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Katie Robertson

by Margaret E. Winslow · English · Gutenberg #23795 · 416,206 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Katie Robertson
        A girls story of factory life

Author: Margaret E. Winslow


        
Release date: December 10, 2007 [eBook #23795]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23795

Credits: Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KATIE ROBERTSON ***




Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









KATIE ROBERTSON

A GIRLS STORY OF FACTORY LIFE

By MARGARET E. WINSLOW
Author of "Miss Malcolm's Ten," "Three Years at Glenwood," etc.

A. L. BURT COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright, 1885,
By Congregational Sunday School and Publishing Society.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To the many boys and girls who are in early years earning an honorable
support for themselves, or else assisting their parents by working in
factories; to the multitudes of young church members, who may be glad of
some practically helpful suggestions in surmounting the difficulties and
resisting the temptations incident to their new lives; to mill-owners,
who feel their solemn responsibility, as in the sight of God, for the
intellectual and spiritual welfare of their operatives; and chiefly to
the young Christian manufacturer who has been the model from which the
picture of "Mr. James" has been copied,--this story, whose incidents are
mostly true ones, is dedicated.

That the Holy Spirit may make use of it to inculcate in young hearts a
sense of honorable independence, a conviction of the dignity of
faithfully performed work, and, above all, an earnest and irrevocable
choice of God's blessed service and an entire committal of their ways to
him, is the sincere prayer of

                                                            THE AUTHOR.

SAUGERTIES, July 1, 1885.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




KATIE ROBERTSON.

CHAPTER I.

A NEW DEPARTURE.


"But, mother, it isn't as if I were going away from home, like the Lloyd
girls; you might have a right to cry if that were the case."

"I know, dear; it's all right, and I ought to be very thankful; but I'm
a foolish woman. I can't bear to think of _my_ little girl, whom I have
guarded so tenderly, going among all those girls and men, and fighting
her way in life."

"I don't think I shall be much of a fighter," laughed Katie, looking at
her diminutive hands; "and why is it any worse to go among the boys and
girls in the factory than among the boys and girls in school? You never
minded that."

"That was different--you weren't doing it for money. O me! what would I
have thought when I married your father if any one had told me that his
child, his _girl_ child, would ever have to earn her bread!"

"Well, mother, I won't go," said the girl, her bright looks fading away,
"if you don't want me to; but I don't know what Mr. Sanderson will
think, he tried so hard to get me into the mill, and it was such a favor
from Mr. Mountjoy. You _said_ you were very thankful."

"So I was, so I am; but--but you don't understand, and perhaps it's
better you should not. I'll try not to grumble."

This was promising more than Mrs. Robertson was able to perform perhaps,
for she was a chronic and inveterate grumbler. But she had some excuse
in the present circumstances, for Katie was, as she said, her baby, and
the "apple of her eye." Married when quite young to the handsome and
intelligent young village doctor, she certainly had not expected ever to
be placed in a position where her children, her girls at least, would
need to earn their own bread. But in a few short years the doctor died
of a contagious disease he had taken from one of his patients, and as he
had not yet begun to accumulate anything, his young widow was left with
her three children to struggle along as best she could. How she had done
it God and herself only knew. The little house was her own, the sole
patrimony left by her own father. The horse and buggy, the medical
library and valuable professional instruments, medicines, etc., were
sold at a fair valuation; and the money thus secured, deposited in the
bank, had served as a last resource whenever the barrel of meal failed
or the cruse of oil ran dry. For the rest, Mrs. Robertson was employed
by her neighbors to help turn and put down carpets, cover furniture,
etc. etc., light jobs requiring judgment and skill rather than strength,
for which her friends, who never placed her in a menial capacity, gladly
paid double the sum they would to any one else. She was also a capital
nurse, and in this position rendered herself very valuable in many
households, and for such services she was even more generously
remunerated; so that somehow she managed to keep her head above water
while her children were small, and feed, clothe, and send them to school
as they grew older.

Her children were, of course, the one source of consolation left to the
poor widow, and many a long evening's work was both shortened and
lightened by golden dreams of their future prosperity and success.

When her eldest boy Eric was twelve, and when Alfred, the second child,
was only ten, a friend made interest with Mr. Sanderson, superintendent
of the bookbindery, auxiliary to the Squantown Paper Mills, to give the
two boys steady employment, and since that time, four years ago, their
earnings, small but certain, had greatly helped in the family expenses.
Both were noble, manly fellows, with, as yet, no bad habits. They
brought their mother all that they earned, and were quite content to
pass their evenings with her and their little sister. Katie, who was now
thirteen, had always attended the public school in the village, of
course helping her mother with the housework and sewing. She was a
delicate little creature, small for her years, but bright and
intelligent, a general favorite with the village children as well as
with her Sunday-school teacher, Miss Etta Mountjoy, who was not so
very many years older than herself.

Katie was a very lady-like looking girl, and did not seem fitted to do
very hard work, nor to mix among rough people, but she was an
independent little thing who knew very well how poor her mother was and
how hard both she and her brothers had to work. She knew that her
breakfasts, dinners, and suppers cost something, and that it took money
to buy the good shoes and neat, whole dresses in which her mother always
kept her dressed, and she resolved in her own wise little head to find
some way of contributing to the family stock. It was some time before
she saw her way clear to do this, but at last she took counsel of a
school-fellow whose sister worked in the folding-room of the Squantown
Paper Mills and found that even a young girl might earn considerable in
this way. So, without telling any one at home of her plans, she, one
evening, presented herself before Mr. Sanderson and requested to be
taken into the bindery.

"What can you do, little puss?" said this gentleman, quite surprised.
"You look about large enough to play with dolls, like my Nina."

"I'm almost fourteen," said Katie, drawing herself up to her full height
and trying to look sedate. "I'm two years older than Nina; I'm as old as
your Bertie, Mr. Sanderson, and I _must_ make some money."

"Must you, indeed?" said he, beginning to be more interested. "Don't I
know your face? Let me see. Why, it can't be--yes, it is Katie
Robertson! How time flies! It seems to me only yesterday that your
father died, and you were a baby; but Bertie was one, too, then, that's
a fact. How time does fly, to be sure! So you want to get into the
bindery where your brothers are, I suppose?" Katie nodded. "Well, now,"
continued he, "it's most unfortunate, but there isn't a vacancy
anywhere; we have five or six applicants now waiting for a chance. Why
don't you try the mill?"

"The mill!" said Katie, "the paper-mill? But I don't know any one there;
how could I go and ask strangers?"

"I think you're brave enough to ask any one," said Mr. Sanderson. "I
suppose you'd find it hard, though, and perhaps no one would believe
that you were old enough or strong enough to work. Your looks are
against you, little one; and then, Mr. Mountjoy did not know your father
as I did; he came here afterward. Let me see. Perhaps I might have some
influence. Will you trust your case in my hands?" And, as the girl
nodded, he continued: "Come here about this time to-morrow evening, and
I will report progress. Perhaps I may have some good news for you, but
don't be too sure. It isn't so easy to get into the mill either; there
are always a great many applicants. You'll come?"

"Yes, sir," said Katie, and went away in a state of disappointed
uncertainty. It was not quite so easy to earn money as she had supposed.

The little girl looked very mysterious all teatime, and threw out
several hints that quite mystified her brothers about Mr. Sanderson and
the bindery. But no one guessed her secret, and the next afternoon, just
as she was beginning to think of putting on her hat and running down to
get her answer, who should come into the gate but Mr. Sanderson himself.

Mrs. Robertson was greatly frightened when she saw him. She was one of
those persons who always look on the dark side of things, and she feared
her boys had got into trouble and would perhaps lose their situations.
She trembled so that she could hardly put on the widow's cap, in which
she always appeared before strangers (although it was now six years
since the doctor had left her and gone home to heaven), and said to her
daughter:--

"That's always our luck! Just as soon as things seem to be going
straight with us, some terrible misfortune is sure to happen; we're the
most unfortunate family in the world."

The poor lady forgot that, with the one exception of her husband's
death, her life had been one of unmingled, as well as undeserved,
happiness; and even in that loss her three children had been spared to
her, friends had been raised up to help her, and there had never been a
day when she and her children had not had enough plain food to eat and
plain clothes to wear. It is thus that we are all apt to dishonor God by
dwelling upon the one thing which in his providence he has seen fit to
take away, and forgetting to thank him for all the many other blessings
he has given us.

But Katie was full of expectation and suppressed delight. She was the
opposite of her mother, and always expected good news, and she felt sure
that Mr. Sanderson would not have taken the trouble to come himself,
except to tell her that he had secured a place for her. Her eyes danced
as she let him in, and she looked inquiringly in his face. But he said
nothing, except:--

"Good-evening, Katie. I would like to see your mother a few moments." So
she ushered him into the "front room," so seldom used, and went to
summon her mother, waiting outside the door till she should herself be
called in to the consultation.

When Mr. Sanderson told Mrs. Robertson that he had called to say that he
had been successful in his application to Mr. Mountjoy, who had agreed
to take Katie into the "rag-room" of the paper-mill, in consideration of
his interest in her mother, she was completely taken by surprise and
inclined to be offended with both gentlemen for their interference, as
she thought it, with her business; but when she heard that the
application came from the child herself, while greatly surprised, she
could not but feel grateful to them for their trouble, and expressed
herself so, while she nevertheless decidedly declined to allow Katie to
accept the position, saying she was altogether too young and too
delicate, and that she would not have her daughter disgraced by working
for her living.

"For the matter of that," said Mr. Sanderson, "I shall be glad to have
my Bertie take the place if you don't want it for Katie. I have a large
family to bring up, and I want my girls and boys both to be independent.
I hadn't thought of it for Bertie quite yet, but your Katie reminded me
last night of how old she is; and I see she is none too young to begin."

This put a little different face on the matter, for Mrs. Sanderson and
Mrs. Robertson had been intimate friends when girls, in precisely the
same rank in life, although one had married a doctor and the other the
overseer of the bookbindery. Moreover, Mr. Sanderson was known to be
very well off and quite able--had he judged it best--to bring up his
girls in idleness, as useless fine ladies. Perhaps it would not be such
a disgrace, after all, and they did sorely need the money. Katie was not
dressed as her father's child should be, and toil as she might, even
with the boys' wages the widow could not make more than sufficed to keep
up the little home. Then, too, her child would have to do something for
herself when she grew up; she would have no one to look to but herself,
and though teaching would be perhaps a more genteel way of support, it
was a very laborious one, and would make it necessary to go away from
home, as the Lloyd girls were going to do, and to remain away for
several years, first at some higher institution of learning and then at
the Normal School, and where would the money come from to pay the
tuition fees, traveling expenses, and board bills?

All this passed through Mrs. Robertson's mind as Mr. Sanderson reasoned
with her and showed her the foolishness of her objections, and finally
the impatient Katie was called in, and informed that she might "try it
for a while"; and then the visitor was thanked for his trouble, and
took his leave.

This all happened a week ago. The intervening time had been spent in
putting Katie's simple wardrobe in order and in making home arrangements
by which Mrs. Robertson would not miss her daughter more than she could
help, in those various little services which she had been wont to
render. The last day had now come; to-morrow the new life was to begin,
and Katie was clearing up the breakfast things for the last time when
the conversation with which our story commences took place.

"I wish it was not in the rag-room," said Mrs. Robertson, by-and-by,
when Katie, having finished her dishes and swept up the room, drew her
seat to her mother's side and took up her work--the ruffle of the last
of the six mob-caps she was to wear at her work.

"Why?" said her daughter, to whom the factory was just now a sort of
enchanted palace, any one of whose rooms was delightful to contemplate.

"It's such a low, dirty place, I'm told, and there's so many common
women and girls there."

"Well, I needn't talk to them, I suppose. I needn't be common, at any
rate, and I can't get dirty in those great long-sleeved aprons and these
nice little caps. You don't know how smart I'm going to be, and won't
you be proud of your big girl when she brings home her first
three-dollar bill, all earned in one week? Eric will see that a girl's
worth something, after all, and Alfred sha'n't make fun of me any more."

Mrs. Robertson did not say anything else just now; she did not like to
be always checking the exuberance of her child's spirits with the dull
forebodings of her own, but she could not see the paper-mill through the
same halo that invested it in Katie's eyes. She knew there were snares
and temptations, besides disagreeable and hard work to be met and
encountered there, and she feared that the child's future disappointment
would be proportioned to the brightness of her present hopes. Still, as
the matter was determined upon, she knew it was right to make the best
of it, and she tried to talk pleasantly and at least seem to sympathize
with her daughter's enthusiasm.

So passed the day, and at night when the boys came home they were
called upon to listen for the hundredth time to all the rose-colored
plans, and were pressed to declare that there could be nothing in the
world more delightful than working in a factory.

But the boys could not see it in that light any more than their mother.
They were as content to work as are most men and boys who seem to take
it for granted that it is in the course of nature for them to earn their
bread by the sweat of their brow, but they had been at it long enough to
have lost the sense of novelty and to understand that it was work and
not play which their sister was undertaking.

"Won't you be sick of it!" said Alfred, in answer to one of Katie's
outbursts, "and long, when Saturday comes, to go out nutting with the
girls, or off on a hay-ride, or something! You'll wish you were free
before you've been a slave many months, or I'm no prophet."

"Well, she shall be free if she wants to," said Eric, kindly. "Our only
little sister sha'n't work if she don't want to; we can take care of
her, Alfred, can't we?"

"But I do want to work," said Katie; "I know I sha'n't get tired, or if
I do get tired of the work, I sha'n't of getting the money; for, boys, I
mean to be a rich, independent woman, and help take care of mother. You
needn't suppose that I'm going to be dependent upon you."

"All right, young lady," said Alfred, "only I think you'll sing a
different tune before many months are over."

"The tune you ought to sing just now, children," said Mrs. Robertson,
"is 'Good-night.' You all have to go to work very early, and Katie is
not used to it. Good-night, darling, and don't forget to ask God to
bless you and shield you in your new undertaking."

"I asked him that night to make Mr. Mountjoy listen to Mr. Sanderson and
give me the place," said Katie, with a rising color; "don't you think he
heard me and answered my prayer? It seems as though he had just made it
all straight and plain. I feel just like thanking him to-night; and,
mother, don't you worry so much. Don't you think Jesus is strong enough
to take care of me anywhere if I ask him to?"

"Yes, indeed," said the mother, almost ashamed of her forebodings, and
rebuked, as she had many a time been, by the bright, hopeful faith of
her child. Surely when she looked at the bright, happy, healthy faces of
her children, she too had ample cause for thankfulness, and for
continued trust in the divine love which had carried her safely through
so many emergencies and had promised never to leave or forsake her or
hers.




CHAPTER II.

ENTERING.


"Hallo, Katie, wake up, wake up!" and Eric rattled the knob of his
sister's door. But he was compelled to do so many times before he heard
a sleepy "What's the matter?"

"Matter? Why, it's high time you were up if you mean to get to the
factory this morning."

"It's the middle of the night," said Katie, yawning.

"Indeed, it is not. It's after five o'clock, and work begins at
half-past six. You haven't a moment to spare if you want to dress
yourself, get your breakfast, and get to the mill in time; it's farther
off than the bindery. Come, be a brave girl, and jump up quickly."

Thus adjured, the little girl jumped out of bed--but how cold and dark
it was! although Eric had left the lamp in the hall outside. One of
Katie's failings--not an uncommon one among girls and boys--was a great
dislike to getting up early in the morning, and her mother had always
humored her in the matter, getting up herself and giving the boys their
breakfast early, and then waking her little girl just in time to eat her
own and get to school at nine o'clock. Even then it was sometimes a
difficult task.

