Thus she sheltered him with what care she knew—­care that unfortunately could not go far enough back to protect him!  His mother came in at the noon hour, as we sat there rocking and chatting.  She was a straight, slender creature, not without grace in her shirt-waist and her low-pulled felt hat that shadowed her sullen face.  She was very young, not more than twenty-two, and her history indicative and tragic.  With a word only and a nod she passes us; she has now too many vital things and incidents in her own career to be curious regarding a strange mill-hand.  She goes with her comrade—­and cousin—­Mamie, into the kitchen to devour in as short a time as possible the noon dinner, served by the grandmother:  cabbage and hominy.  “They don’t have time ’nough to eat,” the aunt says; “no sooner then they-all come in and bolt their dinner then it is time to go back.”  Her child has followed her.  Minnie was married at thirteen; in less than a year she was a grass widow.  “My goodness, there’s lots of grass widows!” my frowsled hostess nods.  “Why, in one weave-room hyar there ain’t a gyrl but what’s left by her husband.  One day a new gyrl come for to run a loom and they yells out at her, ‘Is you-all a grass widow?  Yer can’t come in hyar ef you ain’t.’”

But it was after her grass widowhood that Minnie’s tragedy began.  The mill was her ruin.  So much grace and good looks could not go, cannot go, does not go unchallenged by the attentions of the men who are put there to run these women’s work.  The overseer was father of her child, and when she tried to force from him recognition and aid he threw over his position and left Columbia and this behind him.  This, one instance under my own eyes observed.  There are many.

“Mamie works all night” (she spoke of the other girl)—­“makes more money.  My, but she hates the mills!  Says she ain’t ever known a restful minute sence she left the hills.”

My hostess has drawn the same conclusion from my Northern appearance that the Joneses drew.

“You-all must eat good where you come from! you look so healthy.’  Do you-all know the Banks girl over to Calcutta?”

“No.”

“They give her nine months.” (Calcutta is the roughest settlement round here.) “Why, that gyrl wars her hair cut short, and she shoots and cuts like a man.  She drew her knife on a man last week—­cut his face all up and into his side through his lung.  Tried to pass as she was his wife, but when they had her up, ma’am, they proved she had been three men’s wives and he four gyrl’s husbands.  He liked to died of the cut.  They’ve given her nine months, but he ain’t the only man that bears her marks.  Over to Calcutta it’s the knife and the gun at a wink.  This yere was an awful pretty gyrl.  My Min seed her peekin’ out from behind the loom in the weave-room, thought she was a boy, and said:  ’Who’s that yere pretty boy peekin’ at me?’ And that gyrl told Min that she couldn’t help knife the men, they all worried on her so!  ’Won’t never leave me alone; I jest have to draw on ’em; there ain’t no other way.’"...