The next morning Mrs. Bedlow led Lyddie down the street past all the corporation boardinghouses to the bridge that led to the factory complex. Between two low brick buildings was a tall wooden fence. The gate of the fence was locked like a jail yard, but Mrs. Bedlow wasn’t deterred. She simply went to the door of one of the low buildings and walked in. Lyddie followed, dragging her feet, for the room they entered was larger than the main floor of Cutler’s Tavern, and it was crowded with tables and scriveners’ desks. There were a few men working about the huge room, who looked up over their pens and account books as the two women passed, but it was clear that nothing much was being accomplished even in the counting room now that the water was too high to drive the mill wheel.

Mrs. Bedlow walked straight through the room and out the door on the opposite side into a courtyard large enough, it seemed to Lyddie, for the whole of their mountain farm to fit inside. The front gate and low south buildings—the counting house, offices, and storerooms, as Mrs. Bedlow explained—formed part of the enclosure. The two slightly shorter sides were taller frame structures—the machine shops and repair shops—and across the whole north end of the compound was the cotton mill itself—a gigantic six-story brick building. At one end ran the frame structure of the outdoor staircase. From the brick face, six even rows of windows seemed to glower down at her through the gray April drizzle like so many unfriendly eyes. A bell tower rose from the long roof, making the building seem even taller and more forbidding.

“It must seem imposing to a farm girl,” Mrs. Bedlow said.

Lyddie nodded and tightened her grip on her shawl to keep from trembling.

Mrs. Bedlow turned back toward the low south building and knocked on a door marked “Agent.”

“I’ve brought you a new girl,” she said cheerily to the young man who opened the door. “Fresh from the farm and very healthy, as you can see.”

The young man hardly gave Lyddie a glance, but stepped back and held the door for them to come in. “I’ll see if Mr. Graves can spare a minute,” he said haughtily.

“These clerks do put on airs,” Mrs. Bedlow whispered, but if she was trying to make Lyddie feel more at ease, she failed. Nor was the sight of the agent himself any comfort.

“Mrs. Bedlow, isn’t it?” He was a fat, prosperous-looking man, but without the manners to stand when a middle-aged lady came into his office.