The young work-woman had not included the necessity of getting up so
very early in the morning as one of the many anticipated delights of her
new position. This first taste of it seemed, on the contrary, quite a
hardship. Still, when she was once out of bed, there was a certain
romance in dressing by lamplight, and she knelt down by her bedside to
offer her morning prayer, with a strange feeling of mingled awe and
thankfulness.

Katie Robertson was a Christian girl, and was really desirous to please
the blessed Saviour who had done so much for her. She could not remember
the time when she did not love him; but for the last few years, since
she had grown older and begun to understand things better, she had felt
a longing desire to be like him and to please him in her life and
actions. She found time to open her little Bible this morning and read
one or two verses by the light of the lamp. They were these:--

"In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths";
"Whether, therefore, ye eat or drink, or _whatsoever_ ye do, do all to
the glory of God," and "I can do all things through Christ who
strengthens me."

And then she prayed earnestly that she might in these "ways" upon which
she was entering always "acknowledge" God, be faithful to her work, do
it "to the glory of God," and have the strength which the Lord Jesus
Christ has promised to give to those who ask him, to resist temptation
and stand up for truth and righteousness in the new life which lay
before her. She prayed, also, that her heavenly Father would give her
some work to do for him among her companions in the mill, and then she
went downstairs.

Breakfast was all ready, and it seemed quite funny to eat it by
lamplight; but by the time it was over it was pretty light outside, and
when, warmly wrapped up, Katie left the house with her brothers there
was a rosy flush over the snow which sparkled and glistened, and the
young factory-girl set out in high spirits for her first day's work.
The boys escorted her as far as the great gates, where a good many other
girls and boys were waiting among a crowd of men and women, and then ran
back to be in time at the bindery, which was a little nearer home.

It was rather cold waiting outside, and, if the truth must be told, our
little girl felt just a trifle homesick among so many strangers, for as
yet she had not seen a familiar face, and something seemed to rise in
her throat that she found hard to swallow; but just as she felt that she
_must_ have a good cry, and at the same time resolved that she wouldn't,
the great steam-whistle shrieked, the bell in the tower rang, the gates
opened from the inside, the gathered crowd rushed in, and all along the
road might be seen flying figures of men, women, boys, and girls,
hurrying to be in their places at the commencement of work and thus
avoid the fine imposed upon stragglers. There was a pause of a few
moments in the paved inside court while the inner doors of the great
brick building were opened, and then the incoming crowd entering in
various directions, scattered among the different corridors and left the
"new girl" standing alone and bewildered at the entrance.

In front of her stretched a long, narrow hall, clean and fresh
(Squantown Paper Mills were new and built after the most approved
models), with doors opening from it at intervals on both sides. Some of
these doors were open and some were shut; into some the work-people were
constantly disappearing, as though the doors were mouths that opened
suddenly and swallowed them up, and into some of the open ones Katie
peeped timidly and turned back disconsolately as she discovered that
they only afforded entrance to similar corridors, pierced by similar
rows of doors.

At length the last straggler had entered, gone his way, and disappeared,
and dead silence reigned. Katie felt as though she were alone in the
universe, and almost wondered if she were to be left there forever, when
a short, sharp, deafening whistle echoed through the hall, and at the
same instant the great building vibrated from top to bottom, the roar of
machinery swallowed up the silence, and the day's work began.

Immediately afterward a side door, close to where our little girl was
standing, opened, and out of it came the foreman of the mill, who had
been up to this moment in the office, receiving his orders for the day.

"Hallo, you!" he said crossly, seeing a girl standing idle in the hall;
"why don't you go about your business? Go to work if you belong here; go
home if you don't! No idlers or beggars allowed here, so close to the
office door, too. Come, run away quickly."

"If you please, Mr. Thornton, I've come to work in the mill, in the
rag-room, but I don't know which way to go."

"Oh!" said the foreman, "you're a new hand, eh? Rather a small one. It
seems to me Mr. Mountjoy will end by having a nursery rather than a
mill, but he knows his own business best, I suppose. New hands are not
in my department, however. Mr. James," he called, reopening the office
door and putting his head in again, "here's some work for you."

The "new hand" expected now to have an interview with the awful Mr.
Mountjoy, Miss Etta's father, of whom she had heard so much, but had
never yet seen, and began to tremble a little in anticipation. But,
instead, a rosy-faced, light-haired young man appeared, to whom the
foreman made a slight bow, and then went away. This was Mr. James
Mountjoy, Miss Etta's brother, and the only son of the proprietor of the
mill. Katie had heard her brothers, who were in his Sunday-school class,
talk about him, but had never seen him before.

"Your name, little girl," he said pleasantly, as he ushered her into the
office.

"Katie Robertson, sir. Mr. Sanderson"--

"Oh, I know; Mr. Sanderson recommended you to my father. You look almost
too small to work. Can you do anything?"

"I can cook, and wash dishes, and help mother, and sew; I was in the
first class at school"--

"That is not any of it precisely the kind of work we do here," said the
young gentleman, pleasantly; "but no doubt you are a quick little girl,
and if you are used to doing some kinds of work others will not come so
hard to you. But you must understand in the beginning that work in a
factory is work, not play; work that cannot be laid aside when one is
tired of it, or when one wants to go on an excursion or to do something
else. It is work, too, for which you are to be paid, and it would be
dishonesty not to do it faithfully as in the sight of God. Our rules are
no stricter than they must be for the best good of the work and the
comfort and protection of all, but we _expect_ them to be obeyed. You
will remember that. There must be no playing or whispering in work
hours, and you must always be on time. We want all our work-people to be
happy, and I am sure that the best kind of happiness comes from fidelity
to duty. Can you be a _faithful_ little girl?"

"Yes, sir," said Katie, with a slight blush, though she did not feel at
all afraid of him; "I am trying to please God everywhere, and I am sure
he will help me to do so here."

"I am glad to hear you say that," said the young man, with a smile. "If
every man, woman, and child in this factory were really trusting in God
and trying to please him, we wouldn't need so many rules and the work
would not be so hard. One thing more: I believe you are to be in the
rag-room; that is a dirty place, in spite of all our efforts to keep it
clean and well ventilated; you won't find it very pleasant there always,
but perhaps you can learn to _endure_ for Christ's and duty's sake; and
every one has to begin at the bottom, you know, who means to climb to
the top of the ladder."

During the latter part of this talk the gentleman and the child had been
ascending flight after flight of broad, open staircases, as well as
several narrow, spiral ones, crossing machinery-rooms, where great arms
and wheels and screws, in constant motion, made the little girl shudder,
and threading narrow passages and outside balconies, where the broad
raceway foamed and roared fifty or sixty feet beneath them. Katie had
never been inside of the great paper-mill before, though she had always
admired its fine proportions and handsome architecture from the outside.
She was surprised now to see how really beautiful everything was. The
floors were laid in wood of two contrasting colors; the balusters were
of solid black walnut; there were rows and rows of clear glass windows
in the rooms and corridors, while the machinery was either of shining
steel or polished brass. In some of the rooms were girls tending the
ruling and cutting and folding machines, and occasionally one would nod
to Katie, but no one spoke except where the work rendered it necessary.

At last the room next to the top of the vast building was reached, and
there Mr. James opened a door and ushered Katie into a room which
extended the whole length of one side of the building. The windows, of
which there were fifteen, were wide open, but for all that the air was
so thick with dust that at first Katie drew back with a sense of
suffocation.

"I told you it would not be pleasant," said Mr. James, "but this is your
appointed place. Be a brave girl, and when you are used to it it won't
seem so bad."

The sense of suffocation was caused by the particles of dust with which
the air was heavily laden, and which flew from the piles of rags which
over fifty girls were busily engaged in sorting, putting the
dark-colored ones by themselves, the medium-colored by themselves, and
the white ones--or those that had been white--into large boxes. As soon
as these boxes were filled they were placed on wheelbarrows and emptied
into long slides by men who waited for them and returned the boxes. Mr.
James explained to his young companion that these slides emptied their
contents into great vats in the room below, where after lying some days
in a certain purifying solution they were boiled with soda to loosen the
dirt, thoroughly washed by machinery, and passed into great copper
kettles, where they were boiled to a pulp and ground at the same time,
horizontal grindstones reducing them to the finest powder. He also
showed her that the dust was rendered much less hurtful than it would
otherwise have been by a great fan kept constantly at work on one side
of the room, which drove it out of the windows in front of the girls,
who were thus not compelled to breathe it unless they turned directly
around facing the blast, as Katie had done on entering the room. He then
put her under the care of a pleasant-faced woman, whose duty it was to
oversee the little girls, saw that she had a comfortable seat, shook
hands with her, and went away.

Mr. James was by no means called upon to be so polite to a "new hand";
most employers would have told the child which way to go and then left
her to shift for herself, or at best have sent a man or boy to show her
the way. Perhaps he would have done so with some girls, but he saw that
the child was timid and homesick, and knew that a few kind words would
go a great way toward making her feel at home and happy, and would serve
as an offset against the disagreeable first impressions of the rag-room,
and the weariness of regular work undertaken for the first time.

Why should he care to have one of his factory girls "feel at home and
happy"? some one will say; his relations with them are only those of
business: so much work for so much money; it was nothing to him what
they thought or felt. Mr. James Mountjoy did not feel so. He thought
that his father and he were placed in this responsible position and
given the care of several hundred human souls expressly that some good
work might be done for them. He felt that human beings are more
precious than machinery, and that happiness is an important factor in
goodness. He looked upon his work-people as those for whom he must give
account, and tried to act in all his dealings with them "to the glory of
God." Had he been actuated by the purest selfishness and the most
approved business principles, he could not have chosen a wiser course;
for men and women treated as friends become almost of necessity
friendly, and seeing their own interests cared for were all the more
likely to care for those of their employer. Katie Robertson certainly
never forgot Mr. James's judicious kindness on the morning of her
entrance into the mill; he was to her the kindest, sweetest, and most
lovable of gentlemen. She felt ready to do anything he should tell her
and to keep every rule he might make. Then, too, he was a Christian, and
understood all about what she meant when she had said God would help
her; surely it must be very easy to be good and resist temptation in a
place with such a master, and she felt like thanking God that, in spite
of the suffocating dust, "the lines had fallen to her in such very
pleasant places."




CHAPTER III.

THE FIRST DAY.


Left to herself Katie looked timidly round. It is always an ordeal to
meet so many strangers for the first time, and our little friend was
beginning to feel quite forlorn, when Miss Peters, the superintendent of
the rag-room, came to her and began to show her about the work to be
done; how, besides the rags being sorted, the buttons were to be taken
off and the larger pieces cut into small ones by pulling them
dexterously along and between two great sharp knives set on end for the
purpose. Katie had already covered her clean dress with the long-sleeved
blue apron and her hair with the little mob-cap her mother had provided,
and at once commenced her work, not at all seeing or noticing the
scornful looks that passed between some of the girls whose ragged finery
and dirty hair-ribbons full of dust and "_flue_" presented a lively
contrast to her own neat and suitable equipment. We may observe, in
passing, that before long this simple method of protection so commended
itself to some of the more sensible girls and their parents that many of
them adopted it and mob-caps and overalls became quite the fashion in
the mill.

Katie was a smart little girl and could work very quickly when she set
about it; of course to-day she was anxious to show how much she could
do, and her piles and boxes were fuller than those of any girls near her
by the time of the warning whistle, which indicated that in half an hour
the dinner-bell would sound. Then there was a bustle in the room. The
piles were taken away in long and deep barrows which men wheeled into
the room, the boxes were carried off, emptied into the vats, and brought
back again; some of the girls swept the floor and tables by which they
stood; talking was permitted in this half-hour, and such a Babel as the
tongues of forty or fifty girls suddenly unloosed can make may be better
imagined than described. The "new hand" took advantage of the interval
to divest herself of her cap and apron, and putting on her hat, after
washing her hands in one of the row of basins provided for the purpose,
appeared as neat and nice for her homeward walk as she had done in the
morning when she came.

Such was not the case with most of the girls, whose fluffy, disordered
appearance as they issued from the rag-room was proverbial.

At precisely twelve o'clock the great bells began to clang and the
steam-whistle to shriek, and the long corridors and stairs echoed to the
tramp of many feet as the hundreds of men, women, boys, and girls rushed
down and out, and scattered in every direction toward the many homes
where dinner was awaiting them.

Eric and Alfred met their sister just outside of the door, and the three
were soon at home, Katie talking so much and so fast all the way, that
her brothers, as they said, "could hardly get in a word edgewise." Many
of the mill operatives carried their dinner with them and spent the noon
hour in gossip with each other, but Mrs. Robertson was careful both of
the bodies and souls of her children. She knew that the former would be
much more vigorous if every day they had a warm, comfortable, if
frugal, meal at noontide, and thought that the latter would be kept pure
and unsullied much longer if not exposed to the kind of talk apt to pass
between idle men and women of all grades and associations in society. So
ever since they first went into the bindery, the boys had regularly come
home to dinner, and were much the better, not only for it, but also for
the quick walk in the open fresh air.

Poor Mrs. Robertson had passed a lonely morning. She was used to being
alone while her daughter was at school, but that was different; she had
conjured up all sorts of dangers and disagreeables that the girl might
have to encounter, and she rather expected to see her brought in on a
board bruised and maimed from some part of the machinery into which she
had fallen or been entangled. But when Katie came rushing in like a
whirlwind, in high spirits, with glowing cheeks and a splendid appetite,
which yet she could scarcely take time to gratify, so full was she of
enthusiastic talk concerning the beauty and grandeur of the mill and the
kindness of Mr. James, her mother felt rather ashamed of her
forebodings.

Never had a dinner tasted so nicely; never had the little girl, to her
remembrance, eaten so much. She was in such a hurry to be off again, so
as not to be late, that the boys declared she would not give them any
time to eat at all, and again predicted that in a month's time things
would not be so rose-colored.

In the afternoon a surprise awaited the little factory-girl. Hardly had
work recommenced as the silence of voices and the noise of machinery
followed upon the long steam-whistle, than Mr. James again appeared,
followed by another "new hand." She was a tall, stout girl; in reality
just about Katie's age, but looking several years older, dressed in a
light-blue cashmere, considerably soiled and frayed. Her hair, which was
"banged" low over her forehead, was braided in a long tail behind, and
tied with a bunch of tumbled red ribbons, and around her neck was a
chain and locket intended to resemble gold. The girls all looked at her
inappropriate costume, most of them with envy and admiration, a few with
pity for a girl who knew no better than to come to factory work in so
very unsuitable a dress, and Katie looked up in some surprise to find
that the new comer, who had been placed next to her, was her old school
companion, Bertie Sanderson.

Miss Peters came forward pleasantly, showed the new girl how to do her
work just as she had showed Katie in the morning, and glancing at her
dress, suggested that another time a similar protection to that of her
companion would be advisable, and then left her to herself.

Scarcely was her back turned than Bertie, looking round the room with
great disgust, turned to Katie and said:--

"Isn't it hateful? Just think of _us_ made to work among factory-girls.
I don't see what my father could have been thinking of!"

Katie made no answer, but pointed to Miss Peters, and then to the rule
for silence which was hung up conspicuously on the wall.

"Nonsense!" said Bertie, "that don't mean me. I'm daughter of Mr
Sanderson, the overseer of the bindery, don't you know? It's kind of
funny that I should be in the rag-room among all the common girls,
anyhow; but father said I'd got to begin work, and he guessed what
wouldn't hurt you wouldn't hurt me. But for the thought that you were
here I wouldn't have come at all, no matter what pa said. Ma don't think
it genteel. I don't see what made you come; don't you think it's
disgusting?"

"No," said Katie, "I wanted to come, and I think the factory is
magnificent; besides, I want the money."

