Bessy moved uneasily; then she said: 

’I wish father would not speak as he does.  He means well, as I telled yo’ yesterday, and tell yo’ again and again.  But yo’ see, though I don’t believe him a bit by day, yet by night—­when I’m in a fever, half-asleep and half-awake—­it comes back upon me—­oh! so bad!  And I think, if this should be th’ end of all, and if all I’ve been born for is just to work my heart and my life away, and to sicken i’ this dree place, wi’ them mill-noises in my ears for ever, until I could scream out for them to stop, and let me have a little piece o’ quiet—­and wi’ the fluff filling my lungs, until I thirst to death for one long deep breath o’ the clear air yo’ speak on—­and my mother gone, and I never able to tell her again how I loved her, and o’ all my troubles—­I think if this life is th’ end, and that there’s no God to wipe away all tears from all eyes—­yo’ wench, yo’!’ said she, sitting up, and clutching violently, almost fiercely, at Margaret’s hand, ‘I could go mad, and kill yo’, I could.’  She fell back completely worn out with her passion.  Margaret knelt down by her.

‘Bessy—­we have a Father in Heaven.’

‘I know it!  I know it,’ moaned she, turning her head uneasily from side to side.

’I’m very wicked.  I’ve spoken very wickedly.  Oh! don’t be frightened by me and never come again.  I would not harm a hair of your head.  And,’ opening her eyes, and looking earnestly at Margaret, ‘I believe, perhaps, more than yo’ do o’ what’s to come.  I read the book o’ Revelations until I know it off by heart, and I never doubt when I’m waking, and in my senses, of all the glory I’m to come to.’

’Don’t let us talk of what fancies come into your head when you are feverish.  I would rather hear something about what you used to do when you were well.’

’I think I was well when mother died, but I have never been rightly strong sin’ somewhere about that time.  I began to work in a carding-room soon after, and the fluff got into my lungs and poisoned me.’

‘Fluff?’ said Margaret, inquiringly.

‘Fluff,’ repeated Bessy.  ‘Little bits, as fly off fro’ the cotton, when they’re carding it, and fill the air till it looks all fine white dust.  They say it winds round the lungs, and tightens them up.  Anyhow, there’s many a one as works in a carding-room, that falls into a waste, coughing and spitting blood, because they’re just poisoned by the fluff.’

‘But can’t it be helped?’ asked Margaret.

‘I dunno.  Some folk have a great wheel at one end o’ their carding-rooms to make a draught, and carry off th’ dust; but that wheel costs a deal o’ money—­five or six hundred pound, maybe, and brings in no profit; so it’s but a few of th’ masters as will put ’em up; and I’ve heard tell o’ men who didn’t like working places where there was a wheel, because they said as how it mad ’em hungry, at after they’d been long used to swallowing fluff, tone go without it, and that their wage ought to be raised if they were to work in such places.  So between masters and men th’ wheels fall through.  I know I wish there’d been a wheel in our place, though.’