ought to go from this neighborhood, if ’twas only for the good o’ the rest; and I thought I’d better be the one.  I wa’n’t goin’ to ask the selec’men neither.  I’ve come back with one-thirty-five in money, and I see everything there, an’ I fetched ye all a little somethin’; but I’m full o’ dust now, an’ pretty nigh beat out.  I never see a place more friendly than Pheladelphy; but ’t ain’t natural to a Byfleet person to be always walkin’ on a level.  There, now, Peggy, you take my bundle-handkercher and the basket, and let Mis’ Dow sag on to me.  I ’ll git her along twice as easy.”

With this the small elderly company set forth triumphant toward the poor-house, across the wide green field.

* * * * *

The Gray Mills of Farley

The mills of Farley were close together by the river, and the gray houses that belonged to them stood, tall and bare, alongside.  They had no room for gardens or even for little green side-yards where one might spend a summer evening.  The Corporation, as this compact village was called by those who lived in it, was small but solid; you fancied yourself in the heart of a large town when you stood mid-way of one of its short streets, but from the street’s end you faced a wide green farming country.  On spring and summer Sundays, groups of the young folks of the Corporation would stray out along the country roads, but it was very seldom that any of the older people went.  On the whole, it seemed as if the closer you lived to the mill-yard gate, the better.  You had more time to loiter on a summer morning, and there was less distance to plod through the winter snows and rains.  The last stroke of the bell saw almost everybody within the mill doors.

There were always fluffs of cotton in the air like great white bees drifting down out of the picker chimney.  They lodged in the cramped and dingy elms and horse-chestnuts which a former agent had planted along the streets, and the English sparrows squabbled over them in eaves-corners and made warm, untidy great nests that would have contented an Arctic explorer.  Somehow the Corporation homes looked like make-believe houses or huge stage-properties, they had so little individuality or likeness to the old-fashioned buildings that made homes for people out on the farms.  There was more homelikeness in the sparrows’ nests, or even the toylike railroad station at the end of the main street, for that was warmed by steam, and the station-master’s wife, thriftily taking advantage of the steady heat, brought her house-plants there and kept them all winter on the broad window-sills.

The Corporation had followed the usual fortunes of New England manufacturing villages.  Its operatives were at first eager young men and women from the farms near by, these being joined quickly by pale English weavers and spinners, with their hearty-looking wives and rosy children; then came the flock of Irish families, poorer and simpler than the others but learning the work sooner, and gayer-hearted; now the Canadian-French contingent furnished all the new help, and stood in long rows before the noisy looms and chattered in their odd, excited fashion.  They were quicker-fingered, and were willing to work cheaper than any other workpeople yet.