"So do I," said the other, "and pa said I should have all I earn till
there's enough to get a silk dress. I do want a silk dress so, don't
you?"

"No," said Katie, "I don't care;" but at this moment Miss Peters came
toward them, saying,--

"No talking, girls; you are new hands, or I should have to fine you;
every time a girl speaks it's a penny off of her day's wages, but I'll
let you off this time. Bertie, you haven't done a thing yet."

Katie blushed, for though she had not stopped work a single moment, she
had been tempted by her companion into breaking the rules; but Bertie
looked up insolently at the superintendent as she slowly took up some
of the rags, and muttered in a low tone, which was heard by most of her
neighbors:--

"Who's going to mind you? You're only a servant-girl, anyway;" for Miss
Peters had, in her early life, "lived out."

Whether Miss Peters heard or not Katie could not be sure, but she
thought she saw a heightened color in the young woman's face, and was
just going to ask her companion how she could be guilty of such
rudeness, when she remembered the rule in time, checked herself, and put
her finger significantly on her lips.

As to Bertie, she stared round the room, working a little now and then,
and talking aloud to herself as she could get no one to talk to her.
Miss Peters was very indignant; but thought it best to take no notice
just yet; for, as the girl had said, she was Mr. Sanderson's daughter,
and she did not know just how far it would do to enforce rules in her
case.

The girls in the rag-room were dismissed at five o'clock, so, as the
bindery did not close till six, Katie did not have the company of her
brothers on her homeward walk, Bertie taking their place, and talking
all the way about the indignity of working in a factory and the hardship
of having to work at all. She told about her cousins in the city, who
were quite fine ladies, according to Bertie's account, doing nothing but
play on the piano and do fancy-work. They were coming with their mother
to make a visit in the summer, and how ashamed she should be to appear
before them in the character of a paper-mill girl. The girl talked about
her father in anything but a respectful manner, but seemed to find
comfort in the thought of her silk dress. She had never had one yet, and
it had long been the goal of her ambition. What color did Katie think
would be becoming to her? How would she have it made? how trimmed?

"I'll tell you what, Katie," she said, "let's take our money when we get
it and get silks exactly alike; then we can wear them to Sunday-school
together, and the other girls will see that it isn't so mean to be
factory-girls after all. Even Miss Mountjoy herself can wear nothing
finer than silk, if she does always look so stuck up."

But Katie failed to be infected with a desire for a silk dress. She had
never worn anything but the plainest and poorest clothes, though they
had always been whole, clean, and neatly made; her temptations did not
lie in that line. She had insisted on beginning to work in order to help
her mother support the family, and to make it a little easier for them
all to get along. She admired pretty things, of course, as all girls do,
but she had an intuitive feeling that Sunday-school was not the place in
which to show off fine clothes. Bertie's chatter did not please her, and
though they were old friends, or rather companions, having been to both
school and Sunday-school together for some years, she was glad when they
parted at the corner house, which had once been the doctor's, and she
could go home to her mother.

For the little girl was tired by this time; she had got up much earlier
than usual and had been on her feet all day, and besides the reaction of
so much excitement, even though it had been of a pleasurable nature, was
calculated to produce depression. Her mother was out when she got home,
and there was nobody to welcome her but the gray cat, which did so,
however, with the loudest of purrings, and the lounge in the warm room
looked so comfortable that the tired little worker took pussy in her
arms, lay down there, and began to think. She was not quite satisfied
with her "first day." The factory was quite as nice as she had expected,
and Mr. James was nicer; but had she remembered "in _all_ her ways to
acknowledge God" and "to do all to his glory"? She was afraid not; she
had broken the rules once, and had listened to Bertie's chatter, while a
desire had arisen in her heart, not for a silk dress, but for plenty of
money, for a fine home, for a piano, and all the things that some girls
had, and she had been tempted to think it hard that some people should
have so much and some so little. Was God quite just to let it be so?

But, as she lay upon the lounge, rested by its soft cushions, warmed by
the fire, and soothed by the purring of the cat, she began to be ashamed
of such thoughts. How many comforts, how much happiness God had given
her! A nice home, a loving mother, plenty to eat and wear, and health
and strength to earn enough to make them all so much more comfortable.
She knew that all good things come from God, and if he had not put it
into the heart of Mr. Sanderson to speak to Mr. Mountjoy for her, she
could not have got the situation in the mill. The forty cents she had
earned to-day was directly God's gift, and so would be all the money
that ever came to her in the future. She ought to be a very thankful
little girl, and she was quite ashamed of her questionings. So she
dropped down upon her knees by the lounge, and asked God to forgive her
for the sake of Jesus, and lying down again soon fell fast asleep.

When she awoke it was dark; the boys had come home; her mother had come
in so quietly as not to awaken her daughter, tea was quite ready, and it
was a very pleasant scene that her eyes, now entirely rested, opened
upon, and a very happy, thankful little girl came to the table to eat
the nice supper which awaited her.

After tea she and her brothers played games for some time; then Mrs.
Robertson took her mending-basket, which was always very full, and Katie
got her thimble and helped, while Eric read aloud from a book of
"Stories from History." And so closed the first day of Katie Robertson's
"factory life."




CHAPTER IV.

THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL.


Miss Etta Mountjoy was a young lady of the period. She was the youngest
of Mr. Mountjoy's children, and the baby and pet of all. Her mother died
when she was about five years old, and since then she had always done
exactly as she pleased; her father would not control her, and her eldest
sister, who took charge of the family in her mother's place, could not.
It was well that the girl had no evil tendencies and was, upon the
whole, well-principled, warm-hearted, and good-natured, or she might have
gone very grievously astray. As it was, she was now at seventeen a
bright butterfly, flitting from one to another of the flowers of life,
and sipping as much honey as she could from each. She was fond of all
sorts of bright, pretty things, handsome clothes and jewelry included.
She liked to sing and she liked to dance, to go to parties when there
were any, and to attend concerts and theatres when she went to town; in
a word, she was fond of "having a good time," as Americans express it,
whenever and wherever she could get a chance.

Nor did Miss Etta mind work. She was a girl of energy, who would
willingly walk miles to attend a picnic or climb a mountain, and she did
not hesitate to work for hours on a trimming for her dress, or even some
more useful piece of sewing. She was always having _furores_ for
something; at one time it was gardening, when she coaxed her father to
have a good-sized piece of ground dug up and laid out for her, and
actually raised, not flowers, as one would expect, but quite respectable
vegetables, hoeing the beans, corn, and cabbages herself, and weeding
out the cucumbers, lettuce, and radishes with persistent fidelity.

At another time she had a poultry-mania, and a chicken-house with the
most approved nests, warming-apparatus, etc., was constructed for the
little lady, and here she daily set the hens, fed the chickens, and
collected the eggs, selling them to her father at exorbitant prices.
Again, cooking absorbed her time and gave occupation to her energies;
and the family were treated to strange compounds of her concocting,
while the old servant who reigned supreme in the kitchen was in the
depths of despair at the number of dishes and pans she was called upon
to clear up, the waste and breakage that went on, and the general
disorganization of her lifelong arrangements.

Happily, or unhappily, these moods never were of long duration. The
reading-mania lasted just long enough for a handsome bookcase to be
stocked with histories, biographies, etc.; a few volumes of poems were
dipped into, several novels read, and a big history attacked, when the
mood changed into a passion for skating, and the remainder of the winter
was consumed in preparing a fancy costume, getting the most approved
club-skates, and learning to keep upright upon them; but by the time so
much was accomplished, the ice broke up and Miss Etta was obliged to
find some other occupation. Art came next in the list of the girl's
absorbing avocations. A studio was fitted up, canvas stretched upon
easels, pencils sharpened, and quite a creditable beginning made upon
some pictures which showed considerable native taste and ability.

Just now Sunday-school teaching had taken the place of all other things,
and Etta Mountjoy devoted the energies of her many-sided nature to her
class. There had been more than one person opposed to entrusting so
sacred a work to so light-minded and trivial a girl. Her brother James
considered it nothing short of sacrilege, and her oldest sister Eunice
reasoned with her very gravely, and tried to show her that, in order to
teach the truths of God, one should have some personal knowledge of
them, and that the only acceptable motive for religious work was a
sincere desire to please God and benefit the souls of those whom Christ
came to save. But Etta was not accustomed to be guided by her brother
and sister; she went to her father, told him she wanted to take a class
in Sunday-school, and of course he said "Yes." Then she went to the
superintendent and made known her request, saying it was at her father's
desire, which, as he was book-keeper at the paper-mill, would, she knew,
have great weight.

Mr. Scoville paused, hesitated, and finally resolved to consult the
pastor, promising Etta her answer before Sunday came round. He would
have given an unqualified refusal had the petitioner been any one else
than his employer's daughter.

Mr. Morven, the pastor, however, thought differently. He had known the
young girl ever since she was a very little one; he knew there was no
positive evil in her, and though he had not heretofore suspected her of
any serious thought, he looked upon her request as an indication of
good, and said that perhaps the very familiarity with sacred things
which teaching a Sunday-school class would necessitate might be as
beneficial to the teacher as to the scholars. So Mr. Scoville, though
rather against his better judgment, sent a note to Miss Etta granting
her request, having in his mind a certain class of little ones just out
of the infant class, the teacher of which had announced her intention of
leaving the school. When he went to see this teacher, however, he found
she had changed her mind, and there was no other class available except
one composed of seven "big girls," of whom Katie Robertson was one. Of
course, Mr. Scoville could not go back on his word, so Miss Etta
Mountjoy was formally installed as teacher of one of the most important
classes of the school.

Most of the girls liked her; some were seized with a violent admiration,
if not of her, of her beautiful hats, delicate kid gloves, and all the
_et cetera_ which go to make up the toilet of a modern young lady.
Others liked her fresh, frank manner and sympathy with them and their
interests. Indeed, she was so nearly on their own level as to age that
there was no room for condescension on this account; while, as to
position, where was there ever an American girl of any age who
acknowledged to social inferiority? Katie alone felt, though she could
hardly explain it, the want of something in her new teacher which had
been peculiarly characteristic of the old one, who was a plain, elderly
woman, without much education,--namely, personal love and devotion to
the Lord Jesus, showing itself in an earnest desire that her scholars
might also learn to love and serve him. This good teacher's prayers had
been answered, and her efforts blessed, in Katie Robertson's case, and
hence the girl knew how to appreciate the difference.

In some ways, however, Etta agreeably disappointed all their
expectations. She set herself to study and prepare her lessons with an
energy that carried all before it; consulted commentaries, studied
dates, compared contemporary history, committed to memory schedules, and
looked out illustrations, all of which she imparted to her class till
its members far surpassed all the others in the school in their
knowledge of scripture geography and history and biography. They could
give complete lists of the patriarchs, the judges, the kings of Israel
and Judah, and the major and minor prophets; and they never failed with
the dates of the deluge, the "call of Abraham," the Exodus, the
Captivity, and all the periodic points by which the Bible is marked and
mapped off in the voluminous Sunday-school literature of the day. As to
distinctively religious teachings, every scholar had the catechism
verbatim, ready to recite at a moment's notice, and a failure in the
"golden text" was unknown. To be sure, other teachers in her vicinity,
whose classes failed to win the unqualified praise accorded to hers, did
say that Miss Etta never failed to prompt her scholars if there seemed
to be any hesitation; but perhaps that was due to a tinge of jealousy in
consequence of all the prizes given at a quarterly examination,
including one for the teacher, having been won by this "banner class."

All this was very well in its way. There is certainly no harm in knowing
all we can about the Bible; it helps us to understand and appreciate it,
and to answer the objections which foolish infidels are constantly
bringing against it; but the girls, especially Katie, missed the pointed
application; the showing how every wrong thing is sin; how sin must be
punished; how Jesus has borne the punishment, and so is ready and
willing to forgive the sin; how he loves all men, even though they are
sinners, and is ready to give them strength to resist temptation and
conquer sin, if they will diligently seek the aid of his Holy Spirit--in
Bible words, to make them "whiter than snow." These are the true themes
of Sunday-school teaching; the one end to be aimed at is so to bring up
the children in the "nurture and admonition of the Lord," as that when
they come to years of discretion they shall gladly confess him as their
Master, and become noble, intelligent, active Christian men and women.
Lacking this, all outside things are, as the apostle says, "sounding
brass and a tinkling cymbal."

The only positive harm which Miss Etta did to her class was to foster in
some of the girls a great admiration for dress and an ardent desire to
imitate their teacher in this respect. Since the days of Eve a taste for
dress has always been an inherent part of a girl's constitution, and is
apt to become one of her greatest temptations, especially if she be a
poor girl, as were most of these, and must procure cheap imitations of
finery; or, if even these are beyond their reach, indulge in
discontented repinings, which are really rebellion against God.

Squantown Sunday-school was a very pleasant one. Quite unlike the usual
oblong wooden building, which in many country places serves for a
secular school during the week and a Sunday-school on Sunday, it was a
pretty gothic brick building, handsomely fitted up with folding-seats, a
reed organ, and an uncommonly good library. A nice carpet was upon the
floor, and pretty illuminated texts painted upon the walls; the windows
were narrow and pointed, with little diamond-shaped panes, and when
opened gave a near view of the minister's garden full of bright-hued
flowers, and a more distant one of softly outlined blue mountains, whose
tops, capped in summer with snowy clouds and in winter with veritable
snow, formed apt illustrations to thoughtful teachers of the "mountains
that stand round about Jerusalem," and symbolized the protecting love
and care of the Lord for his people.

The beautiful Sunday-school building was largely due to the efforts of
Mr. James, who had his father's well-filled purse to draw from; and he
had interested himself in getting the scholars together, as well as in
introducing among them all modern improvements. He was greatly
interested in his class of big boys, over whom his influence was most
beneficial. Nearly all of them had already confessed Christ, and were
mostly manly Christians, exercising a good influence upon the other boys
in the mill or bindery, to which they, as well as nearly all the members
of the school, belonged.

Miss Eunice Mountjoy was also engaged in the Sunday-school, having
charge of the Bible-class, which contained all the oldest scholars, some
of them quite young men and women. She was a very different sort of
person from her youngest sister. Fully twelve years her senior, she
looked and seemed much older than she really was, and no one had for
years thought of calling her a "girl," although now she was only
twenty-nine. When she was quite a girl her mother had died, leaving her
with the care of all her sisters and her brother, to whom she had,
indeed, done a mother's part. Her chief aim in life had always been to
"do all to the glory of God," and to her Bible-class she gave her most
earnest efforts and her warmest prayers. Her influence was great at
home, in the mill, and throughout the town of Squantown, though, as far
as possible, she obeyed the scripture injunction not to let her left
hand know what her right hand was doing. She always invited the female
members of her class to take tea with her every Wednesday night; the
boys and young men being expected to come afterward, remain a little
while, and then escort their sisters, cousins, and friends home. These
little meetings were very pleasant; sometimes pretty fancy-work--to be
sold for the benefit of the class missionary fund--was done; sometimes
clothes were cut out and made for some of the poorer factory children,
or some fatherless baby, while Miss Eunice read aloud some interesting
book; sometimes when the topics suggested by last Sunday's lesson had
proved too voluminous for the time of the session, they were taken up
and discussed on Wednesday; sometimes difficult points in next week's
lesson were anticipated. In this way the teacher became really
acquainted with the members of her class, their dispositions,
temptations, and interests; she gained their confidence, and was often
able to advise and assist them in many ways, and they learned to look
upon her as a friend to whom they might apply in time of need. And, as
a secondary benefit, the girls learned a great deal in the way of
cutting out, basting, and other mysteries of needlework calculated to
prove very useful to them in their future capacity of wives and mothers.

