before my eyes when
I'd lie down to go to sleep! Some of us was quicker than others, but to
do the work right we needed to keep together a bit and it was when Jules
Claire, a little French Canadian, got ahead of us at doffing time, that
trouble began.

"Jules was a born Frenchman. There was a gesture in everything he did,
and he couldn't live without showing off. He was the fastest worker in
the room, and when we were taking the full spools off and putting the
empty ones on, one child one side the frame, the other the other, Jules
must go ahead of his mate. We tried to stop him for we didn't want the
foreman to think we could all work at that pace, but he was an artist
and must do things his own way. So he hurries down his line, his little
hands moving like lightning, and when he comes to the end, and we still
plodding, he jumps on an empty truck and stamping with his bare feet,
gives himself three cheers.

"Then the ogre sees him, and the great hulking sneak jumps on the boy,
clouts him over the head, and kicks him with his boot. All he saw was an
idle child. The little fellow was too surprised to cry. 'My God,' he
whispers coming to me, 'did you see dat?' 'I did,' I answers, 'and you
got what was coming to you for going ahead of the rest!' But while I
said it I laid my plans, for there was fire in my heart.

"There's one way a child can always leave her place whether at the mill
or the school and that's by asking for a drink of water. The good Lord
must have made the little ones so dry that they would be sure of moving
about once in a while during the long day. After a time, when Hicks had
us whiter than the cotton we was working on, I got permission to get a
drink. That meant I must go through another room to where the bucket of
water was. After I'd drunk my fill I walked back, and there were the two
girls in charge of the warper looking out of the window, the machines
going merrily all the while. They glanced around at me and then turned
to the window again, and just then I slipped my roller-hook into a nice
place in the machinery where I thought it would do me some good, and, as
innocent looking as a cat that's stole the cream, went back to the
spinning-room.

"It isn't but three or four minutes before one of the two girls come to
the old ogre to say something's wrong with the machinery. The man gives
an oath and leaves us. I knew he'd be some minutes finding the trouble,
and I began talking to my mates. There