he strangeness of the new machine, the noise and her surroundings,
bewildered her. When the man saw that she was not likely to injure
herself or the looms, he turned away with a careless nod and left her
to her fate.

It was a blowy April day outside, with a gay blue sky in which the white
clouds raced, drawing barges of shadow over the earth below. But the
necessity of keeping dust out of the machinery, the inconvenience of
having flying ends carried toward it, closed every window in the big
factory, and the operatives gasped in the early heat, the odour of oil,
the exhausted air. There was a ventilating system in the Hardwick mill,
and it was supposed to be exceptionally free from lint; but the fagged
children crowded to the casements with instinctive longing for the
outdoor air which could not of course enter through the glass; or
plodded their monotonous rounds to tend the frames and see that the
thread was running properly to each spool, and that the spools were
removed, when filled.

By noon every nerve in Johnnie's body quivered with excitement and
overstrain; yet when Mandy came for her at the dinner hour she showed
her a face still resolute, and asked that a snack be brought her to
the mill.

"I don't see why you won't come along home and eat your dinner," the
Meacham woman commented. "The Lord knows you get time enough to stay in
the mill working over them old looms. Say, I seen you in the hall--did
you know who you was talking to?"

The red flooded Johnnie's face as she knelt before her loom
interrogating its workings with a dexterous hand; even the white nape of
her neck showed pink to Mandy's examining eye; but she managed to reply
in a fairly even tone:

"Yes, that was Mr. Stoddard. I saw him yesterday evening when I was
coming down the Ridge with Shade."

"But did you know 'bout him? Say--Johnnie Consadine--turn yourself round
from that old loom and answer me, I was goin' a-past the door, and when
I ketched sight o' you and him settin' there talkin' as if you'd knowed
each other all your lives, why you could have--could have knocked me
down with a feather."

Johnnie sat up on her heels and turned a laughing face across her
shoulder.

"I don't see any reason to want to knock you down with anything," she
evaded the direct issue. "Go 'long, Mandy, or you won't have time to eat
your dinner. Tell Aunt Mavity to send me just a biscuit and a piece
of meat."

"Good land, Johnnie Consadine, but you're