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(_Good Housekeeping_)

NEW ENGLAND MILL SLAVES

BY MARY ALDEN HOPKINS

In the pale light of an early winter morning, while a flat, white
moon awaited the dawn and wind-driven clouds flung faint scudding
shadows across the snow, two little girls, cloaked, shawled, hooded
out of all recognition, plodded heavily along a Vermont mountain
road. Each carried a dangling dinner pail.

The road was lonely. Once they passed a farmhouse, asleep save for a
yellow light in a chamber. Somewhere a cock crowed. A dog barked in
the faint distance.

Where the road ascended the mountain--a narrow cut between dark,
pointed firs and swaying white-limbed birches--the way was slushy
with melting snow. The littler girl, half dozing along the
accustomed way, slipped and slid into puddles.

At the top of the mountain the two children shrank back into their
mufflers, before the sweep of the wet, chill wind; but the mill was
in sight--beyond the slope of bleak pastures outlined with stone
walls--sunk deep in the valley beside a rapid mountain stream, a dim
bulk already glimmering with points of light. Toward this the two
little workwomen slopped along on squashy feet.