The bride winced. “I aim to show ’im we can git on without him an’ his uppidy folks,” she retorted, with a flame of delicate color. “That’s why I come here, jest to make a livin’ fer us all till I can stouten up agin crap-making time next spring. By that time the two little boys’ll be big enough to help with the plowin’. Boys grows a heap in a year.” “Did you say you brung the chillun along with you?” Polly wanted to know. “Yes’m, we all set out together yesterday mornin’. Tain’t to say so dreadful fur—jest eighteen miles—but they ain’t used to travelin’ steady, an’ they give plum out early this mornin’, so I left ’em along with some folks while I come on ahead to git work.” Polly Ann’s interest was of a keenly personal order, which admitted of vast concessions in favor of the second applicant for the already crowded ranks of mill laborers. She had turned the first comer away almost at sight, but Mis’ Lomux was different—her plaintive needs appealed to Polly Ann’s warm, starved little heart in a fashion quite unknown to her since her mother and sister had passed beyond her faithful care. “Where’s your things?” Polly asked after a museful pause. “We’re totin’ all we’ve got,” Mis’ Lomux answered frankly. “Pa didn’t have much of anythin’ when he died an’ I sold what little there was to git the chillun fit close to come down here in.” Polly rose and stepped from the little platform with an air of decision. “You set there while I go hunt the boss,” said she. So Mis’ Lomux waited hopefully until Polly returned from the fore part of the great building to say that there would be a vacancy in the spindle department the very next day. “You’d better fetch the chillun right along,” Polly advised, “’cause you’ll have to be ready to go to work at seven o’clock tomorrow mornin’. There’s a’ empty shack at the end of Factory Row that you can rent real cheap. I’ll see about rentin’ it while you’re gone.” Polly saw them pass the mills late that afternoon, a dusty, tired band of wayfarers, each carrying small, queer-shaped bundles which contained the sum of their meager possessions, and felt herself glow with satisfaction as she thought of what she had contrived to put into the rough little shack, in the way of household furnishings. She went over after work hours to assist with the setting to rights.