Johnny's left arm shot out and caught the other around the neck. At the same time he rapped his bony fist to the other's nose. It was a pathetically bony fist, but that it was sharp to hurt was evidenced by the squeal of pain it produced. The other children were uttering frightened cries, while Johnny's sister, Jennie, had dashed into the house.

He thrust Will from him, kicked him savagely on the shins, then reached for him and slammed him face downward in the dirt. Nor did he release him till the face had been rubbed into the dirt several times. Then the mother arrived, an anæmic whirlwind of solicitude and maternal wrath.

»Why can't he leave me alone?« was Johnny's reply to her upbraiding. »Can't he see I'm tired?«

»I'm as big as you,« Will raged in her arms, his face a mess of tears, dirt, and blood. »I'm as big as you now, an' I'm goin' to git bigger. Then I'll lick you – see if I don't.«

»You ought to be to work, seein' how big you are,« Johnny snarled. »That's what's the matter with you. You ought to be to work. An' it's up to your ma to put you to work.«

»But he's too young,« she protested. »He's only a little boy.«

»I was younger'n him when I started to work.«

Johnny's mouth was open, further to express the sense of unfairness that he felt, but the mouth closed with a snap. He turned gloomily on his heel and stalked into the house and to bed. The door of his room was open to let in warmth from the kitchen. As he undressed in the semi-darkness he could hear his mother talking with a neighbor woman who had dropped in. His mother was crying, and her speech was punctuated with spiritless sniffles.

»I can't make out what's gittin' into Johnny,« he could hear her say. »He didn't used to be this way. He was a patient little angel.

An' he is a good boy,« she hastened to defend. »He's worked faithful, an' he did go to work too young. But it wasn't my fault. I do the best I can, I'm sure.«

Prolonged sniffling from the kitchen, and Johnny murmured to himself as his eyelids closed down, »You betcher life I've worked faithful.«

The next morning he was torn bodily by his mother from the grip of sleep. Then came the meagre breakfast, the tramp through the dark, and the pale glimpse of day across the housetops as he turned his back on it and went in through the factory gate. It was another day, of all the days, and all the days were alike.

And yet there had been variety in his life – at the times he changed from one job to another, or was taken sick. When he was six, he was little mother and father to Will and the other children still younger. At seven he went into the mills – winding bobbins. When he was eight, he got work in another mill. His new job was marvellously easy. All he had to do was to sit down with a little stick in his hand and guide a stream of cloth that flowed past him. This stream of cloth came out of the maw of a machine, passed over a hot roller, and went on its way elsewhere.