lf one with other people and their affairs--do you get
my meaning?"

"I think I understand," half whispered Johnnie, glowing eyes on the face
of the speaker. "Do you mean that I am anything like that? I do love
everybody--most. But how could I help it, when everybody is so good and
kind to me?"

The glances of the older women met across the bright head.

"She won't have much use for feet to climb with," Mrs. Hexter summed it
up, taking her figure from the talk earlier in the afternoon. "She's
got wings."

And puzzled Johnnie could only smile from one to the other.

"Wings!" whispered Mandy Meacham to herself. Mandy was not only
restricted to the use of spiritual feet; she was lame in the soul as
well, poor creature, "Wings--air they callin' her a angel?"

CHAPTER IX

A BIT OF METAL

In the valleys of Tennessee, spring has a trick of dropping down on the
world like a steaming wet blanket. The season that Johnnie Consadine
went to work in the mills at Cottonville, May came in with warm rains.
Stifling nights followed sultry, drenching days, till vegetation
everywhere sprouted unwholesomely and the mountain slopes had almost the
reek of tropic jungles.

Yet the girl performed the labours of a factory weaver with almost
passionate enthusiasm and devotion. Always and always she was looking
beyond the mere present moment. If tending loom was the road which led
to the power and the glory, what need to complain that it--the mere
road--was but dull earth?

She tried conscientiously, to do and be exactly what Lydia Sessions
seemed to want. Gray Stoddard's occasional spoken word, or the more
lengthy written messages he had taken to putting in the books he sent
her, seemed to demand of her nothing, but always inspired to much. For
all his disposition to keep hands off the personal development of his
friends, perhaps on account of it, Gray made an excellent teacher, and
these writings--the garnered grain, the gist, of his own wide
culture--were the very sinews for the race Johnnie was setting out on.
She began to intelligently guard her speech, her manner, her very
thoughts, conforming them to what she knew of his ideals. Miss Session's
striving to build up an imitation lady on the sincere foundation Johnnie
offered appealed less to the girl, and had therefore less effect; but
she immediately responded to Stoddard's methods, tucking in to the books
she returned written queries or records of perplexity, which gradual