all my troubles--I think if this life is th' end, and that there's no God to wipe away all tears from all eyes--yo' wench, yo'!' said she, sitting up, and clutching violently, almost fiercely, at Margaret's hand, 'I could go mad, and kill yo', I could.' She fell back completely worn out with her passion. Margaret knelt down by her. 'Bessy--we have a Father in Heaven.' 'I know it! I know it,' moaned she, turning her head uneasily from side to side. 'I'm very wicked. I've spoken very wickedly. Oh! don't be frightened by me and never come again. I would not harm a hair of your head. And,'
opening her eyes, and looking earnestly at Margaret, 'I believe, perhaps, more than yo' do o' what's to come. I read the book o' Revelations until I know it off by heart, and I never doubt when I'm waking, and in my senses, of all the glory I'm to come to.' 'Don't let us talk of what fancies come into your head when you are feverish.
I would rather hear something about what you used to do when you were well.' 'I think I was well when mother died, but I have never been rightly strong sin' somewhere about that time. I began to work in a carding-room soon after, and the fluff got into my lungs and poisoned me.' 'Fluff?' said Margaret, inquiringly. 'Fluff,' repeated Bessy. 'Little bits, as fly off fro' the cotton, when they're carding it, and fill the air till it looks all fine white dust.
They say it winds round the lungs, and tightens them up. Anyhow, there's many a one as works in a carding-room, that falls into a waste, coughing and spitting blood, because they're just poisoned by the fluff.' 'But can't it be helped?' asked Margaret. 'I dunno. Some folk have a great wheel at one end o' their carding-rooms to make a draught, and carry off th' dust; but that wheel costs a deal o' money--five or six hundred pound, maybe, and brings in no profit; so it's but a few of th' masters as will put 'em up; and I've heard tell o'
men who didn't like working places where there was a wheel, because they said as how it mad 'em hungry, at after they'd been long used to swallowing fluff, tone go without it, and that their wage ought to be raised if they were to work in such places. So between masters and men th' wheels fall through. I know I wish there'd been a wheel in our place, though.' 'Did not your father know about it?' asked Margaret. 'Yes! And he were sorry. But our factory were a good one on the whole;and a steady likely set o' people; and father was afeard of letting me go to a strange place, for though yo' would na think it now, many a one then used to call me a gradely lass enough. And I did na like to be reckoned nesh and soft, and Mary's schooling were to be kept up, mother said, and father he were always liking to buy books, and go to lectures o' one kind or another--all which took money--so I just worked on till I shall ne'er get the whirr out o' my ears, or the fluff out o' my throat i' this world.
That's all.' 'How old are you?' asked Margaret. 'Nineteen, come July.' 'And I too am nineteen.' She thought, more sorrowfully than Bessy did, of the contrast between them. She could not speak for a moment or two for the emotion she was trying to keep down. 'About Mary,' said Bessy. 'I wanted to ask yo' to be a friend to her. She's seventeen, but she's th' last on us. And I don't want her to go to th'
mill, and yet I dunno what she's fit for.' 'She could not do'--Margaret glanced unconsciously at the uncleaned corners of the room--'She could hardly undertake a servant's place, could she?
