had? Mountain air is mighty pure and
healthy, and the water up here is the finest you ever drank; but that's
only for the body. Of course there's beauty all about you--there was
never anything more sightly than big Unaka and the ridges that run from
it, and the sky, and the big woods--and all. And yet human beings have
got to have more than that. I aim to make a chance for the children."

"Are you going to bring them down and let them work in the mills with
you?" Stoddard asked in a perfectly colourless tone.

Johnnie looked embarrassed. Her week in the cotton mill had fixed
indelibly on her mind the picture of the mill child, straggling to work
in the gray dawn, sleepy, shivering, unkempt; of the young things
creeping up and down the aisles between the endlessly turning spools,
dully regarding the frames to see that the threads were not fouled or
broken; of the tired little groups as they pressed close to the shut
windows, neglecting their work to stare out into a world of blue sky and
blowing airs--a world they could see but not enter, and no breath of
which could come in to them. And so she looked embarrassed. She was
afraid that memory of those tired little faces would show in her own
countenance. Her hands on the steering-wheel trembled. She remembered
that Mr. Stoddard was, as Shade had said, one of the bosses in the
Hardwick mill. It seemed too terrible to offend him. He certainly
thought no ill of having children employed; she must not seem to
criticize him; she answered evasively:

"Well, of course they might do that. I did think of it--before I went
down there."

"Before you went to work in the mills yourself," supplied Stoddard,
again in that colourless tone.

"Ye--yes," hesitated Johnnie; "but you mustn't get the idea that I don't
love my work--because I do. You see the children haven't had any
schooling yet, and--well, I'm a great, big, stout somebody, and it looks
like I'm the one to work in the mill."

She turned to him fleetingly a countenance of appeal and perplexity. It
seemed indeed anything but certain that she was one to work in the mill.
There was something almost grotesque in the idea which made Stoddard
smile a little at her earnestness.

"I'd like to talk it over with you when you've been at work there
longer," he found himself saying. "You see, I'm studying mill conditions
from one side, and you're studying them from the opposite--perhaps we
could help each other."

"I sure will tell