"Now, I'm a good drawer-in, an' he said onct"--she nodded at the door from which Travis had gone out--"that I was the best in the worl'; the whole worl'." She blushed slightly. "But, well--I've made no fortune yet--an' somehow, in yo' case now--you see--somehow I feel sorter 'fraid--about you--like somethin' awful was goin' to happen to you." "Why--what--" began Helen, surprised. "Oh, it ain't nothin'," she said trying to be cheerful--"I'll soon get over this ... out in the air. I'm weak now and I think it makes me nervous an' skeery.... I'll throw it off that quick," she snapped her fingers--"out in the open air again--out on the little farm." She was silent, as if trying to turn the subject, but she went back to it again. "You don't know how I've longed for this--to get away from the mill. It's day in an' day out here an' shut up like a convict. It ain't natural--it can't be--it ain't nature. If anybody thinks it is, let 'em look at them little things over on the other side," and she nodded toward the main room. "Why, them little tots work twelve hours a day an' sometimes mo'. Who ever heard of children workin' at all befo' these things come into the country? Now, I've no objection to 'em, only that they ought to work grown folks an' not children. They may kill me if they can," she laughed,--"I am grown, an' can stan' it, but I can't bear to think of 'em killin' my little brothers an' sisters--they're entitled to live until they get grown anyway." She stopped to cough and to show Helen how to untangle some threads. "Oh, but they can't hurt me," she laughed, as if ashamed of her cough; "this is bothersome, but it won't last long after I get out on the little farm." She stopped talking and fell to her work, and for two hours she showed Helen just how to draw the threads through, to shift the machine, to untangle the tangled threads. It was nearly time to go home when Travis came to see how Helen was progressing. He came up behind the two girls and stood looking at them work. When they looked up Maggie started and reddened and Helen saw her tighten her thin lips in a peculiar way while the blood flew from them, leaving a thin white oval ring in the red that flushed her face. "You are doing finely," he said to Helen--"you will make a swift drawer-in." He stooped over and whispered: "Such fingers and hands would draw in anything--even hearts." Helen blushed and looked quickly at Maggie, over whose face the pinched look had come again, but Maggie was busy at her machine.