University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.
THE STONE HOUSE.

IF you are one of “the hands” in the Hayle and
Kelso Mills, you go to your work, as is well
known, from the hour of half past six to seven,
according to the turn of the season. Time has
been when you went at half past four. The
Senior forgot this the other day in a little talk
which he had with his silent partner, — very naturally,
the time having been so long past; but the
time has been, is now, indeed, yet in places. Mr.
Hayle can tell you of mills he saw in New
Hampshire last vacation, where they ring them
up, if you 'll believe it, winter and summer, in
and out, at half past four in the morning. O no,
never let out before six, of course. Mr. Hayle
disapproves of this. Mr. Hayle thinks it not
humane. Mr. Hayle is confident that you would
find no mission Sunday school connected with
that concern.

If you are one of “the hands” in the Hayle
and Kelso Mills — and again, in Hayle and Kelso,
— you are so dully used to this classification, “the
hands,” that you were never known to cultivate
an objection to it, are scarcely found to notice its
use or disuse. Being surely neither head nor
heart, what else remains? Conscious scarcely,
from bell to bell, from sleep to sleep, from day to
dark, of either head or heart, there seems even a
singular appropriateness in the chance of the
word with which you are dimly struck. Hayle
and Kelso label you. There you are. The world
thinks, aspires, creates, enjoys. There you are.
You are the fingers of the world. You take your
patient place. The world may have need of you,
but only that it may think, aspire, create, enjoy.
It needs your patience as well as your place.
You take both, and you are used to both, and the
world is used to both, and so, having put the label
on for safety's sake, lest you be mistaken for a
thinking, aspiring, creating, enjoying compound,
and so some one be poisoned, shoves you into
your place upon its shelf, and shuts its cupboard
door upon you.

If you are one of “the hands,” then, in Hayle

and Kelso, you have a breakfast of bread and
molasses probably; you are apt to eat it while
you dress; somebody is heating the kettle, but you
cannot wait for it; somebody tells you that you
have forgotten your shawl, you throw it over one
shoulder, and step out, before it is fastened, into
the sudden raw air; you left lamp-light in-doors;
you find moonlight without; the night seems to
have overslept itself; you have a fancy for trying
to wake it, would like to shout at it or cry
through it, but feel very cold, and leave that for
the bells to do by and by. You and the bells are
the only waking things in life. The great brain
of the world is in serene repose. The great heart
of the world lies warm to the core with dreams.
The great hands of the world, the patient, perplexed,
one almost fancies at times, just for the
fancy, seeing you here by the morning moon, the
dangerous hands, alone are stirring in the dark.

You hang up your shawl and your crinoline,
and understand, as you go shivering by gaslight
to your looms, that you are chilled to the heart,
and that you were careless about your shawl, but
do not consider carefulness worth your while by
nature or by habit; a little less shawl means a

few less winters in which to require shawling.
You are a godless little creature, but you cherish
a stolid leaning, in these morning moons, towards
making an experiment of death and a wadded
coffin.

By the time that gas is out, you cease, perhaps,
though you cannot depend upon that, to shiver,
and incline less and less to the wadded coffin, and
more to a chat with your neighbor in the alley.
Your neighbor is of either sex and any description,
as the case may be. In any event, warming
a little with the warming day, you incline
more and more to chat. If you chance to be a
cotton-weaver, you are presently warm enough.
It is quite warm enough in the weaving-room.
The engines respire into the weaving-room; with
every throb of their huge lungs you swallow
their breath. The weaving-room stifles with
steam. The window-sills of this room are guttered
to prevent the condensed steam from running
in streams along the floor; sometimes they
overflow, and water stands under the looms; the
walls perspire profusely; on a damp day, drops
will fall from the roof.

The windows of the weaving-room are closed;

the windows must be closed; a stir in the air
will break your threads. There is no air to stir.
You inhale for a substitute motionless, hot moisture.
If you chance to be a cotton-weaver, it is
not in March that you think most about your
coffin.

Being “a hand” in Hayle and Kelso, you are
used to eating cold luncheon in the cold at noon,
or you walk, for the sake of a cup of soup or
coffee, half a mile, three quarters, a mile and a
half, and back. You are allowed three quarters
of an hour in which to do this. You come and
go upon the jog-trot.