Eunice had often wished that the same plan could be pursued in the other
elder classes; but their teachers, who were mostly employed in some
capacity in the mill, could hardly spare the time, and Etta certainly
was not fitted for the work. As an experiment, however, on the first
Sunday after Katie entered the mill she came over to her sister's class
and invited all the girls, or as many as chose to do so, to join hers on
Wednesday afternoon next, saying she had something of interest and
importance to talk about. As the invitation was one that seemed to place
those to whom it was given in the rank of grown-up girls, it was at once
gladly accepted, especially as most of the girls had never been inside
of Mr. Mountjoy's house and grounds, and would gladly see the luxury of
which they had heard so much.

There was a great deal of talk after the close of the session about the
invitation and the proposed meeting, and some curiosity was expressed
as to the "important thing" Miss Eunice was to talk about. One or two of
the girls said they were sorry they had accepted the invitation; they
didn't like "to have religion poked at them"; they guessed they wouldn't
go. Before the appointed day, however, curiosity got the better of these
fainthearted ones, and not a girl of Etta's class was wanting when the
time arrived.




CHAPTER V.

THE TEA-PARTY.


At exactly six o'clock some twenty young girls of various ages assembled
at "the great house," as Mr. Mountjoy's grand mansion was called in the
village. They could not come earlier, as most of them worked in the
mill, which they could not leave till five or half-past five;
consequently they all arrived at about the same time. They were received
with perfect politeness by the servant, who opened the door and ushered
them, as she would have done any other visitors, into the spare-room,
prettily furnished in blue and white satin, with white lace hangings and
silver ornaments. Here they laid aside their hats, and taking their
little work-baskets, descended to the great drawing-room, whose
splendors considerably surprised the younger girls; the older ones were
used to it. At the door Miss Eunice with Etta, the latter arrayed in a
wonderful costume, met and received their guests, and after lingering
for a while among the paintings, engravings, nicknacks, etc., led them
to an inner room, the windows of which overlooked the garden in summer,
and a door from which opened into a greenhouse, now full of blooming
flowers.

This was the family sitting-room, generally the abode of Miss Eunice,
for Etta was too much of a butterfly to stay anywhere, and Rhoda, the
middle sister, now about twenty, was an artist, entirely devoted to
painting, spending her days and a great part of her nights in her
studio, and caring nothing for any of the interests connected with our
story. It was luxuriously furnished, more with a view to comfort than to
show, and as the girls sank into the easy sofas or into the deep stuffed
chairs, or else made themselves comfortable upon low seats and divans,
the contrast with their own bare homes and hardworking life was enough
to call forth many a sigh of rest and enjoyment. Work was then produced,
the usual inquiries after parents and sisters, invalids and home-keepers
asked and answered, with a little other familiar conversation, when Miss
Eunice said: "I think, girls, as we have finished the book upon which
we have been so long engaged, we will not commence another to-day, but
devote our thoughts to a subject about which I have been thinking a
great deal, and which your pastor agrees with me in thinking of very
great importance to be brought before you. I mean a public confession of
Christ as your Saviour and Master."

Some of the girls looked grave, some blushed, some were confused. Katie
Robertson glanced up expectantly, for this was an opportunity she had
long been on the lookout for, and longed to hear more about it. One of
the elder girls said:--

"But, Miss Eunice, nobody ought to join the church who is not
converted."

"That is very true, but is it not equally true that all who are
converted ought to join the church, as you express it, or, as I prefer
to say, confess their Saviour? It is only a mean soul which is willing
to accept gifts and favors and never openly acknowledge its gratitude
for them. I wouldn't care for the friendship of any one who was ashamed
to own me before other people; and I wouldn't think much of a soldier
who did not show his colors and put on the uniform of his country."

Katie felt her face flush; for was she not one of these very secret
friends--one of the soldiers who had not as yet put on the uniform? Not
that she had really been ashamed to do so, but the subject had not been
very prominently brought to her notice, and when she had thought of it
at all it had seemed such a strange, awful, public step for so young a
girl to take. She felt so unworthy; it seemed a thing for old people to
do, not for little girls. But Miss Eunice had thrown a new light upon
the subject, and it looked differently from what it had ever looked
before.

"But if we are not Christians, Miss Eunice, you wouldn't like us to act
a lie."

"God forbid, Mary; did you ever think that you _ought_ to be a
Christian?--ought to be in that state which will make it possible for
you to obey the simple command of Christ to confess him before men?"

"A command, Miss Eunice?"

"Yes, a command accompanied by both a promise and a threat. 'Whosoever
shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father
which is in heaven, but whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I
also deny before my Father which is in heaven.'"

"But still," persisted the first speaker, "if one isn't converted."

"And what is to prevent one's being converted. Don't you think God is
willing to give you grace sufficient to enable you to do and be all that
he commands you? The greatest mistake young people can make is to
suppose that they must wait, and not take the first step toward a
religious life till something mysterious comes to them and lifts them
into it almost against their own will."

"Not _against_ our own wills; I am sure everybody wants to be saved."

"Yes, dear, against their own will, for if any one wills to be a
Christian, she can be one at once. I must insist upon it, because it is
our Saviour's own teachings. He says: 'Ye will not come unto me that ye
might have life'; and so I am sure that if any one does not have life,
spiritual life, it is because she _will_ not come unto him."

"I'd like to come," said one girl, timidly, "but I don't see exactly
how."

"I dare say most of you would. Mr. Morven and I have been talking it
over. He feels that the time for a spiritual harvest among our people,
especially among our carefully taught Sunday scholars, has about come,
and he thinks that, with a little more definite help and teaching, many
of you would be glad to come to Jesus, and be enrolled as his followers
now, instead of waiting for that indefinite sometime which may never
come. I have a book here which, in words so simple that the youngest
girl here can understand, explains how we may come to Christ by
repentance and faith in his sacrifice upon the cross, etc. It is
pleasantly written and illustrated with anecdotes. I think you will all
like it, and I propose to read a little of it aloud every Wednesday
afternoon for the next month, and at the close of the reading we will
have a little familiar conversation on this, the most important of all
topics. As most of the girls in my sister's class are of quite
sufficient age to understand what it means to be a Christian and
honestly to consider their own duty in this respect, I shall be very
happy to see them also, and any others of their friends, either in the
Sunday-school or from outside. Girls, this is a very important subject,
and I trust you will think of it conscientiously and decide upon your
own individual duty as in the sight of God. If you fail to make a right
use of this season, another similar opportunity may never be given you.
Let us commence by asking God's blessing upon our reading and thinking,
and the presence of that Holy Spirit without whose aid we can never come
to any decision that will be pleasing to him."

Miss Eunice then knelt down while all the girls knelt around her, and
prayed in low tones that the influences of the Holy Spirit might be
poured out upon all present; that they might have wisdom to see their
duty at this solemn moment and grace to do it; that they might not be
self-deceived, but really surrender their hearts into the hands of their
Saviour, and, putting their whole trust in him, be willing to confess
him before men, that he might confess them before the angels and his
Father.

Some serious talk followed, and then tea was announced, after which the
conversation became general, and at nine o'clock the girls and their
brothers and friends, who had come for them, went home quietly, and for
the most part wrapped in serious thought.

Etta Mountjoy had never felt so strangely in her life. She had always
known that some people were professing Christians; nay, she had, during
her visits to the city, and even at home, seen people, even young girls,
come forward and take upon themselves the vows of Christ. Perhaps it may
have occurred to her that "sometime" she should do so, but to be
deliberately called upon to consider her own immediate duty in the
matter had not happened to her before. Once or twice, indeed, when she
was much younger, "Sister Eunice" or "Brother James" had attempted to
speak to her upon the subject, but she always turned away from it in
such a flippant way that both felt she was in no proper frame for the
consideration of so solemn a theme, and of late they had foreborne to
mention it. It was with a view, perhaps, of interesting her sister quite
as much as her sister's scholars that Eunice had invited them upon the
present occasion, knowing that the young girl's lively interest in her
class would induce her to be present if its members were, and to her
great joy and thankfulness she was not disappointed. Etta had never
heard her sister pray before, though the Wednesday afternoon meetings
were often thus opened, and it seemed to her something almost awful to
hear the language which she had always associated with a grave minister
and a solemn church service spoken reverently, it is true, but quite
familiarly, by her sister.

Then, too, the question with which the reading closed: "Will _you_ now
thus confess Christ?" How could she answer it? Was she in a fit state
for so solemn an action, she, a butterfly flitting from one avocation to
another, with no thought or aim beyond pleasing herself? She knew she
was not. She had given up the child-habit of "saying her prayers," and
she had never learned really to pray. Until she took that class she had
not, for some years, voluntarily opened her Bible, and now she knew that
all her energetic study of the technicalities of the Holy Word had in it
no grain of desire to please or glorify God. Even her devotion to
Sunday-school teaching, usually supposed to be Christian work, had in it
no leaven of Christianity, being only self-pleasing from end to end.
Etta was sufficiently clear-sighted to see all this. She knew that she
never thought of God. His approval or disapproval was all one to her,
and while she had never denied or openly scoffed at religion, and had no
reason to doubt the truths of its facts and doctrines, she was, so far
as anything practical went, not a Christian at all. What had she to
"confess"? And yet, how strange it would seem if some of those to whom
she stood in the position of teacher, who of necessity looked up to and
imitated her, should become Christians and church members, when she had
never taken the same stand. Stranger still, and worse, if they should be
deterred from what seemed to them a duty by the example of their
Sunday-school teacher. Etta had never been placed in such a dilemma
before, and she heartily wished either that her sister had not invited
her class, or that the class had not accepted the invitation, and that
the girls would never come again, and yet she hardly liked to advise
them not to do so.

"I don't like that kind of a party at all," said Bertie Sanderson, when
the group of younger girls were well out of hearing of the house. "She
just got us there under false pretences, calling it fun and turning it
into a sort of church. We get prayers enough, in all conscience, on
Sundays."

"I'd rather have Miss Etta talk to us about the patriarchs and the
stories and all that," said Matilda Eckart, who was a good scholar, or
would have been if she had not, by the necessities of her family, been
forced to work in the mill. "I like to learn things; still I like Miss
Eunice, too. She's real sweet, and maybe we ought to do as she says."

"Nonsense!" said another girl, Helen Felting by name, "Miss Etta isn't a
Christian, and she's her own sister and three or four years older than
we are. I don't want to be any better than she is. My, ain't her dress
lovely, all silk and velvet, and such an exquisite shade! fits so, too,
just as if it was her skin!"

"Did you see her ear-rings?" said another. "Real diamonds, all set
round with pearls, and _such_ a chain and locket!"

"I don't care," said Bertie; meaning, of course, that she did care very
much. "We girls haven't got so much money and we can't have real things.
I like my chain and locket just as well (which she didn't, for she was
quite keen enough to understand the difference), but I won't go there
again till I get my silk dress made;" and she glanced disgustedly at the
light-blue cashmere which, as it was her best dress, she chose to wear
on all occasions, and which looked already much the worse for its week
in the rag-room at the mill.

Katie Robertson did not speak at all, except to answer the questions of
Eric, who had come for her, as to whether she had had a pleasant time
decidedly in the affirmative. She was thinking very deeply. We have seen
that our Katie was a faithful, conscientious little girl, loving God
sincerely, trusting in her Saviour, and striving to please him and grow
like him. She loved to study the Bible, which she knew was his word, and
to pray to him in her own simple language every night and morning; nay,
often at other times when she felt the need of his help, or had
something she wanted to tell him about. She had not asked herself any
hard questions yet about whether she were a Christian or not. She knew
she was her mother's Katie because she loved her mother and wanted to
please her, and she knew she was God's child because she loved him and
wanted to please him. She often did things, and said things, and thought
things that she knew were displeasing to both, but she did not want to
do so. She was always very sorry, she always asked to be forgiven and
believed she was, for did not her mother say so each time, and had not
her heavenly Father promised so once for all in the Bible?

But this afternoon the thought had really come to her that she _ought_
publicly to confess herself a Christian; and yet she shrank from it, she
hardly knew why. She was afraid she might afterward do something which
would disgrace such a holy profession; and yet, if her Saviour commanded
it, as he certainly did, that made it a duty, and, of course, she ought
to obey, trusting him to help her keep all the promises as he had
promised to do. He would like it, too, so much; it would be easier
afterward to resist temptation and to "stand up for Jesus" among her
companions.

Katie's thoughts were very busy ones, and by the time she came in sight
of her home she had decided that, if her mother and the pastor had no
objection, she would give in her name among those who were, at the first
opportunity, to confess Christ.

The Wednesday afternoon meetings were continued throughout the spring
and early summer, and were attended by all the members of Miss Eunice's
class, nearly all those of her sister's, and five or six other girls who
accepted the kind invitation of the former. There was always the same
hospitality, always the same warm welcome, and always the same grave but
happy earnestness on the part of the young lady on whom God had laid
this great work. As the warm days came on, the meetings were adjourned
to the velvety, close-shaven lawn, where chairs and rustic seats were
clustered under the shade of a great, wide-spreading tree, and the
sweet, holy themes of reading and conversation seemed all the sweeter
that they were henceforth associated with blue sky, bright flowers,
white clouds, green leaves, and the other things made by the God who was
even now calling these young hearts into his service.

Miss Eunice went through with a pretty thorough course of reading upon
sin, repentance, faith in Christ, renunciation of all evil, walking
obediently in God's holy will and commandments, which is another name
for holy living, and as she prayed constantly for God's blessing upon
her efforts, she had great cause for thankfulness in the hope that many
of these young souls thus brought, for the first time, face to face with
their personal responsibility toward God, and his loving provision for
their salvation, really chose the "better part," which no man can take
away from us,--"passed from death unto life," and in publicly
confessing Christ made no false profession.




CHAPTER VI.

A DISCOVERY.


Meanwhile work in the mill was becoming an old story and, as such,
decidedly monotonous. The glamour had passed by, and Squantown Paper
Mill had ceased to be an enchanted palace and become a prosaic place of
daily toil. Such disenchantments are always more or less painful, and
Katie's high spirits declined proportionally. It was well that
principles of self-support, independence, and duty to God, underlay her
enthusiasm, or it would soon have died away, being choked to death by
the dust from the rags.

The little pile of money that was ready to be carried home every
Saturday night at first did a great deal toward rekindling the old
enthusiasm. The first week it was only two dollars and forty cents, but
on the second it had risen to three dollars, fifty cents a day being the
regular price paid to the "rag-room girls." By this time the "new hand"
was new no longer, and she had learned to work so fast as to accomplish
the amount usually done in a day in a much shorter time, and then Miss
Peters told her she might go home.

Mr. Mountjoy, or rather "Mr. James," upon whom all arrangements
concerning the work-people devolved, was not one of those employers who
consider that they have bought all the time of their employees. He had a
right to a fair day's work in return for a fair day's wages, but if any
one was industrious enough to do more than this, the time thus gained
was his own to use as he liked. Many of the elder workers did use it in
the mill, receiving extra pay for extra work, when, as sometimes
happened, there was extra work to be done. Some of her companions made
as much as a dollar a day in this way. But Mrs. Robertson was gifted
with good sense, and knew that her child's young strength must not be
overtaxed and thus the development of the future woman be stunted. So
Katie came home generally about four o'clock, and had plenty of time to
rest, to help her mother about the house, to keep up some of her old
school studies, and to read the very valuable and interesting books of
which the Sunday-school library was composed. Her mother took her money
and kept it for her, hoping thus to have enough for the summer outfit
she would so soon need. The child would gladly have done extra work in
order to make extra money, she knew so well how much it was needed, but
her mother was inexorable, and she was forced to submit.

