Her face kindled instantly.

“He’s home, Miss Marg’et,—­yes.  An’ it’s all right wid him.  Things allus do come right, some time,” she added, in a reflective tone, brushing a fly off Sawney’s ear.

Margaret smiled.

“Always?  Who brings them right for you, Lois?”

“The Master,” she said, turning with an answering smile.

Margaret was touched.  The owner of the mill was not a more real verity to this girl than the Master of whom she spoke with such quiet knowledge.

“Are things right in the mill?” she said, testing her.

A shadow came on her face; her eyes wandered uncertainly, as if her weak brain were confused,—­only for a moment.

“They’ll come right!” she said, bravely.  “The Master’ll see to it!”

But the light was gone from her eyes; some old pain seemed to be surging through her narrow thought; and when she began to talk, it was in a bewildered, doubtful way.

“It’s a black place, th’ mill,” she said, in a low voice.  “It was a good while I was there:  frum seven year old till sixteen.  ‘T seemed longer t’ me ’n ’t was.  ‘T seemed as if I’d been there allus,—­jes’ forever, yoh know.  ’Fore I went in, I had the rickets, they say:  that’s what ails me.  ’T hurt my head, they’ve told me,—­made me different frum other folks.”

She stopped a moment, with a dumb, hungry look in her eyes.  After a while she looked at Margaret furtively, with a pitiful eagerness.

“Miss Marg’et, I think there is something wrong in my head.  Did yoh ever notice it?”

Margaret put her hand kindly on the broad, misshapen forehead.

“Something is wrong everywhere, Lois,” she said, absently.

She did not see the slow sigh with which the girl smothered down whatever hope had risen just then, nor the wistful look of the brown eyes that brightened into bravery after a while.

“It’ll come right,” she said, steadily, though her voice was lower than before.

“But the mill,”—­Margaret recalled her.

“Th’ mill,—­yes.  There was three of us,—­father ‘n’ mother ‘n’ me,—­’n’ pay was poor.  They said times was hard.  They was hard times, Miss Marg’et!” she said, with a nervous laugh, the brown eyes strangely wandering.

“Yes, hard,”—­she soothed her, gently.

“Pay was poor, ‘n’ many things tuk money.” (Remembering the girl’s mother, Margaret knew gin would have covered the “many things.”) “Worst to me was th’ mill.  I kind o’ grew into that place in them years:  seemed to me like as I was part o’ th’ engines, somehow.  Th’ air used to be thick in my mouth, black wi’ smoke ‘n’ wool ‘n’ smells.  It ’s better now there.  I got stunted then, yoh know.  ‘N’ th’ air in th’ alleys was worse, where we slep’.  I think mebbe as ’t was then I went wrong in my head.  Miss Marg’et!”

Her voice went lower.

“‘T isn’t easy to think o’ th’ Master—­down there, in them cellars.  Things comes right—­slow there,—­slow.”