They were still grouped around the office awaiting their turn. In the faces of some were shrewdness, cunning, hypocrisy. Some looked out through dull eyes, humbled and brow-beaten and unfeeling. But all of them when they spoke to Jud Carpenter--Jud Carpenter who stood in with the managers of the mill--became at once the grinning, fawning framework of a human being. "Yes, boys," said Jud patronizingly as Stallings went out, "this here mill is a god-send to us po' folks who've got chillun to burn. They ain't a day we ortenter git down on our knees an' thank Mr. Kingsley an' Mister Travis there. You know I done took down that sign I useter have hangin' up in my house in the hall--that sign which said, _God bless our home_? I've put up another one now." "What you done put up now, Jud?" grinned a tall weaver with that blank look of expectancy which settles over the face of the middle man in a negro minstrel troupe when he passes the stale question to the end man, knowing the joke which was coming. "Why, I've put up," said Jud brutally, "'_Suffer Little Children to Come Unto Me_.' That's scriptural authority for cotton mills, ain't it?" The paying went on, after the uproarious laughter had subsided, and down the long row only the clinking of silver was heard, intermingled now and then with the shrill voice of some creature disputing with Kingsley about her account. Generally it ran thus: "_It cyant be thet away. Sixty hours at five cents an hour--wal, but didn't the chillun wuck no longer than that? I cyant--I cyant--I jes' cyant live on that little bit._" Such it was, and it floated down the line to Helen like the wail of a lost soul. When her time came Kingsley met her with a smile. Then he gave her an order and Travis handed her a bright crisp ten-dollar bill. She looked at him in astonishment. "But--but," she said. "Surely, I didn't earn all this, did I? Maggie--you had to pay Maggie for teaching me this week. It was she who earned it. I cannot take it." Kingsley smiled: "If you must know--though we promised her we would not tell you," he said--"no, Miss Conway, you did not earn but five dollars this week. The other five is Maggie's gift to you--she left it here for you." She looked at him stupidly--in dazed gratitude. Travis came forward: "I've ordered Jim to take you home to-night. I cannot leave now." And he led her out to where the trotters stood. He lifted her in, pressing her hand as he did so--but she did not know it--she burned with a strange fullness in her throat as she clutched her money, the first she had ever earned, and thought of Maggie--Maggie, dying and unselfish. Work--it had opened a new life to her. Work--and never before had she known the sweetness of it. "Oh, father," she said when she reached home, "I have made some money--I can support you and Lily now." When Travis returned Jud Carpenter met him at the door.