As to Bertie, she never finished her day's work at all. Her time was
largely spent in looking out of window, studying the dresses and ribbons
of the other girls, making signs to her companions, and whispering to
her neighbor whenever Miss Peters's back was turned. She hated her work
and would have given it up long ago, at least as soon as the silk dress
had been procured, and her mother would have very injudiciously
purchased it long before the money had been earned, but that her father
was resolute. The mill would have dispensed with her society as soon as
her idleness and inefficiency were seen, except that Mr. Sanderson was
her father, and it was thought best to show due consideration to him.

"Dear me! how hateful it all is," said Bertie, with a yawn, one day
during the half-hour when talking was permitted. "Are you not heartily
sick of it, Katie?"

"It's a little monotonous, I own," said the girl addressed, "but then,
no work is play, I suppose. Maybe we'll get promoted to the folding-room
soon, and it will be much nicer there."

"It isn't a bit nicer. It's work anywhere, and I hate work. I never mean
to do a bit of it that I can help. Ma says pa'll have money enough to
make us all rich, and I want to be a lady." "Ma" had been a factory-girl
herself, which was perhaps one reason why Bertie despised the business.
She had married the foreman of the mill, who had now risen to be
overseer of the bindery, and yearly laid up a large portion of his
salary, while her sister had married a city grocer, who was spending all
he made as he made it, and his children were growing up to be useless,
fine ladies, and a positive injury to their country cousins.

"But while you do work you might do it faithfully, not spend time for
which you are paid in idleness, and crowd in rags with the buttons all
on, which will be sure to spoil the machinery when they come to be
ground."

"Bah! what difference does it make? I'm paid for my time. Provided I
stay here all day, they haven't a right to claim anything more."

"But, Bertie, they have. Don't you remember the text which is painted on
the wall at the foot of the corridor?

  "'Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.'"

"It seems to me just like stealing to waste time that we're paid for, or
not to do work entrusted to us just as well as we possibly can."

"Oh, well, you're one of the saints, you know. If it's saintship to be
rude and call other people thieves I'm glad I'm a sinner, that's all. I
guess we'll catch the saint in a slip before long, don't you, girls?"
said she, appealing to several other idlers who naturally congregated
around a bird of the same feather as themselves.

Bertie and Katie did not walk home together any more. The former, never
having finished her work, was always obliged to remain in the mill till
the closing-bell rang, while the former went home, as we have seen, at
four o'clock, and at noon she was generally met by her brothers.

"Eric," she said on the day of the above conversation, "do you think
it's right to idle and talk instead of doing your work?"

"We can't in the bindery; the machine won't let us. Everything would go
to thunder if we looked off."

"But suppose you could, and nobody knew anything about it?"

"They couldn't fine you if they didn't know," said Alfred, whose ideas
of the righteousness of law were modified by the possibility of escaping
its penalty.

"What difference would that make?" said Eric. "God would know."

"Yes," said Katie, "I always wish the words 'Thou God seest me,' were
written up on the walls of the mill. It helps you not to get tired and
want to stop."

"Do you ever want to stop, Katie?" said her brother, tenderly.

"Yes, lots of times, It's just the same thing day after day, no change,
no variety, the dust suffocates you, and it's so hard to get up in the
morning, and"--

"Sho!" shouted Alfred, "I thought you'd sing a different tune after you'd
been in the factory a little while. Don't you remember I told you
so?"

"Katie," said Eric, "you remember _I_ told you that you should not work
one moment longer than you wanted to. A girl with two strong brothers to
support her need not work for her living unless she chooses to. Do you
want to stop now?"

"I _want_ to, ever so much," said the girl, "but I don't _mean_ to. Do
you think I am a baby to begin a thing and then leave it off again?
There's just as much reason as there ever was for my earning money. I'm
not going to be dependent upon you, and mother is growing older every
day. Do you remember what the Bible says about those who put their hands
to the plough and look back? I don't mean to be one of those; and I mean
to pray every day," she said more softly, "that I may be more patient
and persevering."

Eric understood her, and even Alfred respected his sister the more for
what he could not understand.

"I wish I knew some way of making money faster," said Katie to her
brothers soon after; "a great deal, I mean. Mother wants any quantity of
things--blankets, and kitchen utensils, and table things, and she hasn't
a bonnet fit to go to church in. It takes about all we can make to feed
us all, and if there is any left she always uses it to buy things for us
instead of thinking about herself."

"I wonder how it is mothers never think of themselves," said Alfred.
"They are always fussing to make us happy, and we don't do things for
them at all."

Katie thought of the words:--

                  "As one whom his mother comforteth,"

which had been in last Sunday's lesson, but did not say them aloud, only
it was a comfort to her to think of the other holy words which say of a
mother and her child: "She may forget, yet will not I forget thee." No
matter how much a mother may love, God loves us better still.

One day about that time, Bertie Sanderson, following her usual custom
of looking around the room instead of at her work, saw something that
caused her to start, open her eyes very wide, and then mutter
half-aloud:--

"Oho! the saints are not so saintly after all. It's dishonest to look
around the room, is it? I wonder what you call that!"

"Bertie Sanderson, talking, as usual," said Miss Peters, marking the
fine upon the slate which she always carried with her," and Katie
Robertson, too," noting a sudden flush upon the face of the latter.
"I _am_ surprised."

"I did not speak," said Katie, respectfully, but with some confusion.

"There's no harm in talking to yourself," said Bertie, in the rude tone
which she usually addressed to Miss Peters.

"Were not those girls talking, Gretchen," said the superintendent,
appealing to a stout German who worked near the others.

"No, ma'am, I believe not; at least, Katie wasn't. I heard Bertie say
something, but Katie did not answer, but"--

"Never mind," said Miss Peters, who had got all she wanted,--a chance
to fine Bertie whom she hated,--"attend to your work," and she passed
on, never noticing the hand which Katie, having hastily thrust it into
her pocket, continued to hold there.

The work proceeded in silence, and, as Katie went home at four o'clock
as usual, Bertie did not have an opportunity to speak to her about the
strange thing she had noticed. She did, however, say to Gretchen, as
they separated: "Did you see that?"

"What?" said the German, innocently.

"Oh! nothing, if you did not see it." Bertie was going to tell her
companion what she had seen, but on second thoughts decided to keep her
discovery to herself, that she might have more power over the "saint,"
whom she was beginning to absolutely hate.

But Gretchen had seen exactly what Bertie had, only she did not think it
her business, and as it was not, did not choose to speak about it, but,
German fashion, went about her own business.

What had the two girls seen? What was it that made Katie Robertson's
face such a study as she walked home at a much slower pace than was her
wont? What was it that lay in the depth of her pocket, where her hand
rested for greater security. What did she put away in the drawer that
contained her treasures, going directly to her room for the purpose,
instead of rushing first of all to the sitting-room to see if her mother
were at home.

Only a crisp fifty-dollar bill! Katie had never seen so much money at
once before. How beautiful it looked; how much it represented of comfort
and luxury; how many things it would buy that she knew were wanted by
her mother and the boys! She deposited her treasure carefully at the
bottom of a little pearl box which had been her mother's, and was the
only really pretty thing which she possessed, and then went downstairs
to lie on the sofa, think about and plan for spending it.

Where had Katie suddenly got so much money? and why did she so earnestly
desire to keep the possession of it a secret? She _thought_ the answer
to the latter question lay in her desire to surprise her mother, and was
not at all conscious of another feeling that lay as yet quite dormant
and unaroused. As to the former, that is easily answered. After cutting
off the buttons of an old vest, just as the little girl was preparing to
cut it in smaller pieces, the pocket opened, and out fluttered a
crumpled paper, which on being opened proved to be a fifty-dollar bill.
Some careless gentleman, no one could tell whom, no one could tell when,
had stuffed it into the pocket and forgotten all about it. Strange that
the vest should have gone through all the vicissitudes common to old
clothes, worn possibly by a beggar, condemned to a dust-heap, fished
out, sorted, sold, packed, sold again, and transported to the factory,
passing through a dozen hands, to any one of whose owners the money
would have been so useful, and there it had lain unnoticed till it
fluttered out into the very hands of Katie Robertson, who needed it so
much.

What castles in the air the little girl built as she lay there in the
twilight!--dresses and bonnets for her mother; new suits for each of the
boys; a new tea-set, with table-cloth and napkins. Never in the world
did a fifty-dollar bill buy half so much in reality as this one did in
imagination; which, by the way, is a very pleasant way of spending
money, since it does not at all diminish the amount, which may be all
spent over and over again in a variety of ways. But strangely enough,
while everything needed by the others, even to a new ribbon to tie round
pussy's neck, was remembered, Katie's catalogue of articles to be bought
contained nothing in the world for herself.




CHAPTER VII.

STRIFE AND VICTORY.


No thought had as yet suggested itself to Katie concerning her right to
the money which had thus come into her possession, and as she lay there
planning the things she was going to get with it, she enjoyed to the
full the dignity of ownership. How glad her mother would be when there
was a decent water-pail in the house, plates enough of one kind to go
round, and a table-cloth that was not nearly all darns! Then her mother
should have a new shawl and bonnet, and each of the boys a straw hat and
a bright necktie, and she would have something to put in the plate every
Sunday in church, and to add to the missionary collection of the
Sunday-school class. Perhaps, even, she could give something toward a
present that the girls were talking of giving to Miss Eunice.

But just then an idea, so painful that at first she turned away from
it, struck her, and a question that she did not want to answer suggested
itself to her mind. Had she a right to keep the money? Was it really
hers? Of course it was, said inclination; whose else could it be? She
had _found_ it, no one else; if she had not picked it up it would have
gone in with the rags to be boiled and ground up into paper again, or it
might have been swept away among the dust and waste paper, and no one
been the better or wiser. "Findings is keepings" was a familiar
school-boy proverb; was it the right principle or not?

Katie tried to persuade herself that it was. Nevertheless, she was glad
that, as she supposed, no one had seen her find the bill, and that her
mother as yet knew nothing about the finding. Also, she did not plan out
any more ways of spending the money.

Katie was so silent all teatime that her brothers continually rallied
her upon her preoccupation, and her mother, fearing she must be sick,
sent her to bed very early. To this the little girl did not object, as
she wanted to be alone to think over the question that was so
perplexing her brain.

Before getting into bed, our young friend opened her drawer, took out
the box, gazed lovingly at the bill for a time, then put it away, and
knelt to say her evening prayer. What was the matter to-night? For
almost the first time since she had known what prayer really was, she
could not pray. Her thoughts would not be controlled; they kept
wandering away to the finding of that bill. She wondered whether any one
had seen her find it, what use she should put it to, and if it were
really hers after all. She knew it was wrong to think of other things at
such a solemn moment, and felt guilty and condemned. Her conscience
troubled her; it seemed as though God were angry with her. So far the
finding of the money had not been a very happy event for its finder. It
often happens that secular things, the things we are interested in in
our daily lives, will come in between us and our prayers, and we cannot
get rid of them. Young Christians especially are greatly troubled in
this way, and have many weary fights in the attempt to control their
thoughts. They have an idea that prayer is such a sacred thing, and God
is so holy, that they must only talk to him about religion, and use
pretty much the same words which they hear in church, and when they
cannot do this, they either fall into the habit of _saying_ such words
formally without in the least thinking of their meaning, or else they
are wretched and self-condemned because of what are called "distractions
in prayer." But there is a more excellent way, even to take all the
things that really interest us directly to "our Father which art in
heaven," and tell him all about them. He encourages us to do so when he
says, "casting _all_ your care upon him," and "in everything by prayer
and supplication make your requests known unto God." If we are really
his children we may be sure that nothing is too small to interest him
which _rightfully_ interests us, and if it is not a right interest there
is no surer way of finding that out, and gaining the victory over it,
than by bringing it to the light of his Holy Spirit and asking him for
strength to dispose of it as we ought.

Had Katie thus taken the money which she had found directly to the
Lord, she would soon have understood all her duty concerning it. Her
desire would have been only to do his will, and she would have gone to
sleep as peacefully as a little child who trusts its mother to manage
for it just as she sees to be for the best. But this she did not dare to
do, partly because she had not yet learned to understand how God
"careth" for his children in all little things, and partly because down
at the bottom of her heart she was not quite ready to do his will--that
is, she _hoped_ that it would be right for her to keep the money, and
hoped this so strongly that she could not look fairly on the other side
of the question. Nearly all night--or it seemed so to a little girl who
was generally asleep by the time her head touched the pillow--she lay
tossing from side to side, troubled by a dozen different sides of the
question. And when she did get to sleep it was to dream confused dreams
of thieves being taken to prison, and of being one of them herself.

As soon as it was light, for the long days had come now, the tired
little girl sprang from her bed, and dressed herself, in a very unhappy
frame of mind. She must decide very soon now, and she began to see more
and more clearly that that money did not belong to her, but to the owner
of the vest in which she had found it. To be sure, she could not now
find the original owner, but Mr. Mountjoy certainly owned it, because he
had bought the rags. It was one thing, however, to see this, and quite
another to decide to give up to him who had so much the little that was
so much to her. All the pleasant planning must go with it; all the
things she had desired for her mother and the boys. She was sure she had
not been selfish; it was not for herself she wanted money at all. From
force of habit she opened her Bible and read the first words she saw,
which were these: "Thou desirest truth in the inward parts." And again
the words flashed upon her: "Thou God seest me."

What did God see? Did he see "truth in the inward part" of her heart?
Was she prepared in _all_ her ways to acknowledge him? his right to her
and all that was hers?

Then she knelt down and did what she ought to have done the first
thing--told him, who understands and pities us "like as a father pitieth
his children," all about it, and asked him to forgive, to pity, and to
direct her. And now it all came to her, for God always keeps his word,
and he has promised to give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him, and
further that that blessed Spirit when he comes shall "guide us unto all
truth."

Whoever was the owner of that bill, she was not. It belonged to God
primarily, but he had given the disposal of it into the hands of him who
owned the rags. If she kept it, at least without telling him that she
had found it, she would be a _thief_! There was but one right way for
her, and that was to take it at once to him, tell him where she had
found it, and leave him to do as he thought best. To her mind there was
little doubt what he would do. People did not generally give away their
money, especially such large sums as fifty dollars seemed to her. All
her air-castles must fall to the dust, and the house must go on with the
old things as before.

Nevertheless, it was with a sense of absolute relief that Katie folded
that bill away in her little purse, and dropped it far down into her
pocket. If the "eyes of the Lord were in every place," they saw it
there, and they saw, too, into her heart, and saw there that the purpose
of doing his will had, by his grace, triumphed over her own desires, and
that was enough to make her once more the happy, bright Katie Robertson.

She was almost late at the mill this morning; had only just time to get
to her place as the short whistle sounded, and of course there was no
time to speak to Mr. Mountjoy. She commenced her work at once, and
continued it very diligently, never once looking around at the other
girls, so full was she of her own thoughts. Thus she did not see the
significant looks which Bertie cast at her from time to time, nor the
signs which she made to some of the other girls who, in their turn,
became curious and significant, and lost several pennies in fines,
because they could not help asking each other what was the matter.

Bertie had not exactly told the story as she knew it, but had
insinuated to one and another that she knew something that nobody else
knew about Katie Robertson; that, if she chose to tell all she knew,
people would not think her such a saint; that, for her part, she did not
believe in saints; when people pretended to be very religious they were
sure to be dishonest, etc. etc. She made such a mystery of her news that
the girls to whom she had made her half-confidence were worked up to a
great state of excitement, and the others were devoured with curiosity
to know what it could all be about.

