bet he started the hull thing; and he's tacked on a passel of lies,
and the endurin' place is hummin' with it. Thought I'd tell ye
before ye went in, so's ye could fix up a little what to say."

Mary thanked him cordially, and passed on into the mill: the old man
looked after her with a very friendly glance in his keen blue eyes.

"She's good stuff, May is!" he murmured. "Good stuff, like her mother.

"Folks is like rags, however you look at 'em. Take a good linen rag,
no matter how black it is, and put it through the washers, and the
bleachers, and the cutters, and all the time it's gettin' whiter and
whiter, and sweeter and sweeter, the more you bang it round; till at
last you have bank-note paper, and write to the Queen of England on
it, if you're a mind to, and she won't have none better. And take
jute or shoddy, and the minute you touch to wash it, it cockles up,
or drops to pieces, and it ain't no good to mortal man. Jest like
folks, I tell ye! and May and her mother's pure linen clippin's, if
ever I see 'em."

Forewarned is forearmed, and Mary met quietly the buzz of inquiry
that greeted her when she entered the rag-room. The girls crowded
round her, the men were not far behind. To each and all Mary told the
simple truth, trying not to say a word too much. "The tongue is a
fire!" her mother's favorite text, was constantly in her mind, and
she was determined that no ill word should be spoken of Mr. Gordon,
if she could help it. Almost every one in the mill liked and
respected the "Old Man;" but the human mind loves a sensation, and
Lena and Hitchcock had told their story so vividly the day before
that Mary's account seemed tame and dull beside it; and some of the