty? She
don't never whip her, neither; jest a little cross to her."

"Can I find lodging here?"

She looks at me. "Yes, ma'am, you kin. I'm full up; got a lot of
gentlemen bo'ders, but not many ladies. I got one bed up aloft; you
can't have it alone neither, and the baby's mother is sick up there,
too. Nuthin' ketchin'. She come here a stranger; the mill was too hard
on her; she's ben sick fo' days."

I had made a quick decision and accepted half a bed. I would return at
noon.

"Stranger hyar, I reckon?"

"Yes; from Massachusetts. A shoe-hand."

She shakes her head: "You wont like the mills."

She draws Letty between her old stiff knees, seats herself on a
straight chair, and combs the child's hair on either side its pathetic,
gentle little face. So I leave her for the present to return to Columbia
and fetch back with me my bundle of clothes.

* * * * *

When I return at noon it is dinner time. I enter and am introduced, with
positive grace and courtesy, by my dear old landlady to her son-in-law,
"Tommy Jones," a widower, a man in decent store clothes and a Derby hat
surrounded by a majestic crape sash. He is nonchalantly loading a large
revolver, and thrusts it in his trousers pocket: "Always carry it," he
explains; "comes handy!" Then I am presented to the gentlemen boarders.
I beg to go upstairs, with my bundles, and I see for the first time my
dwelling part of this shanty.

A ladderlike stair leading directly from the kitchen takes me into the
loft. Heavens! the sight of that sleeping apartment! There are three
beds in it, sagging beds, covered by calico comforters. The floor is
bare; the walls are bare. I have grown to know that "Jones'" is the
cleanliest place in the Excelsior village, and yet to our thinking it
lacks perfection. Around the bare walls hang the garments of the other
women who share the room with me. What humble and pathetic decorations!
poor, miserable clothes--a shawl or two, a coat or two, a cotton
wrapper, a hat; and on one nail the miniature clothes