“Didn’t they ever serenade you?”

“No, ma’am; I don’t pay no ’tention to spo’tin’.”

Without, the moon’s slender thread holds in a silvery circle the half-defined misty ball that shall soon be full moon.  Thank heavens I shall not see this golden globe form, wane, decline in this town, forgotten of gods and men!  But the woman at my side must see it mark its seasons; she is inscrutably part of the colony devoted to unending toil!  Here all she has brought of strong youth shall fade and perish; womanly sentiment be crushed; die out in sterility; or worse, coarsen to the animal like to those whose companion she is forced to be.

“I live to the Rockies, an’ Uncle Tom he come up after me and carried me down hyar.  My auntie died two weeks ago in the livin’-room; she had catchin’ pneumonia.  I tuk care of her all through her sickness, did every mite for her, and there was bo’ders, tew—­I guess half a dozen of ’em—­and I cooked and washed and everything for ’em all.  When she died I went to work in the mill.  Say, I reckon you-all didn’t see my new hat?” It was fetched, done up with care in paper.  She displayed it, a white straw round hat, covered with roses.  At praise of it and admiration the girl flushed with pleasure.

“My, you dew like it?  Why, I didn’t think it pretty, much.  Uncle Tom dun buy it for me.”

She gives all her wages to Uncle Tom, who in turn brings her from time to time such stimulus to labour as some pretty feminine thing like this. This shall crown Molly’s hair freed from the crimpers when the one day of the week, Sunday, comes!  Not from Sunday till Sunday again are those hair crimpers unloosed.

Despite Uncle Tom’s opposition to mill work for women, despite his cognizance of the unhealthfulness of the mills, he knew a thing or two when he put his strapping innocent niece to work thirteen hours a day and pocketed himself the spoils.

“I can’t go to bade awful early, because I don’t sleep ef I do; I’m too tired to sleep.  When I feel real sick I tries to stay home a day, and then the overseer he rides around and worries me to git up.  I declare ef I wouldn’t near as soon git up as to be roused up.  They don’t give you no peace, rousing you out of bed when you can scarcely stand.  I suttenly dew feel bade to-night; I suttenly can’t scarcely get to bed!”

Here into our discourse, mounting the stairs, comes the pale mother and her little child.  This ghost of a woman, wedding-ringless, who called herself Mrs. White, could scarcely crawl to her bed.  She was whiter than the moon and as slender.  Molly’s bed is close to mine.  The night toilet of this girl consisted of her divesting herself of her shoes, stockings and her cotton wrapper, then in all the other garments she wore during the day she turned herself into bed, nightgownless, unwashed.