You grow moody, being “a hand” at Hayle
and Kelso's, with the growing day; are inclined
to quarrel or to confidence with your neighbor in
the alley; find the overseer out of temper, and
the cotton full of flaws; find pains in your feet,
your back, your eyes, your arms; feel damp and
sticky lint in your hair, your neck, your ears,
your throat, your lungs; discover a monotony
in the process of breathing hot moisture, lower
your window at your risk; are bidden by somebody
whose threads you have broken at the other
end of the room to put it up, and put it up;

are conscious that your head swims, your eye-balls
burn, your breath quickens; yield your
preference for a wadded coffin, and consider
whether the river would not be the comfortable
thing; cough a little, cough a great deal, lose
your balance in a coughing fit, snap a thread,
and take to swearing roundly.

From swearing you take to singing; both
perhaps are equal relief, active and diverting.
There is something curious about that singing
of yours. The time, the place, the singers,
characterize it sharply, — the waning light, the
rival din, the girls with tired faces. You start
some little thing with a refrain and a ring to it;
a hymn, it is not unlikely; something of a River
and of Waiting, and of Toil and Rest, or Sleep,
or Crowns, or Harps, or Home, or Green Fields, or
Flowers, or Sorrow, or Repose, or a dozen things,
but always, it will be noticed, of simple, spotless
things, such as will surprise the listener who
caught you at your oath of five minutes past.
You have other songs, neither simple nor spotless,
it may be; but you never sing them at your
work, when the waning day is crawling out from
spots between your looms, and the girls lift up

their tired faces to catch and keep the chorus in
the rival din.

You like to watch the contest between the
chorus and the din; to see — you seem almost to
see — the struggle of the melody from alley to
alley, from loom to loom, from darkening wall
to darkening wall, from lifted face to lifted face;
to see — for you are very sure you see — the
machinery fall into a fit of rage. That is a sight!
You would never guess, unless you had watched
it just as many times as you have, how that machinery
will rage. How it throws its arms about,
what fists it can clench, how it shakes at the
elbows and knees, what teeth it knows how to
gnash, how it writhes and roars, how it clutches
at the leaky, strangling gas-lights, and how it
bends its impotent black head, always, at last,
without fail, and your song sweeps triumphant,
like an angel, over it! With this you are very
much pleased, though only “a hand,” to be sure,
in Hayle and Kelso.

You are singing when the bell strikes, and
singing still when you clatter down the stairs.
Something of the simple spotlessness of the
little song is on your face, when you dip into

the wind and dusk. Perhaps you have only
pinned your shawl, or pulled your hat over your
face, or knocked against a stranger on the walk;
but it passes; it passes and is gone. It is cold
and you tremble, direct from the morbid heat in
which you have stood all day; or you have been
cold all day, and it is colder, and you shrink; or
you are from the weaving-room, and the wind
strikes you faint, or you stop to cough and the
girls go on without you. The town is lighted,
and people are out in their best clothes. You
pull your dingy veil about your eyes. You are
weak and heart-sick all at once. You don't
care to go home to supper. The pretty song
creeps, wounded, back for the engines in the
deserted dark to crunch You are a miserable
little factory-girl with a dirty face.

A broken chatter falls in pieces about you;
all the melody of the voices that you hear has
vanished with the vanquished song; they are
hoarse and rough.

“Goin' to the dance to-night, Bet?”

“Nynee Mell! yer alway speerin' awa' after
some young mon. Can't yer keep yer een at
home like a decint lassie?”

“An' who gave you lave to hoult a body's
hand onasked an' onrequested, Pathrick Donnavon?”

“Sip Garth, give us `Champagne Charley';
can't you?”

“Do you think the mules will strike?”

“More mules they, if they do. Did ye never
see a mouse strike a cat?”

“There 's Bub beggin' tobacco yet! How old
is that little devil?”

“The Lord knows!”

“Pity the Lord don't know a few more
things as one would suppose might fall in his
line.”

“A tract?”

“A tract. Bless you, four pages long. Says
I, What in — 's this? for I was just going in
to the meetin' to see the fun. So he stuffs it
into my hand, and I clears out.”

“Sip, I say! Priscilla! Sip Garth —”

But Sip Garth breaks out of sight as the
chatter breaks out of hearing; turns a corner;
turns another; walks wearily fast, and wearily
faster; pushes her stout way through a dirty
street and a dirtier street; stops at shadowy

corners to look for something which she does
not find; stops at lighted doors to call for
something that does not answer; hesitates a
moment at the dismal gate of a dismal little
stone house by the water, and, hesitating still
and with a heavy sigh, goes in.

