Short Stories
As he undressed in the semi-darkness he could hear his mother
talking with a neighbor woman who had dropped in. His moth-
er was crying, and her speech was punctuated with spiritless
sniffles.
"I can't make out what's gittin' into Johnny," he could hear
her say. "He didn't used to be this way. He was a patient little
angel.
"An' he is a good boy," she hastened to defend. "He's worked
faithful, an' he did go to work too young. But it wasn't my fault.
do the best I can, I'm sure."
Prolonged sniffling from the kitchen, and Johnny murmured
to himself as his eyelids closed down, "You betcher life I've
worked faithful."
The next morning he was torn bodily by his mother from the
grip of sleep. Then came the meagre breakfast, the tramp
through the dark, and the pale glimpse of day across the house-
tops as he turned his back on it and went in through the factory
gate. It was another day, of all the days, and all the days were
alike.
And yet there had been variety in his life—at the times he
changed from one job to another, or was taken sick. When he
was six, he was little mother and father to Will and the other
children still younger. At seven he went into the mills—winding
bobbins. When he was eight, he got work in another mill. His
new job was marvellously easy. All he had to do was to sit down
with a little stick in his hand and guide a stream of cloth that
flowed past him. This stream of cloth came out of the maw of a
machine, passed over a hot roller, and went on its way else-
where. But he sat always in the one place, beyond the reach
31