Their play had been always out of doors, on the mosses under
tall trees, where fragrant balsams dropped cushions of springy needles
for the feet; their labour, the gathering of brush and chips for the
fire in winter, the dropping corn, and, with the older boys, the hoeing
of it in spring and summer--all under God's open sky. They had been
forced into the factory when nothing but places on the night shift could
be got for them. Day work was promised later, but the bitter winter wore
away, and still the little captives crept over the bridge in the
twilight and slunk shivering home at dawn. Johnnie made an arrangement
to get off from her work a little earlier, and used to take the two
girls over herself; but she could not go for them in the morning. One
evening about the holidays, miserably wet, and offering its squalid
contrast to the season, Johnnie, plodding along between the two little
girls, with Pony and Milo following, met Gray Stoddard face to face. He
halted uncertainly. There was a world of reproach in his face, and
Johnnie answered it with eyes of such shame and contrition as convinced
him that she knew well the degradation of what she was doing.
"You need another umbrella," he said abruptly, putting down his own as
he paused under the store porch where a boy stood at the curb with his
car, hood on, prepared for a trip in to Watauga.
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