“I reckon you-all never did see anything like the fight to the mill to-day.”

She arouses at once the interest of even the dull men opposite, who pause, in the applying of their knives and forks, to hear.

“Amanda Wilcox she dun tol’ Ida Jacobs that she’d do her at noon, and Ida she sarst her back.  It was all about a sport[5]—­Bill James.  He’s been spo’tin’ Ida Jacobs these three weeks, I reckon, and Amanda got crazy over it and ‘clared she’d spile her game.  And she tol’ Ida Jacobs a lie about Bill—­sayd he’ been spo’tin’ her down to the Park on Sunday.

  [Footnote 5:  A beau.]

“Well, sir, the whole spinnin’-room was out to see what they-all’d do at noon, and they jest resh’d for each other like’s they was crazy; and one man he got between ’em and sayd, ’Now the gyrl what spits over my hand first can begin the fight.’

“They both them spit right, into each other’s faces, they did so; and arter that yer couldn’t get them apart.  Ida Jacobs grabbed Amanda by the ha’r and Amanda hit her plump in the chest with her fist.  They was suttenly like to kill each other ef the men hadn’t just parted them; it took three men to part ’em.”

Her story was much appreciated.

“Ida was dun fer, I can tell ye; she suttenly was.  She can’t git back to work fer days.”

The spinning-room is the toughest room in the mill.

After supper the men went out on the porch with their pipes and we to the sitting-room, where Molly, the story-teller, seated herself in a comfortable chair, her feet outstretched before her.  She made a lap, a generous lap, to which she tried to beguile the baby, Letty.  Mrs. White had disappeared.

“You-all come here to me, Letty.”  She held out her large dirty hands to the blue-eyed waif.  In its blue-checked apron, the remains of fish and ham around its mouth, its large blue eyes wandering from face to face in search of the pale mother who had for a time left her, Letty stood for a moment motionless and on the verge of tears.

“You-all come to Molly and go By-O.”

There was some magic in that word that at long past eight charmed the eighteen-months’-old baby.  She toddled across the floor to the mill-girl, who lifted her tenderly into her ample lap.  The big, awkward girl, scarcely more than a child herself, uncouth, untutored, suddenly gained a dignity and a grace maternal—­not too much to say it, she had charm.

Letty leaned her head against Molly’s breast and smiled contentedly, whilst the mill-girl rocked softly to and fro.

“Shall Molly sing By-O?”

She should.  The little face, lifted, declared its request.

“Letty must sing, too,” murmured the young girl.  “Sing By-O!  We’ll all sing it together.”

Letty covered her eyes with one hand-to feign sleep and sang her two words sweetly, “By-O!  By-O!” and Molly joined her.  Thus they rocked and hummed, a picture infinitely touching to see.