But Katie worked quietly on. She had plenty of opportunity to change her
determination had she desired to do so, and indeed the temptation to
keep the money herself and say nothing about it presented itself again
and again to her mind. But now she knew it to be a temptation, and she
was strong to resist, because she had committed herself to One who was
mighty and his strength was made perfect in her weakness.

As soon as the noon-bell rang and the work-people all poured along the
corridors and out at the open doors, Katie knocked at the office door
and was told to "Come in!" by Mr. James, who happened to be alone
inside. Without a word the girl walked up to his desk and laid the bill
down beside him.

The young man started, stared, and finally said:--

"Where did you get this?"

"I found it in the rags, sir."

"When?"

"Yesterday afternoon."

"Why did you bring it to me?"

"Because I think if it belongs to anybody it does to you, it was found
among your rags."

"Why did you not bring it to me at once?"

"Because--because I didn't think at first, and I wanted it _so_ much."

"Did you?" said he, gravely. "You know the Bible says: 'Thou shalt not
covet'?"

Katie started; had she been breaking one of the commandments, after all?
Not the one about stealing, of which she had thought, but another.

"I didn't mean to do that," said she, in a low voice, "but we do want
things so much--mother, I mean. We are so poor."

"Are you?" said the young man, in a sympathizing tone. "Well, you are
an honest little girl to bring it to me at all. A great many would not
have done so, and I should have known nothing about it. Didn't you think
of that?"

"Yes, sir; but God knew it, and that made all the difference. Besides, I
don't think I was quite honest; if I had been, I should have come to you
the first minute, and not thought about keeping it at all."

"Then you did have a little struggle about it?"

"Oh, yes, sir, I hardly slept all night. I didn't know what to do at
first, and then I didn't want to do it."

"But God gave you the victory," said the young man, reverently.

"I understand all about that, and how sweet it is to be helped by him,"
Katie added.

"Now," continued he, "I think he sent you that fifty-dollar bill
himself; first to try you, and then that you might help your mother to
buy all those things that you and she are so much in need of. It isn't
mine, for when I pay two cents a pound for old rags I do not buy fifty
dollar bills. Take it, and be just as happy with it as a thankful heart
can make you. Good-morning; I must hurry home to dinner."[1]

A gladder little girl than Katie Robertson it would be hard to find. The
love of money is said to be the root of all evil, and so money itself
sometimes is, but that is according to how it is gotten and how used.

This bill would have been a root of bitter evil to the girl had she kept
it, in spite of an enlightened conscience, which told her to give it up;
and it would have been a root of evil to the young man, had he taken it,
as by the letter of the law he had an undoubted right to do, when he
knew the little girl needed it so much more than he did. As it was, it
was a seed of joy to both of them. Mr. James went home full of the joy
which is so like to Christ's joy, in having been kind to another at his
own expense; and Katie's heart could hardly hold the glad thankfulness,
both to him and to her heavenly Father, that filled it to overflowing,
and that was all the gladder because it was rooted in an approving
conscience, at peace with itself and at peace with God.

The precious piece of paper was displayed to the wondering mother and
brothers at the dinner-table that day. The story, or so much of it as
Katie could bring herself to relate, was told, and all enjoyed in
anticipation the comforts it was able to procure; but the best thing it
accomplished was to teach its finder where to go in time of perplexity
and temptation and in whose strength to be "more than conqueror."

-----
[Footnote 1: 1 This whole occurrence is a positive fact.]




CHAPTER VIII.

TEMPLES.


It was a lovely June Sunday. The seats of Squantown Sunday-school were
even more crowded than usual; the girls' side looking like a flower-bed
in its variety and brilliancy of color. Bertie Sanderson was there in
her new silk,--a brilliant cardinal,--looking strangely unsuitable to
the season; Gretchen, the German, in her woolen petticoat and jacket,
which she had not been long enough in the country to discard for summer
attire; the other girls in spring suits, and Katie Robertson in a lovely
pale-blue lawn and a white straw hat trimmed with the same color. It was
the prettiest costume the little girl had ever possessed, and as it was
all bought with her own earnings she may be pardoned for being very much
pleased with it. And yet it was as simple and inexpensive a summer
outfit as any one could have, and certainly was not fitted to excite the
hateful thoughts to which it was giving rise in Bertie's mind--Bertie,
clad in her unsuitable finery! This finery had not been the success that
Bertie expected. To be sure, it was a silk dress, and the brightest
color she could procure, but it had been made by the Squantown
dressmaker, and entirely lacked the fit and finish of Etta Mountjoy's
dresses, besides being in direct contrast to the delicate, harmonious
colors which the latter wore--a contrast which her admirer and would-be
imitator was quick to perceive when her own brilliant coloring had been
selected and it was too late to change. The disappointment made her
cross, and inclined her still more to look for flaws in Katie, whom she
began to hate as natures not sanctified by the grace of God are apt to
hate those who are trying to do his will, and are thus a constant rebuke
to them.

"Just look at her finery," said Bertie to her nearest neighbor, as Katie
entered, looking as fresh and sweet as a June rose, "and her mother so
poor. I could tell a story about how she got it that would make Miss
Etta open her eyes, and Miss Eunice, too, for all she makes such a pet
of the saint."

"What in the world do you mean?" said the other; but Bertie shook her
head and looked mysterious, of course thus exciting the curiosity of the
other tenfold.

"Do tell me," she said.

"We know what we do know, don't we?" said Bertie, provokingly, appealing
to Gretchen, who nodded, but did not speak.

"Now, you're real mean," said the other, one Amelia Porter by name. "I
know something I won't tell you, that's all."

Just then the bell tapped for silence, and the rest of the conversation
was carried on in whispers, the only part which was heard being Amelia's
astonished "Stole it? You don't say so! I never would have thought of
such a thing."

But Katie did not hear. She was not thinking about her dress at all. The
lesson was to her a very interesting one--the oft-repeated story of the
tongues of fire that came down upon the early church, symbolizing the
mighty power of the Holy Spirit to enkindle divine emotions, enthusiasm,
and praise, and to make human tongues as flames of fire.

Miss Etta explained (for she had taken pains to study it up) how, in
the early, times one Sunday in June was observed in commemoration of
this descent of the Holy Ghost, and how, on that day, the new
Christians, who of course were originally heathen, having been at first
subjected to a long course of training, were baptized. They were called
_catechumens_, because they were catechised or questioned, and
_candidates_ because they wore long white robes, _candidus_ being the
Latin word for white, and by degrees the day came to be called
Whitsunday. Furthermore, Miss Etta told all about the Whitsuntide
festivals of old English times in the days of the corrupt church, when
festivities of the most riotous kind took place on the two days
following Sunday; and the girls left the school, if not impressed by the
holy teachings of the lessons, very full of a certain knowledge of that
kind which St. Paul says "puffeth up," and prepared to pass a brilliant
examination on the history and customs of Whitsuntide.

Very different was the pastor's sermon of that morning, which several of
our girls remembered all their lives. Its text was:--

                "Ye are the temples of the Holy Ghost."

And the speaker showed first what the temples of old times were; not
places of meeting, as our churches to a great extent are, but
dwelling-places, homes where God, or rather "the gods," were supposed to
_live_. This idea was the one used as an illustration by St. Paul in the
text, which means that _God_ has made all human hearts to be his home
and dwelling-place, and that if we will let him, not barring the doors
with sin and filling up the inside with other things, he will live there
always; or, as our Lord Jesus says: "If any man will open unto me, I
will come in unto him and will sup with him;" and in another place,
"will abide with him." Then he explained so that the youngest of his
audience could understand what are the sins that bar the door against
our blessed Saviour, and how we set up idols upon the altars of God's
temple, by worshiping dress, vanity, pride, revenge, worldliness, and
our own way, and showed how nobody can really worship God and have him
abiding in his holy temple who yields obedience to anything or cares for
anything more than his will. He said it was an awful thing to _defile_
the temple of God by such things as drinking, smoking, and swearing, or
even by evil thoughts and dishonest intentions, by selfish motives and
unkindness in word or deed.

He closed his sermon in these words:--

"My hearers, every one of you is a temple of the Holy Ghost, built and
fashioned with exquisite skill, for his own chosen dwelling-place. See
to it that ye defile not this temple, and if it be in any wise already
defiled, from without or within, at once seek the double cleansing,
which flows from the Cross on Calvary, that thus your sacred temple may
be washed whiter than snow. Dethrone the idol _Self_ which has so long
usurped the place of God upon its altar, and let him rule alone. And
remember that every other human soul is likewise a sacred temple, no
matter how defiled and degraded it has become by yielding itself
willingly to the dominion of sin. Strive to do all that in you lies, by
kind, persuasive words, by example and effort, to cleanse the degraded
and polluted temples, and so do all in your power to exalt the dominion
and worship of God in all the human souls which he has made."

The impression made by this sermon upon its hearers was in accord with
the character and religious development of each.

James Mountjoy resolved to be more active and energetic in all efforts
to improve the condition of his work-people, to raise the fallen, to
reclaim the sinful, to set a better example and raise a higher standard
of moral excellence, that the human temples over whom he had influence
might be better fitted for the abiding presence of their heavenly Guest.
Some of the more thoughtful of his boys resolved that smoking, drinking,
and swearing should no longer, even in a slight degree, defile the
"temples" entrusted to their keeping.

Eunice Mountjoy made a more entire consecration of herself than ever
before to God's service, praying that there might be no hidden idols in
her temple; that self and self-seeking might be forever cast out, even
as our Lord cast out the money-changers and traffickers from the temple
at Jerusalem; that God's will in all things might be hers, and that she
might devote not a part only, but _all_ her time, all her faculties,
all her influence to his service in doing good to others, and thus
"worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness."

Katie Robertson felt that she had understood some things to-day as never
before. What but the presence of the Holy Spirit in her heart had
enabled her to see the right and strengthened her to do it, and thus
come off victorious over temptation? She remembered how the Holy Ghost
is symbolized by a pure white dove, and she longed that her temple
should also be a soft, white nest full of pure desires and kindly
thoughts, and that nothing she might do or say in her daily life, among
her companions or at home, should grieve that blessed heavenly
inhabitant.

Even Bertie Sanderson had been struck with the sermon. If her heart was
indeed a temple of the Holy Ghost, how was she defiling it? Envy,
hatred, and malice were allowed to run riot there; love of dress and
vanity were the idols enthroned on the altar; pride, disobedience,
irreverence, contempt of rightful authority, idleness, and
unfaithfulness were barring the door and keeping the loving Saviour,
who stood knocking there, from coming into his own.

Bertie felt uncomfortable; the Holy Spirit was speaking to her, and she
could not help but hear. But to hear and to obey are two very different
things. The girl knew that she could unbar the closed door of her heart
if she chose. One earnest, sincere prayer would bring the omnipotent aid
of the Spirit to cast out the evil things and cleanse the defilement.
But she did not _want_ them cast out; she loved them too well. It would
be all very well to have Christ's love, pity, forgiveness, and
protection, and to be sure of heaven when she died; but to be a
Christian--a saint she would have called it--now, to give up the things
that most interested her, and live a life of self-denial and
obedience,--she had no idea of doing any such thing. So, to drown the
voice that she could not help hearing but did not mean to obey, she went
off on a Sunday afternoon's excursion with some of the boys and girls,
received a sharp reprimand from her father for so doing, and went back
to her work on Monday morning more rebellious, more hardened, more idle,
more malicious than before.

The blessed Holy Spirit is always longing to have us come to Christ and
walk in his holy and happy ways. He watches for an opportunity to speak
to us, and does speak, again and again, inclining us to give up sin and
choose holiness, offering us, if we will do so, all the help we need.
But he will not _force_ us to obey his gentle call. If we _will_ not
listen and obey, he lets us go off on our self-chosen path, ceases to
speak audibly to us, and patiently waits for another and more propitious
season. Bertie Sanderson, that June Sunday, greatly "grieved the
Spirit."

But not so did Etta Mountjoy. This young lady, ever since that first
Wednesday when she attended her sister's tea-party, had thought more
seriously than she had ever thought before. The duty of being a
Christian had come home to her during Eunice's talk and prayer, and at
the same time she had felt that she was not, and had never tried to be,
one. She had seen this still more clearly during the subsequent
meetings, from which her duty to her own class would not permit her to
be absent. Dishonesty and hypocrisy were not Etta's vices; she could
not pretend to be what she was not, and yet she could not shake off the
impression that she _ought_ to give herself to Christ and openly confess
his name. She tried to put the subject out of her thoughts; but still,
as she listened, day by day, she grew more and more dissatisfied with
herself, her own character, her aims in life. The preparation of her
Sunday-school lessons became a dreaded task, for it was impossible to
minutely consider the shells of sacred things and not at the same time
take cognizance of the spiritual kernels which they envelop, and these
spiritual realities made her uncomfortable and more and more
dissatisfied with herself.

This Sunday's sermon had gone to the very quick of Etta's conscience,
painting as with a finger of light what she ought to be and what she
was. God had made her for his own temple and dwelling-place; made her
fair, outside and within; endowed her with intellectual and spiritual
gifts, and with wealth, station, and influence, giving her opportunities
for culture and usefulness far greater than most of those who surrounded
her. It was not chance or accident, but God, who had given her all
this, and he demanded, as he had a right to demand, in return, her love,
her obedience, her service. Had she given him these? Never once in her
whole life. She had set up upon his altar in the midst of his beautiful
temple the idol of self-pleasing, and never in her whole seventeen years
had she acted from any other motive than to please herself. It was
sacrilege, it was idolatry, it was dishonesty; and so were all the
actions which had come from such a corrupt source.

Etta was too clear-headed to suppose that any sudden change of practice,
which it was in her power to commence now, would make any difference.
She might obey mechanically, but she could not _make_ herself _love_,
and she did not love, God. His service was a weariness, prayer a
formality, the Bible a dull, uninteresting book. She did love a light,
gay, frivolous life; she saw no attractiveness in one of self-denial and
holy living.

She went directly to her room on reaching home, refused to go down to
dinner, sat behind the shaded blinds, and thought till thought became
insupportable; and then, having come to one settled determination, put
on her hat, covered her tear-stained face with a veil, and walked down
the hill to the parsonage, and rang the bell with a nervous jerk.
Whatever Etta did she did with a will; she made no halfway decisions.

The servant who admitted "Miss Etta" showed her into the pastor's study,
where after a time he joined her, looking a little surprised at
receiving such a visitor on Sunday afternoon. Etta's peculiarities,
however, were well known, and he concluded she had some new project in
her head, in which she desired his assistance and, as usual, could not
wait a moment to put it into execution. He was rather surprised by the
tear-swollen eyes and the resolute expression of face, and after
courteously welcoming his visitor, waited somewhat impatiently to hear
what she had to say.

"I came," said the girl, with her usual directness, "to ask you to give
my Sunday-school class to some one else."

"Tired of holding your hand to the plow, and beginning to look back
already, eh?" he said.

"No, sir, it isn't that; but I am not fit to teach any class; certainly
not such a one as this. I don't myself know what those girls ought to
learn; besides, I'm not a fit character for them to imitate."

"Not a fit character? What can you mean?"

So far Etta had spoken quite steadily, but now there came a tremor into
her voice, a mist before her eyes, and a choking sensation in her
throat, that would not let her speak.

He waited a few moments, then said gently: "Try to tell me about it, and
I will help you if I can."

Encouraged by something fatherly in the clergyman's voice, the girl at
last found courage to commence her story; and having broken the ice, her
words came fluently enough, as she tried to make him understand how
utterly self-seeking and godless her life and character were; how the
temple that should be God's was barred against him, and filled with
idols and idolatry.

"This must be the Holy Spirit's teachings," said he, gravely; "for, so
far as I know, you are no worse or more careless than most girls of
your age."

