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“Is Johnnie putting those children in the mill?” asked Stoddard half doubtfully, as his gaze followed them toward the entrance of the Victory.

“I believe so,” returned Lydia, smiling.  “We were just speaking of how good it was that the cotton mills gave an opportunity for even the smaller ones to help, at work which is within their capacity.”

“Johnnie Consadine said that?” inquired Gray, startled.  “Why is she taking them over to the Victory?” And then he answered his own question.  “She knows very well they are below the legal age in Tennessee.”

Lydia Sessions trimmed instantly.

“That must be it,” she said.  “I wondered a little that she seemed not to want them in the same factory that she is in.  But I remember Brother Hartley said that we are very particular at our mill to hire no young people below the legal age.  That must be it.”

Stoddard looked with reprehending yet still incredulous eyes, to where Johnnie and her small following disappeared within the mill doors.  Johnnie—­the girl who had written him that pathetic little letter about the children in her room, and her growing doubt as to the wholesomeness of their work; the girl who had read the books he gave her, and fed her understanding on them till she expressed herself logically and lucidly on the economic problems of the day—­that, for the sake of the few cents they could earn, she should put the children, whom he knew she loved, into slavery, seemed to him monstrous beyond belief.  Why, if this were true, what a hypocrite the girl was!  As coarse and unfeeling as the rest of them.  Yet she had some shame left; she had blushed to be caught in the act by him.  It showed her worse than those who justified this thing, the enormity of which she had seemed to understand well.

“You mustn’t blame her too much,” came Lydia Sessions’s smooth voice.  “John’s mother is a widow, and girls of that age like pretty clothes and a good time.  Some people consider John very handsome, and of course with an ignorant young woman of that class, flattery is likely to turn the head.  I think she does as well as could be expected.”

CHAPTER XVI

BITTER WATERS

Johnnie had a set of small volumes of English verse, extensively annotated by his own hand, which Stoddard had brought to her early in their acquaintance, leaving it with her more as a gift than as a loan.  She kept these little books after all the others had gone back.  She had read and reread them—­cullings from Chaucer, from Spenser, from the Elizabethan lyrists, the border balladry, fierce, tender, oh, so human—­till she knew pages of them by heart, and their vocabulary influenced her own, their imagery tinged all her leisure thoughts.  It seemed to her, whenever she debated returning them, that she could not bear it.  She would get them out and sit with one of them open in her hands, not reading, but staring at the pages with unseeing eyes, passing her fingers over it, as one strokes a beloved hand, or turning through each book only to find the pencilled words in the margins.  She would be giving up part of herself when she took these back.