Reels and Spindles: A Story of Mill Life

"Maybe; maybe not. Maybe we'll compromise and have but one. Though we can do little until after Christmas, it's so near now."

"Oh, don't get up another. We have just lovely times in ours. All the boys come and – but I'll not tell. I'll leave you to see. They wanted I should ask you, and your brother, too. He's real nice looking, 'Jack doffer' says, even if he is lame."

Amy's cheek burned, and her quick temper got her into trouble.

"My brother Hallam is a very, very handsome boy. Even with his lameness he's a thousand times better looking than any boy in this mill, and what's more, he's a gentleman!"

Then this champion of the aristocracy, which she thought she disdained but now discovered she was proud to call her own class, walked off with her nose in the air and her dark eyes glittering with an angry light.

"There, now you've done it!" cried Gwendolyn, in amazement. "But ma said it wouldn't last. She says that's the way with all the heroines in her novels that lose their money and pretend to be just plain folks afterward. They never are. They're always 'ristocratics an' they can't help it."

"Oh, well, they shouldn't try," remarked this young "heroine," fiercely. "I don't care at all what they say about me, but they'd best let my Hal alone."

"Hoity-toity, I don't see as he's any better than anybody else."

Amy stopped short on the path from the mill to the ladder upon the bluff. Suddenly she reflected how her mother would have regarded her present mood. "He that ruleth his own spirit."

The words seemed whispered in her ear. A moment later she turned and spoke again, but her voice was now gentle and appealing.

"Yes, he is better, though I'm not. He is better because he is just what he seems. There is no pretence about him. He doesn't think that plastering his hair with stuff, and wearing ugly, showy clothes, and a hat on the back of his head, or swaggering, or smoking nasty cigarettes, or being insolent to women, are marks of a gentleman. He's the real thing. That's what Hal is, and that's why I'm so proud of him, so – so touchy about him."

"Amy, what does make a gentleman, anyway, if it isn't dressing in style and knowing things?"

"It's the simplest thing in the world; it's just being kind out of one's heart instead of one's head. It's being just as pure-minded and honest as one can be, and – believing that everybody else is as good or a little better than one's self. So it seems to me."

"We are different, then. I never should know how to say such things. I don't know how to think them. It isn't any use. You are you, and I am me, and that ends it."

Amy did not even smile at the crooked grammar. This was the old cry of Mary, too, and it hurt her.

"Oh, Gwen, I am so sorry. It is of use. There isn't any difference, really. We are both girls who have to earn our living. Our training has been different, that is all. I want to know all you know; I want you to know all I do. I want to be friends; oh, I want to be friends with every girl in the world!"

"Pshaw! do you? Well, I don't. I don't want but a few, and I want them to be stylish and nice. You'd have a lot of style if you could dress different."

Poor Amy. This was like a dash of cold water over her enthusiasm. Just when she fancied that Gwendolyn was aspiring to all that was noble and uplifting, down she had dropped again into that idea of "style" and fashion and good times. But she remembered Mary. In the soul of that afflicted little mill girl was, indeed, a true ambition, and she felt glad again, from thoughts of her.

"Hallam, how can you climb all the way to 'Charity House'? You will drop by the way. It's hard, even for me."

"I can do it. I must. There is nothing else to be done."

So they set out together, through the darkness. The days were at the shortest, and Christmas would come the following week. Hallam and Amy looked forward with dread to the festival, remembering their mother had striven, even under disadvantages, to keep the holiday a bright one for her children. There had never been either many or costly gifts at Fairacres, but there had been something for each and all; and the home-made trifles were all the dearer because Salome's gentle fingers had fashioned them.

Now Gwendolyn was full of anticipation, and from her talk about it her neighbors judged she meant to expend a really large sum of money in presents for her friends.

"But, Gwendolyn, how can you buy all these things? You told me you earned about five dollars a week, and you've bought so many clothes; and – I guess I'm not good at figures. My poor little two dollars and a half, that I get now, wouldn't buy a quarter of all you say."

"Oh, that's all right. Mis' Hackett, she charges it. I always run an account with her."

"You? a girl like you? What is your mother thinking about? I thought to buy a wheel that way was queer; but how dare you?"