It is a damp house, and she rents the dampest
room in it; a tenement boasting of the
width of the house, and a closet bedroom with
a little cupboard window in it; a low room
with cellar smells and river smells about it, and
with gutter smells and drain smells and with
unclassified smells of years settled and settling
in its walls and ceiling. Never a cheerful
room; never by any means a cheerful room,
when she and Catty — or she without Catty —
come home from work at night.

Something has happened to the forlorn little
room to-night. Sip stops with the door-latch
in her hand. A fire has happened, and the
kerosene lamp has happened, and drawn curtains
have happened; and Miss Kelso has happened,
— down on her knees on the bare floor,
with her kid gloves off, and a poker in her
hands.

So original in Perley! Maverick would say;
Maverick not being there to say it, Perley
spoke for herself, with the poker in her hand,
and still upon her knees.

“I beg your pardon, Sip, but they told me,
the other side of the house, that you would be
in in five minutes, and the room was dark and
so I took the liberty. If you would n't mind
me, and would go right on as if I had n't come,
I should take it very kindly.”

“All right,” said Sip.

“The fact is,” said Miss Kelso, meditatively
twirling her poker, “that that is the first fire I
ever made in my life. Would you believe it,
to look at it?”

“I certainly should n't,” said Sip.

“And you 're quite sure that you would n't
mind me?”

“No, not quite sure. But if you 'll stay
awhile, I 'll find out and tell you.”

“Very well,” said Miss Kelso.

“See how dirty I am,” said Sip, stopping in
the full light on her way to the closet bedroom.

“I had n't seen,” said Miss Kelso to the
poker.

“O, well. No matter. I did n't know but
you 'd mind.”

There was dust about Sip, and oil about her,
and a consciousness of both about her, that
gave her a more miserable aspect than either.
In the full light she looked like some half-cleared
Pompeian statue just dug against the
face of day.

“We can't help it, you see,” said poor Sip;
“mill-folks can't. Dust we are and to dust do
we return. I 've got a dreadful sore-throat to-night.”

“Have you taken cold?”

“O no. I have it generally. It comes from
sucking filling through the shuttle. But I don't
think much of it. There 's girls I know, weavers,
can't even talk beyond a whisper; lost their voices
some time ago.”

Sip washed and dressed herself after this in
silence. She washed herself in the sink; there
was no pump to the sink; she went out bareheaded,
and brought water in from a well in
the yard; the pail was heavy, and she walked
wearily, with her head and body bent to balance
it, over the slippery path. She coughed while

she walked and when she came in, — a peculiar,
dry, rasping cough, which Perley learned afterwards
to recognize as the “cotton-cough.” She
washed herself in a tin basin, which she rinsed
carefully and hung up against the wall. While she
was dressing in the closet bedroom, Perley still
knelt, thoughtfully playing with the poker beside
the fire.

“I don't suppose,” said Sip, coming out presently
in her plaid dress, with her hair in a net,
and speaking as if she had not been interrupted,
— “I don't suppose you 'd ever guess how much
difference the dirt makes. I don't suppose you
ever could. Cotton ain't so bad, though. Once
I worked to a flax-mill. That was dirt.”

“What difference?”

“Hush!” said Sip, abruptly, “I thought I
heard —” She went to the window and looked
out, raising her hands against her eyes, but
came back with a disappointed face.

“Catty has n't come in,” she said, nervously.
“There 's times she slips away from me; she
works in the Old Stone, and I can't catch her.
There 's times she does n't come till late. Will
you stay to tea?” with a quick change of voice.

“Thank you. I don't understand about Catty,”
with another.

Sip set her table before she spoke again; bustled
about, growing restless; put the kettle on
and off the hob; broke one of her stone-china
plates; stopped to sweep the floor a little and to
fill her coal-hod; the brown tints of her rugged
little face turning white and pinched in spots
about the mouth.

She came, presently, and stood by the fire by
Miss Kelso's side, in the full sweep of the light.
“Miss Kelso,” her hands folding and unfolding
restlessly, “there 's many things you don't understand.
There 's things you could n't understand.”

“Why?”

“I don't know why. I never did quite know
why.”

“You may be right; you may be wrong.
How can you tell till you try me?”

“How can I tell whether I can skate on running
water till I try it? — I wish Catty would
come!”

