row of little cheap houses stretched on each side of the narrow, dusty street. There was not a tree in the whole length of it except in front of David May's house. A slim young maple, carefully boxed in around the trunk, stood close to his gate.
These poor little houses were all alike; they had been built expressly for the operatives in the Saunders Cotton Mills. There was a little square of ground fenced in before each cottage. Some were miniature vegetable gardens. Araminta May, David's wife, had hers all planted with flowers. They were coarse and gaudy, rather than delicate; her taste ran that way. The flower garden was divided into little fantastic beds edged with cobble-stones, and the narrow footpath leading through the midst of it to the door had on each side a fence of bent willow boughs.
Some morning-glory vines were climbing up on strings towards the two front windows; Araminta's great ambition was to have them thickly screened.
"Folks can't look in an' see us eat then," she said.
They could now. Passers-by might look directly in on the little table set between the windows for tea. The six-o'clock whistle had blown, and the men and girls were coming home from the shops. They straggled along, the men in their calico shirt-sleeves, the girls in their soiled dresses, turning into this yard and that with an air of content.
Araminta had worked in the shop, too, before she was married. Afterwards, David would not let her. "His wife might do his washing and ironing and cooking," he said, "but she should not work for other people as long as he had his two hands."
Every cent that he could spare went to "rig Minty up," as he put it. He could not bear to see her in a poor gown; she dressed as punctiliously as if she had been a fine lady "against Davy comes home."
She had not a fine taste, and admired the cheaply gorgeous. To-night she had on a flimsy blue muslin with a good many flowers, and a deal of wide cotton lace. She was a handsome young woman. She had a long face, with full red lips and an exquisite florid complexion. She flushed pink easily from forehead to throat, but the pink was as fine as a rose's. She had flaxen hair, which she parted and combed straight back.
Araminta's father had been a country minister on a pitiful salary. Her mother had died first, and then her father in his little parish, when she was but a child. Since then she had shifted as best she could. She had lived around in various families, partly dependent, partly working her way, until she was eighteen. Then she came to Saundersville to work in the mills, and there she met David May, and was married to him.
Araminta had not wholly escaped the suspicions liable to attach themselves to a handsome unprotected girl in a humble position. People had said she was a pretty wild kind of a girl, with a meaning look, before she was married.
She had watched for David anxiously to-night She had a little extra tea—a pie and some hot biscuits.
"I'm awful glad you've come," she said, when the stout, curly-headed young fellow loomed up in the doorway. "The biscuits are all gettin' cold. What made you so late; it ain't pay-night?"
"No," said David, "it's turnin'-off night."
"Now, David May, what do you mean?"
"Just what I say. It's turnin'-off night. I've got turned off."
He dropped down on a chair with that and rested his elbows on his knees and held his head in his two hands—the attitude most indicative of a person's sympathy with his own tired soul.
"Now, Davy, honest an' true, ain't you jokin'?"
"No, I ain't jokin'. Wish to the Lord I was, for your sake!"
"But what have you got turned off fur, Davy? I declare, I'm all upset. They ain't out of work, are they?"
"No; there's work enough. It's some of that Lem Wheelock's doin's. If any feller but him had been foreman, I'd ha' kept my place. He's always had a spite again' me, and I'll be hanged if I know why."
"What did they say was the reason they turned you off?"
"Didn't give me no reason. The boss jest called me into his office, an' told me they wouldn't need my services no more, an' paid me what was owin' me, an' that was jest ten dollars. I tried to talk, but he kep' on writin' in a book an' didn't seem to hear me, an' I quit when I found out I might jest as well be talkin' to a stone wall. I dunno what Wheelock's been tellin' him, and I don't care. Ef he wants me to go, 1'll go. I ain't goin' to whine, and tease him fur work. I've got a little feelin', ef I ain't one of the upper crust!"
"That's so, Davy. I'd see him Down East first."