"Why, I'm working all the time, ain't I? Anybody that has regular work can get anything they want at Mis' Hackett's, or other places, too. Ma and pa do the same way."

"But – that's debt. It must be horrible. It seems like going out of one debt into another as fast as you can. Oh, Gwen, don't do it."

"Pshaw! that isn't anything. Why, look here, that's the very way your own folks did. If they hadn't been in debt, they wouldn't have had to move from Fairacres, and all that. Would they?"

Both Hallam and Amy were silent. The keen common sense of the mill girl had struck home, and again Amy realized that her vocation was not that of "preaching." Finally, the cripple spoke: —

"It's like it, yet it isn't. We had something left to pay our debts. It wasn't money, but it was money's worth. We paid them. We are left poor indeed, but we haven't mortgaged our future. That's all. But we are too young to talk so wisely. If your parents approve, they probably know best. Hark! there is a wagon coming."

They all paused, and drew aside out of the road to let the vehicle pass. It was so dark that they could distinguish nothing clearly, and the lantern fastened to the dashboard of the buggy seemed but to throw into greater shadow the face of the occupant. To their surprise, the traveller drew rein and saluted them: —

"Hello. Just getting home, eh?"

All recognized the voice. It belonged to Mr. Wingate.

"Yes, just getting home," answered Amy, cheerily.

"Growing pretty dark, isn't it? Hmm, yes. Heard you lost your donkey, Hallam."

"For the time, I have, sir," responded the lad, rather stiffly. He hated this man "on sight," or out of it, and it was difficult for him to conquer his aversion. All the kindness he had felt toward him, on the night of Mr. Wingate's first unwelcome visit to Fairacres, had been forgotten since; because in his heart he believed that his mother's death was due to her removal from her home. Yet he wished to be just, and he would try to feel differently by and by. Meanwhile, his unused strength was fast waning. He had met with a great disappointment that day, for he was going home empty-handed. He had lost his beloved Balaam, and he had nothing to show for it. In all his life he had never walked so far as from the mill to the Bareacre knoll, and even his crutches seemed to wobble and twist with fatigue. Amy had noticed this, and made him pause to rest more than once; but the night was cold, and he felt it most unwise to risk taking cold by standing in the wind. Poverty was teaching Hallam prudence, among many other excellent things.

"None of us can afford to be sick now," he reflected.

"Hmm. That half-witted fellow ought not to be allowed to go free. He's done me a lot of mischief, and I guess he injures everybody who befriends him. The last thing he ought to be trusted with is horse-flesh, or mule-flesh either. Well, I'm going your way, and it's a tough pull on a pair of crutches. If you'll get in, I'll give you a lift as far as the bars."

Everybody was astonished, and everybody waited for Hallam's reply in some anxiety. Amy knew his mind, and she knew, also, that he was very weary. She hoped that he would say: —

"Thank you; I'll be glad to accept," but his answer was a curt: "Thank you; I would rather walk."

"Very well. Suit yourself."

The horse was touched sharply, and bounded up the hill road at an unusual pace.

"Oh, Hal, why didn't you ride? You are so tired."

"Well – because."

"You'd better. Old man don't like to have his favors lost," remarked Gwendolyn. "I've heard lots say that, even though he hasn't been at Ardsley so very long."

Now, in the lad's heart, besides his unwillingness to "accept favors from an enemy," there had been another motive. Until that evening he had not realized how lonely and dark was the homeward walk for his sister, after her long day of toil, and even with the company of Gwendolyn. In this his first experience it had come upon him with a shock, that it was neither pleasant nor safe for Amy, and he resolved she should never again be left without his escort, if he were possibly able to be with her.

But he could not, or felt that he could not, tell this to the girls; much less to Mr. Wingate, finding it easier to be misjudged than to explain. Yet had the mill owner known the fact, it would have gone far toward propitiating him, and toward rousing his admiration for his young kinsman.

So with the best intentions all around, the breach between Fairacres and "Charity House" was duly widened.

The trio of mill workers trudged wearily upward, and the mill master hurried recklessly through the gloom toward a home he had coveted, but found a lonely, "ghost-haunted" solitude. For though there are no real spectres to frighten the eye, there are memories which are sadder to face than any "haunt" would be.

"Stir up the fire, man. Don't you know it's a bitter night outside?" he cried, as he entered it.