Sip walked to the window again, and walked
back again, and took a look at the teapot, and
cut a slice or two of bread.

“So you 've left the Company board,” observed
Miss Kelso, quite as if they had been
talking about the Company board. “You did n't
like it?”

“I liked well enough.”

“You left suddenly?”

“I left sudden.” Sip threw her bread-knife
down, with an aimless, passionate gesture. “I
suppose it 's no good to shy off. I might as well
tell o't first as last. They turned us off!”

“Turned you off?”

“On account of Catty.”

Miss Kelso raised a confused face from the
poker and the fire.

“You see,” said Sip, “I told you there 's things
you could n't understand. Now there ain't one
of my own kind of folks, your age, would n't have
understood half an hour ago, and saved me the
trouble of telling. Catty 's queer, don't you see?
She runs away, don't you see? Sometimes she
drinks, don't you understand? Drinks herself
the dead kind. That ain't so often. Most times
she just runs away about streets. There 's sometimes
she does — worse.”

“Worse?” The young lady's pure, puzzled

face dropped suddenly. “O, I was very dull! I
am sorry. I am not used —” And so broke off,
with a sick look about the lips, — a look which
did not escape the notice of the little brown,
pinched face in the firelight, for it was curving
into a bitter smile when the door opened, banging
back against the wall as if the opener had
either little consciousness or little care of the
noise it made.

“There 's Catty,” said Sip, doggedly. “Come
and get warm, Catty.” This is their silent language
on her rapid, work-worn fingers.

“If you mind me now, I 'll go,” said Miss
Kelso, in a low voice.

“That 's for you to say, whether I shall mind
you now.”

“Poor Catty!” said Perley, still in a very low
voice. “Poor, poor Catty!”

Sip flushed, — flushed very sweetly and suddenly
all over her dogged face. “Now I don't
mind you. Stay to supper. We 'll have supper
right away. Come here a minute, Catty dear.”

Catty dear would not come. Catty dear stood
scowling in the middle of the room, a sullen, ill-tempered,
ill-controlled, uncontrollable Catty dear
as one could ask to see.

“For love's sake,” said Sip, on her patient
fingers; “here a minute, for love's sake, Catty.”

“For love's sake?” repeated Catty, in her
pathetic language.

“Only for love's sake, dear,” said Sip.

Catty came with this, and laid her head down
with a singularly gentle motion on Sip's faded
plaid lap. Miss Kelso could see her now, in the
light in which they three were sitting. A girl
possibly of fifteen years, — a girl with a low forehead,
with wandering eyes, with a dull stoop to
the head, with long, lithe, magnetic fingers,
with a thick, dropping under lip, — a girl walled
up and walled in from that labyrinth of sympathies,
that difficult evolution of brain from beast,
the gorgeous peril of that play at good and evil
which we call life, except at the wandering eyes,
and at the long, lithe, magnetic fingers. An ugly
girl.

She lay, for an ugly girl, very still in her sister's
lap. Sip softly stroked her face, talking
now to the child and now to her visitor, wound
about in a pretty net of soft sounds and softer
emotions. A pleasant change had fallen upon
her since the deaf-mute came in.

“See how pleasant it is to come home early,
Catty.” (She won't talk to-night, because you 're
here.) “For love's sake, dear, you know.” (That
's the way I get along with her. She likes that.)
“For love's sake and my sake, and with the lamp
and fire bright. So much better — ” (It 's never
her fault, poor dear! God knows, I never, never
laid it up against her as it was her fault.) “Better
than the dark street-corners, Catty — ”

“There 's light in the shops,” said Catty, on
her long fingers, with a shrewd, unpleasant smile.

“And supper at home,” said Sip, quickly, rising.
“For love's sake, you know. And company
to supper!”

“For love's sake?” asked Catty, rising too.

“I don't know for whose sake!” said Sip, all
the pleasantness gone in a minute from her.

The young lady and Catty were standing now,
between the lamp-glow and the fire-glow, side by
side. They were a startling pair to be standing
side by side. They stood quite still, except that
Catty passed her fingers curiously over Miss
Kelso's dress, — it seemed that she saw quite as
much with her fingers as with her eyes, — and
that she nodded once or twice, as if she were

talking to herself, in a stupid way. Perley's fine,
fair, finished smile seemed to blot out this miserable
figure, and to fill the room with a kind of
dazzle.

