quare!" exclaimed Mandy,
staring with bulging light eyes. "If it was me I'd be all in a tremble
yet--and there you sit and talk about meat and bread!"

Johnnie did not think it necessary to explain that the tremor of that
conversation with Stoddard had indeed lasted through her entire morning.

"There was nothing to tremble about," she remarked with surface calm.
"He'd never seen a pink moccasin flower, and I gave him the one I had
and told him where it grew."

"Well, he wasn't looking at no moccasin flower when I seed him," Mandy
persisted. "He was lookin' at you. He jest eyed you as if you was Miss
Lydia Sessions herself--more so, if anything."

Johnnie inwardly rebuked the throb of joy which greeted this statement.

"I reckon his looks are his own, Mandy," she said soberly. "You and me
have no call to notice them."

"Ain't got no call to notice 'em? Well, I jest wish't I could get you
and him up in front of Miss Sessions, and have her see them looks of
his'n," grumbled Mandy as she turned away. "I bet you there'd be some
noticin' done then!"

When in the evening Mandy came for Johnnie, she found the new mill hand
white about the mouth with exhaustion, heavy-eyed, choking, and ready
to weep.

"Uh-huh," said the Meacham woman, "I know just how you feel. They all
look that-a-way the first day or two--then after that they look worse."

Nervelessly Johnnie found her way downstairs in the stream of tired
girls and women. There was more than one kindly greeting for the new
hand, and occasionally somebody clapped her on the shoulder and assured
her that a few days more would get her used to the work. The mill yard
was large, filled with grass-plots and gravel walks; but it was shut in
by a boarding so tall that the street could not be seen from the windows
of the lower floor. To Johnnie, weary to the point where aching muscles
and blood charged with uneliminated waste spelled pessimism, that high
board fence seemed to make of the pretty place a prison yard.

A man was propping open the big wooden gates, and through them she saw
the street, the sidewalk, and a carriage drawn up at the curb. In this
vehicle sat a lady; and a gentleman, hat in hand, talked to her from
the sidewalk.

"Come on," hissed Mandy, seizing her companion's arm and dragging her
forward. "Thar's Miss Lydia Sessions right now, and that's Mr. Stoddard
a-talkin' to her. I'll go straight up and give you a knockdown--I want
to, anyway. She's the