But this thought was no comfort to her thoroughly aroused conscience,
nor did the minister suppose it would be. He continued:

"Now that you see how bad things are, you are going to change them, are
you not? You will open the barred doors that our blessed Lord wants to
enter, and let him henceforth be your one object of worship and
obedience, will you not?"

"How can I?" said the astonished girl. "I can't _make_ myself like
things."

"No; but it is the Holy Ghost who desires to come into his holy temple,
and where he comes he brings healing, cleansing, and regenerating power.
What we have to do is to let him do his work, not hindering him by our
self-will and disobedience, not even trying to _feel_ as we think we
ought to feel."

"But I am not worthy to have him come to me. For seventeen years I have
been sinning against him and grieving him. Even if I were made right all
at once, I could not undo all that."

"But Jesus can," he said solemnly. "Have you forgotten the cross, and
all that it means? Have you forgotten that he died to bear the penalty
of sin, and that for his sake the worst sinners can be forgiven? We are
none of us worthy to come to him, or, which is the same thing, to have
him come to us; but he is the 'propitiation, sacrifice, and satisfaction
for the sins of the whole world'; it is not what you can do or be, but
what he has done and is. Believe that he loves you, and died for you,
and is your Saviour, and you cannot help loving and trusting him and
letting his Spirit do with you as he will."

Was that all? So simple, so easy, and yet an hour ago it had seemed so
impossible to be a Christian. She did not speak for some minutes; then
she said:--

"Have I nothing at all to do?"

"A great deal by-and-by; only one thing to-day."

"And that is?"

"To be sure that you are in earnest, that you are thoroughly ashamed of,
and sorry for, the past, really anxious to be delivered from sin and
made holy, and resolutely determined obediently to follow where God
leads the way."

"I believe I am in earnest," said she, simply. "Won't you pray for me,
sir?"

"Yes, indeed, my child," said the minister, laying his hand on her head.
"God bless you, and make you very happy in his love, and useful in his
service."

"You will provide a teacher for my class?" said Etta, as somewhat later
she rose to take her leave.

"Why, no; unless you are really tired of it. I think you had better go
on as you have commenced."

"I am not fit to be a Sunday-school teacher."

"I am not fit to be a minister; but God, in his providence, has seen fit
to make me one, and so I trust him to give me the strength and wisdom I
need. If you will do the same, you will become a very successful and
efficient Sunday-school teacher; and this is a good way in which to
consecrate your talents and opportunities to his service. Now, good-by;
I must prepare for the evening service. Whenever you want help, advice,
or sympathy, be sure you come to me."

Etta went home in a new world of thought and feeling. She seemed to
herself scarcely to be the same girl; but in fact she was not thinking
particularly about herself. God's love in desiring to save sinners,
Christ's love in dying for them, the love of the Holy Spirit in being
willing to come and abide with them, filled all her soul, and she was
not _trying_ to love this triune God, but loving him with all her might,
because she could not help doing so. How strange it is that we go on
from year to year, trying to be better, trying to feel right, trying to
make ourselves holy, instead of just opening the door of the temple of
our heart and believing that Jesus Christ loves us, and _because_ he
loves us will make us all that he wants us to be.




CHAPTER IX.

UNDER A CLOUD.


Meanwhile there were some changes at the mill. Katie Robertson had been
promoted to the folding-room, which was on the lower floor, and where
the work was not so heavy, though the payment was much better. She now
received seventy-five cents for a regular day's work, and might often
have made a dollar if her mother would have allowed her to work a half
or quarter day extra. This promotion came soon after the occurrence of
the fifty-dollar bill, which, no doubt, had something to do with the
higher place in Mr. James's estimation, which the little girl held in
consequence. He took occasion to inquire of Miss Peters concerning her
work, and heard such a good account of her industry, capability, and
faithfulness that he felt sure she might be trusted with pleasanter
occupation and that which needed greater skill.

To enable our young readers who have never seen the process of
paper-making to understand the change in our heroine's surroundings, we
will tell them in a few words how paper is made.

As, of course, is universally known, rags, straw, old rope, poplar pith,
etc., are the materials used. The best writing-paper is made of linen
rags, which are for the most part imported from Germany. For ordinary
writing and printing paper cotton rags are used, while straw and hemp,
and even wool, go largely into the construction of manilla and wrapping
paper. The linen rags and the woolen ones are generally sorted out in
the places where they are gathered, at which time the others are all
packed into bales, when, after passing through various hands, they are
brought to the different paper-mills. Here the bales are hoisted to the
top loft of the building, where they are broken and their contents
turned over and over and subjected to a fanning process which removes a
large part of the dust. They are then passed through slides down into
the rag-room, where, as we have seen, they are sorted, cut in pieces,
and the buttons taken off. They are cut again, in the next room to
which they are carried, by a revolving cylinder whose surface is covered
with short, sharp knives, acting on each other much like the blades of
scissors. From here they are passed into the interior of a long,
horizontal, copper boiler containing a solution of soda and some other
chemical substances, and boiled for several days, at the end of which
time, the dirt being thoroughly loosened, the boiling mass is passed
through a long slide into vats, through which a constant stream of water
is flowing, and so thoroughly washed that it becomes as white as snow
and looks like raw, white cotton. It is then taken into another room,
packed into a "Jordan engine," and ground into an almost impalpable
pulp. This pulp is passed into other vats thoroughly mixed with water,
blueing, and some other substances calculated to give it a hard finish,
and then conveyed by pipes to the drying-room, where it is distributed
over the surface of fine wire netting stretched on cylinders and looking
much like "skim milk." It is now passed from cylinder to cylinder,
dropping the water with which it is mixed as it goes, and gradually
taking, more and more, the consistency of paper. At one stage--if it is
to be writing-paper, which was chiefly manufactured at Squantown
Mills--a certain amount of glue is poured upon it by means of little
tubes which are over the cylinders, and this gradually becomes pressed
into the fibre, giving the paper the shining surface to which we are
accustomed. This is called _sizing_. At another stage the wire netting
is changed for a blanket which passes over the cylinders and keeps the
weak, wet paper from friction, as well as from any chance of breaking.
Steam is now introduced into the cylinders, and the drying process goes
on so rapidly that, at the end of the long room, the pulp issues from
between the two last cylinders in sheets of firm, dry, white paper,
which are cut off in lengths by stationary knives, and caught and laid
in place by two boys or girls who sit at a table just below. So complete
and perfect is the machinery that, in addition to the two boys, only one
man is needed in the room, and he only to watch lest either of the
machines gets out of order, or lest the paper should accidentally break.

It is quite fascinating to watch the thin pulp as it gradually becomes
strong paper, and Katie one day overheard a gentleman visitor, to whom
Mr. James was explaining the process, say something that she never
forgot:--

"It makes me think of God's way of dealing with human souls. He takes
them, polluted and sinful, from the gutters and the slums of life, cuts
and fashions them till they are in a condition to be used; then washes
out their stains by his precious blood, grinds, moulds, dissolves, and
manipulates them, till they come out pure, innocent, white paper, on
which he can write just what he pleases."

"Yes," said Mr. James. "I have often thought out that analogy, but you
have not yet seen the whole process. No saint is completed till he has
gone through the polishing and finishing of his life and character. You
will see how we polish and finish our paper in the next room."

In the next room were great steel rollers, at each of which two women
were employed, as this work was generally considered too hard and
steady, as well as too particular, for the girls and boys. One of these
women places a sheet of paper between the rollers at the top; the engine
turns them, carrying the paper round and round between them, and the
other woman takes it out at the bottom, beautifully polished by the
pressure.

It is then carried in great piles to the ruling-machines, which stand at
the other end of the room, and there other girls and women act as
"feeders" and "tenders." The sheets are carried under upright,
stationary pens, filled with blue or red ink, and ruled first on one
side and then on the other, the machine never letting go of the sheets
till the ruling is perfectly dry.

The paper is now finished, but it must be prepared for being taken away
and sold; so great piles of it are placed on barrows, and it is carried
by the "lift" down to the lowest room of all, called the "folding-room,"
and this is a very gay, busy scene.

Multitudes of girls are at work here, and everything is so clean that no
checked aprons or mob-caps are needed. Some of them count out the paper,
first into quires, and then into reams and half-reams. Others fold the
sheets with an evenness and rapidity that only long practice can give;
others, again, stamp each sheet in the corner with a die; and still
others fold the reams--after they have been pressed together--into the
pretty, colored wrappers prepared for them, sealing them with wax, and
putting the packages, two together, into heavy brown papers, which are
closed with the label peculiar to the special brand of paper.

There was plenty of work for everybody, and there was, moreover, a
variety, and Katie felt very much elated at her promotion when she first
came into the gay, pleasant folding-room.

But the poor girl was destined to meet with a very bitter
disappointment. Perhaps the most severe trial of her life awaited her in
that pleasant room. She had only been there a few days when she became
aware that she was looked upon with suspicion. The superintendent
watched her closely, and carefully verified the accounts she gave of her
work. The girls with whom she tried to make acquaintance turned away,
and either answered her in monosyllables or else declined speaking at
all, and often when she came in suddenly before work had commenced two
or three who were mysteriously whispering together would suddenly stop
and look curiously and strangely at her. Once or twice she overheard
some disconnected words, of which the following are specimens: "What was
it really?"--"You don't say so!"--"Dishonesty!"--"I never should have
thought it!"--"Are you sure?"--"Bertie Sanderson!"--"She saw it
herself," etc. etc. Katie, having no key to these disjointed sentences,
could make nothing of them, but she felt that she was what school boys
call "sent to Coventry," and had not the least idea why.

The fact was that Bertie, whose jealous dislike was greatly increased by
Katie's promotion, while she herself remained in the rag-room, had
uttered her innuendoes to all who would listen to her, till it was
pretty generally understood throughout the mill that Katie Robertson was
a thief, who appeared in unbecoming finery bought with ill-gotten gains.
The rumor never took sufficient definiteness of shape to reach the girl
so that she could confute it and explain its origin. Of course, she was
not likely to tell any one in the mill about the finding of the
fifty-dollar bill and what had passed between Mr. James Mountjoy and
herself, since it was largely to her own credit, nor had he ever thought
of mentioning it, for a somewhat similar reason. So the report traveled
from one mouth to another, losing nothing in its passage, and poor Katie
was obliged to endure the general avoidance and reprobation as best she
might. It was a hard trial and one in which she had no one to sympathize
with her, for Mrs. Robertson's gloomy disposition inclined her children
to keep from her anything that might add to her unhappiness, and somehow
she did not feel like making confidants of the boys. But hard as the
trial seemed in the passing, it was, in the end, good for our heroine,
for it drove her to the only Friend who knew all about it, who knew that
she was innocent of the charge, whatever it might be, and pitied and
loved her, whoever else might cast her out. The things which drive us
close to Him, no matter how hard they seem, are really blessings in
disguise. Katie had now but one friend in the mill, a slight, pale
girl, who stood by the folding-table next to herself. She had only just
come to the mill, was intimate with no one, and, so far, had not heard
the story, whatever it was, about Katie Robertson. Her name was Tessa.
Her father, who had been a traveling organ-grinder, was taken sick and
died very suddenly at Squantown. His little dark-eyed girl, who
accompanied him, was left perfectly destitute and in a most desolate
condition. She was at first taken care of in the poor-house, but as she
grew older, and it was thought best that she should do something for her
own support, Mr. Mountjoy had been appealed to, and had given her a
place in the mill. Not in the rag-room, however, for she had such a
delicate constitution that it was supposed she never could stand the
dust. Her work consisted in pasting the fancy paper over the edges of
little "pads," intended for doctors' use in writing their prescriptions,
and when she was tired she was allowed to have a seat. She could not
make much, but what she did receive sufficed to pay for her room in the
factory boarding-house, and Tessa was as happy as she could be without
her father.

The Italian girl had conceived a strong admiration for our bright
little Katie, and by degrees the two girls became great friends. Tessa's
love was the silver lining to the cloud under whose shadow her companion
lived.

But the heaviest part of the cloud was that the story reached Miss Etta.
She had noticed the general avoidance of Katie by the other girls in her
class, and was very much at a loss to account for it, for to her this
scholar had always seemed the best and brightest of them all, and she
could see no change in her reverent, attentive behavior, her carefully
prepared lessons, and her evident understanding and enjoyment of the
spiritual truths which they contained. This latter point she could
appreciate better than before, and she often shrank in humility from
attempting to teach Katie anything, feeling herself better fitted to be
the pupil. But the girls evidently did not feel so. What could be the
matter?

One day, when all had left the Sunday-school, except Bertie, she stopped
her and asked her directly why neither she nor the other girls were
willing to sit next to Katie Robertson, and why they all looked at her
so significantly when she came in or went out.

Bertie flushed, whether with joy or shame it would have been hard to
say, and at first would not answer; but on her teacher's insisting, said
that she didn't want to tell tales, etc.

The young lady saw that nevertheless her scholar was running over with
her secret and longing for an opportunity to divulge it, and, had she
been a little older and more experienced, she would not have given her
the opportunity. But Etta was very curious, and, moreover, thought she
had a right to know all that concerned her Sunday scholars, so she
waited until her patience was rewarded by the whole story--that is, the
version of it that Bertie's vindictive fancy chose to give.

She learned that Katie had been seen by two of the girls in the mill to
_steal_ a large sum of money, which she had appropriated to the use of
herself and family; that by degrees one after another had heard of it,
and that of course honest girls who had their own way to make did not
like to associate with a thief.

On being asked who the girls were that had seen the action, and why
they had not at once given information concerning it, Bertie declined to
give any answer to the first part of her question, and professed entire
ignorance concerning the latter; only she said: "All the girls knew, and
of course couldn't associate with a sly thief, especially when she gave
herself the airs of a saint."

Etta was very much troubled. She could not believe such a story of her
best pupil, and yet how could she contradict it? Without names and
particulars she did not know how to set about investigating the truth;
nor did she like to ask any one's advice, and thus cast suspicion upon
the child.




CHAPTER X.

NOVEL-READING.


"What makes you so tired to-day, Tessa?" said Katie, one morning when the
"rules" allowed the girls to speak.

"I don't know; I always do feel so in the mornings. It's awfully hard to
get up. Don't you find it so?"

"I did at first, but I am getting used to it now. By the time I am
dressed I am wide-awake and fit for anything. I don't see why you should
feel so; I am afraid you're sick."

"Oh, no; only stupid and sleepy; I'll wake up by-and-by," and Tessa drew
from her pocket a thin, square volume which was tightly rolled up. The
noon-whistles sounded just then, and Katie saw her companion curl
herself up on a box in the corner and at once lose herself in her book.

She still sat there when her friend returned, rosy and refreshed after
her warm dinner and two brisk walks, and, as there were still a few
moments before work must be resumed, the latter walked across the room
and playfully took the book from the other's hand.

"Don't! oh, please, don't!" said Tessa. "Time's most up, and I _must_
know what became of Sir Reginald!"

"You _must_ eat your lunch. Look, here it lies untasted beside you.
Tessa, you will certainly be sick if you go on in this way."

But Tessa did not listen; she had again firmly grasped the book, and was
greedily devouring its contents quite dead to outside things, till, the
bell ringing, Katie jogged her shoulder, and she walked slowly across to
the table where both girls worked, her eyes still upon her book. There
she set it up, still open, against a pile of packages of paper, and all
the afternoon kept casting furtive glances at it, often letting her work
drop and her hands hang idle, while she followed the fortunes of the
fascinating Sir Reginald.

Katie was in an agony; she loved Tessa, and did not want her to get into
trouble, as she would certainly do if her proceedings should be observed
by the overseer. Besides, was it honest thus to use time paid for by an
employer?