“Good God!” cried Sip, sharply. “You asked
me for the difference. Look at that! You
asked what difference the dirt makes. That 's
the difference! To be born in it, breathe it,
swallow it, grow on it, live it, die and go back to
it — bah! If you want to go the devil, work in
the dirt. Look at her!”

“I look at her,” said Perley, with a solemn,
frightened look upon her young face, — “I look
at her, Sip. For love's sake. Believe me if you
can. Make her understand. I look for love's
sake.”

Is it possible? Is Miss Kelso sure? Not for a
whim's sake? Not for fancy's sake? Not for
the sake of an idle moment's curiosity? Not to
gratify an eccentric taste, — playing my Lady
Bountiful for a pretty change in a pretty life?
Look at her; it is a very loathsome under lip.
Look well at her; they are not pleasant eyes.
An ugly girl, — a very ugly girl. For love's sake,
Miss Kelso?

Catty sat down to supper without washing her
face. This troubled Sip more than it did her
visitor. Her visitor, indeed, scarcely noticed it.
Her face wore yet something of the solemn fright
which had descended on it with Catty's coming
in.

She noticed, however, that she had bread and
butter for her supper, and that she was eating
from a stone-china plate, and with a steel fork
and with a pewter spoon. She noticed that the
bread was toasted, it seemed in deference to the
presence of a guest, and that the toasting had
feverishly flushed Sip's haggard face. She noticed
that Sip and Catty ate no butter, but dipped
their bread into a little blue bowl of thick black
molasses. She noticed that there was a kind of
coarse black tea upon the table, and noticed that
she found a single pewter spoonful of it quite
sufficient for her wants. She noticed that Sip
made rather a form than a fact of playing with
her toasted bread in the thick black molasses,
and that she drained her dreadful teacup thirstily,
and that she then leaned, with a sudden sick look,
back into her chair.

Everything tasted of oil, she said. She could

not eat. There were times that she could not eat
day nor night for a long time. How long? She
was not sure. It had been often two days that
nothing passed her lips. Sometimes, with the
tea, it was longer. There were times that she
came home and got right into bed, dirt and
all. She could n't undress, no, not if it was to
save her soul, nor eat. But, generally, she managed
to cook for Catty. Besides, there was the
work.

“What work?” asked Miss Kelso, innocently.

“Washing. Ironing. Baking. Sweeping.
Dusting. Sewing. Marketing. Pumping. Scrubbing.
Scouring,” said Sip, drumming out her
periods on a teaspoon with her hard, worn fingers.

“Oh!” said Miss Kelso.

“For two, you see,” said Sip.

“But all this, — you cannot have all this to do
after you have stood eleven hours and a half at
your loom?”

“When should I have it to do! There 's Sunday,
to be sure; but I don't do so much now Sundays,
except the washing and the brushing up.
I like,” with a gentle, quick look at the deaf and
dumb girl, who still sat dipping bread crusts into

black molasses, absorbed and still, “to make it a
kind of a comfortable day for Catty, Sunday.
I don't bother Catty so much to help me, you
know,” added Sip, cheerfully. “I like,” with another
very pleasant look, “to make it comfortable
for Catty.”

“I went into the mills to-day,” said Miss Kelso,
in reply. It was not very much to the point as a
reply, and was said with an interrogatory accent,
which lessened its aptness.

“Yes?” said Sip, in the same tone.

“I never was in a mill before.”

“No?”

“No.”

There was a pause, in which the young lady
seemed to be waiting for a leading question, like a
puzzled scholar. If she were, she had none. Sip
sat with her dogged smile, and snapped little paper
balls into the fire.

“I thought it rather close in the mills.”

“Yes?”

“And — dirty. And — there was one very
warm room; the overseer advised me not to go in.”

“It was very good advice.”

“I went into the Company boarding-house too.”

“For the first time?”

“For the first time. I went to inquire after
you. The landlady took me about. Now I think
of it, she invited me to tea.”

“Why did n't you stay?”

“Why, to tell the truth, the — tablecloth was
— rather dirty.”

“Oh!”

“And I saw her wipe her face on — the dishtowel.
Do the girls often sleep six in a room?
They had no wash-stands. I saw some basins
set on trunks. They carried all the water up and
down stairs themselves; there were two or three
flights. There was n't a ventilator in the house.
I saw a girl there sick.”

“Sick? O, Bert Bush. Yes. Pleurisy. She 's
going to work her notice when she gets about
again. Given out.”

