Yes, it was true that at the Victory you could hire out anything
that could walk and talk. Johnnie caught her breath and hugged the small
pliant body to her breast, feeling with a mighty throb of fierce,
mother-tenderness, the poor little ribs, yet cartilagenous; the
delicate, soft frame for which God and nature demanded time, and chance
to grow and strengthen. Yet she knew if she gave up her wages to Pap she
would be no better off--indeed, she would be helpless in his hands; and
the sum of them would not cover what the children all together
could earn.
"Oh, Lord! To work in the Victory!" she groaned.
"Now, Johnnie," objected her mother, "don't you get meddlesome just
because you're a old maid. Your great-aunt Betsy was meddlesome disposed
that-a-way. I reckon single women as they get on in years is apt so to
be. Every one of these children has been promised that they should be
let to work in the mill. They've been jest honin' to do it ever since
you came down and got your place. Deanie was scared to death for fear
they wouldn't take her. Don't you be meddlesome."
"Yes, and I'm goin' to buy me a gun and a nag with my money what I
earn," put in Pony explosively. "'Course I'll take you-all to ride." He
added the saving clause under Milo's reproving eye. "Sis' Johnnie, don't
you want me to earn money and buy a hawse and a gun, and a--and most
ever'thing else?"
Johnnie looked down into the blue eyes of the little lad who had crept
close to her chair.
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