the Falls at that rate. Three hot
meals a day I got: breakfast, coffee, toast, two eggs, mush, later
fruit; dinner, often soup, always meat, potatoes, vegetables, coffee,
and a dessert; supper, what wasn't finished at dinner, and tea. Always
there was plenty of everything. Sometimes too much, if it were
home-canned goods which had stood too many years on the shelves, due
to lack of boarders to eat the same. But the sisters Weston meant the
best.

"How d'ya like the punkin pie?" the older, Miss Belle, would ask.

The pumpkin pie had seemed to taste a trifle strange, but we laid it
to the fact that it was some time since we had eaten pumpkin pie. "It
tastes all right."

"Now, there! Glad to hear you say it. Canned that punkin ourselves.
Put it up several years ago. Thought it smelled and looked a bit
spoiled, but I says, guess I'll cook it up; mebbe the heat 'n' all'll
turn it all right again. There's more in the kitchen!"

But it suddenly seemed as if I must get to work earlier that noon than
I had expected. "Can't ya even finish your pie? I declare I'm scared
that pie won't keep long."

Mr. Welsh got sick after the first couple of meals, but bore on
bravely, nor did the matter of turned string beans consciously worry
Mr. Welsh. The sisters themselves were always dying; their faithful
morning reports of the details of what they had been through the night
before left nothing to the imagination. "Guess I oughtn't ta 'a' et
four hot cakes for supper when I was so sick yesterday afternoon. I
sure was thinking I'd die in the night.... 'Liza, pass them baked
beans; we gotta git them et up."

* * * * *

At six o'clock in the morning the bleachery whistle blows three times
loud enough to shake the shingles on the roofs of the one-hundred-year-old
houses and the leaves on the more than one-hundred-year-old trees
about the Falls. Those women who have their breakfasts to get and
houses to straighten up before they leave for work--and there are a
number--must needs be about before then. Seven o'clock sees folks on
all roads leading to the bleachery gate. At 7.10 the last whistle
blows; at 7.15 the power is turned on, wheels revolve, work begins.

It must be realized that factory work, or any other kind of work, in a
small town is a different matter from work in a large city, if for no
other reason than the transportation problem. Say work in New York
City begins at 7.45. That means for many,