Deanie, who had never been sick a day in her life, took a heavy cold and
coughed so that she could scarcely get any sleep. Johnnie was
desperately anxious, since the lint of the spinning room immediately
irritated the little throat, and perpetuated the cold in a steady,
hacking cough, that cotton-mill workers know well. Pony was from the
first insubordinate and well-nigh incorrigible--in short, he died hard.
He came to Johnnie again and again with stories of having been cursed
and struck. She could only beg him to be good and do what was demanded
without laying himself liable to punishment. Milo, the serious-faced
little burden bearer, was growing fast, and lacked stamina. Beneath the
cotton-mill regime, his chest was getting dreadfully hollow. He was all
too good a worker, and tried anxiously to make up for his brother's
shortcomings.
"Pony, he's a little feller," Milo would say pitifully. "He ain't nigh
as old as I am. It comes easier to me than what it does to him to stay
in the house and tend my frames, and do like I'm told. If the bosses
would call me when he don't do to suit 'em, I could always get him
to mind."
Lissy had something of her mother's shining vitality, but it dimmed
woefully in the rough-and-ready clatter and slam of the big
Victory mill.
The children had come from the sunlit heights and free air of the
Unakas.
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