e, asking me every sort of question, to which I give the best answers
that I can. By and by she slips away from me. I turn to find her; she
has vanished, leaving me under the care of a truly kind, sad little
creature in a wrapper dress. This little Maggie has a heart of gold.

"Don't you-all fret," she consoles. "That's like Jeannie: she's so
_mean_. When you git to be a remarkable fine spooler she'll want you on
her side, you bet."

She assists my awkwardness gently.

"I'll learn you all right. You-all kin stan' hyar by me all day. Jeannie
clean fergits she was a greenhorn herself onct; we all wuz. Whar you
come from?"

"Lynn, Massachusetts."

"Did you-all git _worried_ with the train? I only bin onto it onct, and
it worried me for days!"

She tells me her simple annals with no question:

"My paw he married ag'in, and me stepmother peard like she didn't care
for me; so one day I sez to paw, 'I'm goin' to work in the mills'--an' I
lef home all alone and come here." After a little--"When I sayd good-by
to my father peard like _he_ didn't care neither. I'm all alone here. I
bo'ds with that girl's mother."

I wore that day in the mill a blue-checked apron. So did Maggie, but
mine was from Wanamaker's in New York, and had, I suppose, a certain
style, for the child said:

"I suttenly dew think that yere's a awful pretty apron: where'd you git
it?"

"Where I came from," I answered, and, I am sorry to say, it sounded
brusque. For the little thing blushed, fearful lest she had been
indiscreet....(Oh, I assure you the qualities of good breeding are
there! Some of my factory and mill friends can teach the set in which I
move lessons salutary!)

"I didn't mean jest 'xactly wherebouts," she murmurs; "I only meant it
warn't from these parts."

* * * * *

During the afternoon the gay Jeannie returns and presents to me a tin
box. It is filled with a black powder. "Want some?" Well, what is it?
She greets my ignorance with shrieks of laughter. In a trice half a
dozen girls have left their spooling and cluster around me.

"She ain't never _seen_ it!" and the little creature fills her mouth
with the powder which she keeps under her tongue. "It is _snuff_!"

They all take it, old and young, even the smallest children. Their
mouths are brown with it; their teeth are black with it. They take it
and smell it and carry it about under their tongues all day in a black
wad, spitting it all over