after year.  It is not an experience to this woman who works beside me so patiently; it is her life.  The forms she sees are warped and scarred; the intellects with which she comes in contact are dulled and undeveloped.  All they know is toil, all they know of gain is a fluctuation in a wage that ranges from cents to a dollar and cents again, never touching a two-dollar mark.  The children who, barefooted, filthy, brush past her, sweeping the cotton from the infected floors, these are the only forms of childhood she has ever seen.  The dirty women around her, low-browed, sensual, are the forms of womanhood that she knows; and the men?  If she does not feed the passion of the overseer, she may find some mill-hand who will contract a “mill marriage” with this daughter of the loom, a marriage little binding to him and which will give her children to give in time to the mill.  This is the realism of her love story:  She reads books that you, too, may have read; she dares to dream of scenes, to picture them—­scenes that you have sought and wearied of.  A tithe of our satiety would mean her banquet, her salvation!...  Her happiness? That question who can answer for her or for you?)

She continues:  “I’m very fond of fo’ran travel, only I ain’t never had much occasion for it.”

This pathos and humour keep me silent.  A few ropers have run out; she rises.  I rise, too, to replace, to attach, and set the exhausted line taut and complete again.

Ten years!  Ten years!  All her girlhood and youth has been given to keeping ropers supplied with fresh yarn and speeders a-whirling.  During this travail she has kept a serenity of expression, a depth of sweetness at which I marvel.  Her voice is peculiarly soft and, coupled with the dialect drawl, is pleasant to hear.

“I hate the mills!” she says simply.

“What would you be if you could choose?” I venture to ask.  She has no hesitation in answering.

“I’d love to be a trained nurse.”  Then, turn about is fair play in her mind, I suppose, for she asks: 

“What would you-all be?”

And ashamed not to well repay her truthfulness I frankly respond:  “I’d like to write a book.”

“I dee-clare.”  She stares at me.  “Why, you-all is ambitious.  Did you ever write anything?”

“A letter or two.”

She is interested and kindles, leaning forward.  “I suttenly ain’t so high in my ambitions,” she says appreciatively.  “Wish you’d write a love story for me to read,” and she ponders over the idea, her eyes on my snowy flying speeders.

“Look a-hyar, got any of your scrappin’s on writin’ hyar?  Ef you don’t mind anybody’s messin’ with your things, bring your scrappin’s to me an’ I’ll soon tell you ef you can write a book er not,” she whispered to me encouragingly, confidentially, a whisper reaching farther in the mills than a loud sound.

I thanked her and said:  “Do you think that you’d know?”