“She coughed while I was there. I thought
her room was rather cold. I thought all the
rooms were rather cold. I did n't seem to see
any fire for anybody, except in the common sitting-room.
But the bread was sweet.”

“Yes, the bread was sweet.”

“And the gingerbread.”

“Very sweet.”

“And, I suppose, the board —

“The board is quarter of a dollar cheaper than
in other places.”

Sip stopped snapping paper balls into the fire,
and snapped instead one of her shrewd, sidewise
glances at her visitor's face.

The fine, fair, finished face! How puzzled it
looked! Sip smiled.

Catty had crept around while they were talking,
and sat upon the floor by Miss Kelso's chair.
She was still amusing herself with the young
lady's dress, passing her wise fingers to and fro
across its elegant surface, and nodding to herself
in her dull way. Miss Kelso's hand, the one with
the rings, lay upon her lap, and Catty, attracted
suddenly by the blaze of the jewels, took it up.
She took it up as she would a novel toy, examined
it for a few moments with much pleasure, then
removed the rings and dropped them carelessly,
and laid her cheek down upon the soft flesh. It
was such a dusty cheek, and such a beautiful,
bare, clean hand, that Sip started anxiously to
speak to Catty, but saw that Perley sat quite still,
and that her earnest eyes were full of sudden tears.

“You will not let me say, you know, that I am
sorry for you. I have been trying all the evening.
I can't come any nearer than this.” This
she said smiling.

“Look here!” said Sip; her brown face worked
and altered. She said, “Look here!” again, and
stopped. “That 's nigh enough. I 'll take that.
I like that. I like you. Look here! I never
said that to one of your kind of folks before; I
like you. Generally I hate your kind of folks.”

“Now that,” said Miss Kelso, musing, “perplexes
me. We feel no such instinct of aversion
to you. As far as I understand `my kind of
folks,' they have kindly hearts, and they have it
in their hearts to feel very sorry for the poor.”

“Who wants their pity? And who cares
what 's in their hearts?”

Sip had hardened again like a little growing
prickly nut. The subject and her softer mood
dropped away together.

“Sip,” said Perley, fallen into another revery,
“you see how little I know —”

Sip nodded.

“About — people who work and — have a
hard time.”

“They don't none of 'em know. That 's why
I hate your kind of folks. It ain't because they
don't care, it 's because they don't know; nor
they don't care enough to know.”

“Now I have always been brought up to believe,”
urged Miss Kelso, “that our factory-people,
for instance, had good wages.”

“I never complained of the wages. Hayle
and Kelso could n't get a cotton-weaver for
three dollars a week, like a paper-factory I
know about in Cincinnati. I knew a girl as
worked to Cincinnati. Three dollars a week,
and board to come out of it! Cotton-weaving
's no play, and cotton-weavers are no
fools.”

“And I always thought,” continued Miss Kelso,
“that such people were — why, happy and comfortable,
you know. Of course, I knew they must
economize, and that, but —”

She looked vaguely over at the supper-table;
such uncertain conceptions as she might hitherto
be said to have had of “economizing” acquiring
suddenly the form of thick, black molasses,
a little sticky, to be sure, but tangible.

Sip made no reply, and Perley, suddenly aware

of the lateness of the hour, started in dismay to
take her leave. It occurred to her that the sticky
stone-china dishes were yet to be washed, and
that she had done a thoughtless thing in imposing,
for a novel evening's entertainment, upon
the scanty leisure of a worn-out factory-girl.

She turned, however, neither an entertained
nor a thoughtless face upon Sip when she tried
to rise from her chair. Catty had fallen asleep,
with her dirty cheek upon the shining hand, from
which the rings were gone. Her ugly lower lip
protruded, and all the repulsive lines about her
eyes came out. Her long fingers moved a little,
as is often the way with the deaf and dumb in
sleep, framing broken words. Even in her
dreams, this miserable creature bore about her a
dull sense of denial and distress. Even in her
dreams she listened for what she never heard,
and spoke that which no man understood.

“Mother used to say,” said Sip, under her
breath, “that it was the noise.”

“The noise?”

“The noise of the wheels. She said they
beat about in her head. She come home o'
nights, and says to herself, `The baby 'll never

hear in this world unless she hears the wheels';
and sure enough” (Sip lifted her face to Perley's,
with a look of awe), “it is true enough that
Catty hears the wheels; but never anything
besides.”