Here the voice faltered and she paused.

"But where could you go, and how could you make your bread, you poor
little ailing thing?"

"I hear that in the town of Columbus, Georgia, even little children
get wages to work in the factory, and I know I can earn enough to
pay my board among the factory people."

"But you are too young to be straying about in a strange place. If
you will stay here, and help my wife about the house and the
weaving, I will take good care of you, and clothe you till you are
grown and married."

"I would rather go away, because I want to be educated, and I can't
be if I stay here."

"Fiddlestick! you will know as much as the balance of us, and that's
all you will ever have any use for. I notice you have a hankering
after books, but the quicker you get that foolishness out of your
head the better; for books won't put bread in your mouth and clothes
on your back; and folks that want to be better than their neighbors
generally turn out worse. The less book-learning you women have the
better."

"I don't see that it is any of your business, Peter Wood, how much
learning we women choose to get, provided your bread is baked and
your socks darned when you want 'em. A woman has as good a right as
a man to get book-learning, if she wants it; and as for sense, I'll