Only this morning he had taken them out and read them over,
and decided that the girl who wrote them was worth at least an attempt
toward an explanation and better footing. He had decided not to give her
up. Now she confirmed his worst apprehensions. At his glance, her face
was suffused with a swift, distressed red. She wondered if he yet knew
of her mother's marriage. She dreaded the time when she must tell him.
With an inarticulate murmur she spoke to the little ones, turned her
back and hurried across the bridge.
"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.
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