But she had no chance to speak to her companion, for as usual she
finished her work and went home, and whether her companion received a
reprimand from the overseer for not having completed her daily task she
did not know. Probably she did not, for it was an understood thing that
Tessa was not so strong as the other girls, and therefore so much must
not be expected of her.

The next day it was the same thing. Tessa looked tired out before the
day's work began, and well she might, for she had sat up nearly all
night to dispose of Sir Reginald, and now "The Fair Barmaid" had taken
his place. Again the girl went without the uninviting lunch she had
brought from her boarding-house, and again, as before, the fascinating
novel divided her attention with her work. This afternoon she was
detected by the overseer, who spoke a few words of reprimand and ordered
her to put the book away, which she did unwillingly and with heightened
color. It came out again, however, the moment the closing-bell rang;
and, to make up for lost time, was assiduously read during the homeward
walk, and took the place of both supper and sleep till almost daylight
the next morning.

Poor Tessa! she had inherited from her ancestry that love of romance and
adventure which, in their own sunny land, makes the Italians rival the
Orientals in their love of hearing and telling stories. The more
thrilling these stories are, the fuller of passion and crime, the better
they seem to suit the tastes of these fervid and excitable natures. And
she was alone; there was no one to counsel her, no one to love her, no
one even to talk to in the long evenings she must of necessity spend in
her bare room at the factory boarding-house, hot and stifling in summer,
cold and bare in winter. She had been taught to read at the poor-house
school and a stray dime novel happening to fall in her way, her
imagination, waiting for something on which to feed itself, seized upon
the unhealthful food, and gratified taste quickly ripened into
insatiable appetite. The girl read everything she could lay hold of, and
there is always plenty of such literature close at hand and ready to be
devoured. Novels at five cents apiece are sold by the million at country
stores, railway-depots, and news-stations. Ephemeral in their nature,
every one who owns them is ready to lend, give, or throw them away, and
when books fail there are always quantities of "story-papers," full of
the wildest, most improbable, and often vicious tales.

Tessa bought when she had any spare pennies, borrowed and begged when
she had not; read by daylight, and twilight, and lamplight, sitting up
as long as the miserable boarding-house lamps would hold out, and became
so immersed in her world of romance as to become almost oblivious to
outward things.

To do the little girl justice, she was too innocent to understand half
the wickedness which in this way was brought before her notice, but none
the less was she being gradually demoralized by this evil habit. Her
appetite failed, she scarcely took any exercise, she became nervous and
excitable to a degree, her work was neglected, and, worse still, she was
becoming familiarized with ideas, suggestions, and thoughts that should
never come within the comprehension of pure-minded girls. As to her
work, she was fast losing all interest in, indeed all capacity for,
that, and it was whispered among her superiors that but for her utterly
friendless condition it would be expedient to supply her place in the
mill with some more profitable work-woman.

"Miss Eunice," said Katie, at the next Wednesday afternoon meeting, "is
it wicked to read novels?"

"What a wholesale question," said Miss Eunice. "It is not _wicked_
exactly to do a great many things which it would be better on the whole
to let alone--tipping one's chair up on two legs, for instance."

Katie blushed, righted her chair, and said: "I mean wrong; is it wrong
to read novels?"

"Not all novels, certainly; that is, not all _fiction_. The best writers
of our day throw their thoughts into that form, and our knowledge of
history, philosophy, science, and character comes largely from this
source. Our Saviour sanctified fiction by giving his highest and deepest
lessons to his disciples in parables. If you mean that kind of novels,
read in moderation, I should decidedly say no."

"She means dime novels," said one of the girls.

"Oh, 'Headless Horsemen' and 'Midnight Mysteries,' fascinating maidens
carried off by desperate ruffians. I am thankful to say that I have no
personal acquaintance with that sort of thing; but, girls, let me ask
you a few questions. May I?"

"First, let all who read, or ever have read, what are called 'sensation
stories' raise their hands."

A great many hands went up--more than the questioner liked to see.

"How many find such books help them in their work, make the factory seem
pleasanter, and themselves more contented?"

Not a hand was raised, and the girl who had spoken before said:--

"I never can work half as well in the morning when I have been reading
stories at night. I hate the sight of the factory, and wish I was a
princess, or a splendidly dressed young lady with oceans of gold and
jewels, like those in the books."

"Another question: Do books of this kind help you to pray, make the
Bible more interesting, and incline you to loving service for the
Saviour who has died that you might be saved?"

No one answered. The girls looked both surprised and shocked, and Miss
Eunice continued:--

"On the contrary, I dare say many of you remember times when the
thrilling interest of an exciting story has made you utterly forget your
prayers, or at any rate has made church and Sunday-school and the homely
duties of a Christian life seem tame and flat by comparison. Is it not
so?"

Many bowed assent.

"Now for my last question: Would you be willing that your fathers and
brothers or the young men of your acquaintance should read all of these
books with you, every passage, and could you, without blushing, read
them aloud to your pastor or to me?"

No answer.

"There is another aspect of the question," continued the teacher. "Your
employers pay you a stipulated sum in return for a certain amount of
work to be done in a certain amount of time. They have a right to expect
you to give your best skill, your closest attention. Do you think it is
quite _honest_ either to use a part of that time in reading foolish,
useless, or hurtful books, or to come to your work so exhausted and
preoccupied by them as to be unfitted for performing your part of the
contract?"

"I do not desire to coerce you, or even to bind your consciences by any
promise, but I leave you to consider all I have said, and I think if you
do so honestly and prayerfully you will come to the conclusion that for
you who hope you have found your Saviour,--nay, I will say for all,
inasmuch as you all ought to be Christians,--the reading of this kind of
books and stories is among those works of the flesh and the devil which
you are called to renounce."

Katie had got the answer she had asked for, and besides she was well
furnished with arguments to bring to bear upon Tessa the first
opportunity she should have of talking with her, and that, she
determined, should be very soon.

When the girls and their escorts had gone home that evening, the two
sisters lingered to talk a little over the question that had so
interested their scholars. It was a new thing for them to have any
common interest, and Eunice hailed it as a good omen that her sister
should consult with her about anything. Etta had not yet confided to her
elder sister her new hopes, purposes, and feelings. She was an
independent girl, who had always thought and acted for herself, and
there had never been anything like sisterly familiarity between the
eldest and youngest of the Mountjoys. The distance between them was too
great, and perhaps the elder, in filling the position of a mother to her
little sister, had at first assumed a little too much of the authority
of one. She had grown wiser now, and did not attempt to force the young
girl's confidence; but she could not but be conscious of a change. There
was an increased gentleness of manner and sweetness of tone, a
thoughtful consideration of others, and deference to her own wishes
which she had never seen before. Her continuing to attend the Wednesday
meetings, and her serious attention when there, were good signs; so was
Etta's voluntary attendance at the Sunday evening service, a thing that
had never happened before, and Eunice began to hope that the solemn,
earnest realities of life would yet become precious to her
light-hearted, wayward sister.

This evening they talked over the novel grievance, and the temptations
to which the mill-girls were exposed, and Etta proposed a plan for their
benefit, which, when matured and digested, besides being supported by
Mr. Mountjoy's purse and his son's executive ability, eventuated in the
conversion of an unused loft in the mill into a library and reading-room
for the girls and such of their brothers and friends as knew how to
appreciate its benefits by behaving like gentlemen.

The books were chosen with great care, and were the best of their kind
to be had--popular science, history, and biography, with a large, a very
large, proportion of such fiction as had a tendency to elevate and
instruct, while it interested, its readers. The books were not to be
taken from the building, except upon rare occasions and under peculiar
circumstances; but the reading-room, which was nicely carpeted, well
warmed, and furnished with long tables and comfortable chairs, was open
during the noon intermission and for two hours every evening, and good
behavior was the only condition demanded for enjoying both its social
and literary privileges. The library soon became a very popular
institution, and the sale and consumption of sensational literature
decreased proportionally.

Before separating for the night, Etta said: "Did you notice the girl who
asked the question about novels?"

"Katie Robertson? Yes; I have had my eye on her for a long time. She
seems the most promising subject of your class."

"So I have always thought; but I have had a terrible disappointment in
her. No one would suppose it, but I have recently heard that she is a
thief, and that to a large amount. The child, innocent as she looks, has
actually stolen fifty dollars from our mill."

"That is absolutely impossible! I will not believe it. Who told you so,
Etta?"

"One of the class. Bertie Sanderson. She was not at all willing to tell
tales on her companion, but I questioned her and found it is as I say.
She assures me that all the girls know about it, and that two of
them--she did not give their names--saw the theft."

"Why did they not inform about it at once?"

"So I asked her; but she did not seem to know, and also declined giving
the names of the two girls. That was a little more honorable than I gave
Bertie credit for being."

"A little more deceitful, possibly," said Eunice, who had no high
opinion of Bertie Sanderson; "yet, if she were herself one of these
girls, she would, I suppose, have been glad to say so. Where do you
suppose this child found fifty dollars to steal? Money is not kept loose
around the mill, and the girls do not have access to the office. There
is something we don't know about this, Etta. The subject ought to be
investigated. Have you spoken to James?"

"No, I don't want to prejudice him against Katie, if she should be
innocent; but I fear that is hardly possible, after what Bertie said."

"I should be more inclined to suspect Bertie herself. Where do you
suppose she got that flashy silk dress she wears?"

"Isn't it horrid! I wonder those girls don't see how vulgar their cheap
finery is."

"Perhaps they try to copy their teacher," ventured the elder sister,
whose exquisitely neat style of dress was always remarkable for its
plainness and simplicity when she came in contact with her Sunday
scholars. But Etta was not yet sufficiently humbled to take reproof from
that source, and she abruptly left the room. All the same, however, she
thought and prayed a great deal upon the subject, and the next Sunday
surprised her class by appearing before them without an unnecessary
ribbon or ornament.




CHAPTER XI.

TESSA.


Katie Robertson remained in the mill that Saturday afternoon, although
her work had long been completed, till the bell rang for five o'clock,
that being the hour for the Saturday dismissal. Then she said to
Tessa:--

"Come and take a walk with me. There's a full hour before tea, and I
don't believe you've ever seen the Fawn's Leap. Have you?"

"No," said her companion, "I have never been anywhere in Squantown. They
would not let us go, in the poor-house, and since I've been in the mill
I've been too tired after work was over."

"Are you very tired now?"

"Not so very; I did not sleep much last night."

"Was it a _very_ interesting story?" said the other, archly.

"Oh, yes," said Tessa, becoming at once very much excited; "she,
Amanda, I mean, married the most elegant count, and he took her to his
castle, and she had pearls and diamonds and silks and satins, and never
had to do a thing all the rest of her life; and only think, Katie, she
was a mill-girl in the beginning, just like us." The sentence finished
with a sigh.

"Would you like a count to come and carry you off to a castle by-and-by,
and give you all those things?"

"Oh, indeed, yes; when the light goes out, and I can't read any more I
lie awake thinking about it, and wondering if such a count will ever
come along. He might, you know, any day."

"Does that make the mill seem any pleasanter in the morning?"

"No! no! I hate the mill. It looks so rough and bare, and the girls all
seem so common. I feel like crying to have to spend so many hours
there."

"And then you can't do your work well. I know just how that feels. Miss
Eunice says it isn't _honest_ to do anything that will unfit us for the
work we are paid for doing."

This was a new definition of dishonesty to Tessa, but she only said:--

"Who's Miss Eunice?"

"Oh, she's the teacher of the Bible-class; the nicest, most splendid
lady in the Sunday-school, except, of course, Miss Etta. She's our
teacher, you know, but she's so young she seems just like one of
ourselves."

"Do you go to Sunday-school?" said Tessa opening her eyes. "I thought
only little children went. Father said it was so in Italy."

"But everybody goes here. There's great big girls, quite young women, in
Miss Eunice's class. Tessa," said Katie, struck with a sudden idea,
"what do you do with yourself on Sundays?"

"I read," said the person addressed; "read all day long. I lie on the
bed in my room, and forget how hot it is and how lonely, and then when
it gets dark I remember beautiful Italy and cry."

"What a lonely life," said Katie, sympathetically. "Why don't you go to
church?"

"We never went to church, my father and I. He said the church had
ruined Italy, and he was not a Catholic any more."

"But we're not Catholics. Oh, I wish you would come to our church and
our Sunday-school! It's just as nice!--there's Miss Etta, and Bertie and
Gretchen and Cora, and two or three more, and on Wednesday Miss Eunice
invites our class and hers to tea, and reads to us, and we have a
society and work for missions and--oh, it's so nice!" said enthusiastic
Katie.

"Do you go to Sunday-school just to have nice times?" and Tessa opened
her black eyes very widely.

"No," said her friend, more soberly; "I think I go there to learn more
about Jesus, and how to love him more and serve him better. Some of us
hope to join the church soon."

Tessa asked some questions that led to a long talk which lasted till
they had reached the Fawn's Leap, which was a beautiful little waterfall
shooting down between two high rocks, from one of which to the other a
fawn was reputed to have sprung. It was a very lovely spot, and the two
girls threw themselves upon the grass to rest, while the Italian drew
long inspirations of delight.

"It makes me think of home," she said; "the old home in Italy. We
lived, my father and I, close to a waterfall just like this, among the
mountains. After my mother died my father did not want to stay there, so
he went to Naples and bought an organ, and we came to America in a big
ship, and wandered about, and then"--her voice broke down then and she
said: "Oh, Katie, I am so lonely! if I only had a home like yours, with
people in it to talk to and to be kind to me, I should not want to read
so many stories. I don't believe they _are_ good for me." This was in
reference to all Miss Eunice's talk about the evils of novel-reading as
repeated by Katie.

A sudden thought struck the latter.

"Tessa," she said, "it must be awfully lonely at your boarding-house in
the evenings and on Sundays. I wish you could come and live with me. I
have no companions but the boys, and to have you would be just
splendid."

"Do you think I could? Do you think your mother would let me? Oh, Katie,
you can't really mean it!"

Katie had not taken her mother into consideration. Of course, she could
not be sure of her approbation of such a plan, but she promised to ask,
and went on planning how nice it would be--how the two girls could share
Katie's room and bed; how they could go to the mill together. "And
then," said she, "you could go to Sunday-school with me, Tessa."

But here Tessa drew back. She had no clothes, she said, fit to go to
church in--only her working-dress and the straw hat which she wore every
day to the mill.

"Go in that. Miss Eunice says God doesn't care what we wear when we go
to church."

"But the girls do, and I care more about them."

This rather shocked Katie, but she did not see her way out of the
difficulty, and mentally resolved to "ask mother": that way out of all
difficulties which is first to suggest itself to a young girl's mind.

"There is the sun setting," said Tessa.--"It must be ever so late. I
sha'n't get any supper; they never keep anything for us at our
boarding-house."

"Oh, yes, you will! you are coming home with me; mother will have
something ready for both of us. I told her where we were going, and she
promised she would keep our supper for us, no matter how late it was.
Besides, it will be a good chance to ask her about our plan."

So Tessa consented, nothing loth, and when she saw the fair, white
cloth, with the clear glasses and bright, shining china, the delicate
slices of white bread, the wild strawberries, and fresh brown
gingerbread, and contrasted it with the bare table, the stoneware badly
chipped, and the great piles of coarse provisions, into which the
boarders dipped their own knives, she felt as though she had suddenly
got into paradise.

Katie had told the home party about her Italian companion, and her
apparent friendlessness, and all had taken such an interest in her that
when the boys heard their sister ask and receive permission to bring her
home to tea, and their mother's promise to make some soft gingerbread,
they resolved to contribute their share toward the festival, and the
strawberries, to gathering which they had devoted their afternoon
holiday, were the result.

It was a very happy tea-party. Katie was in high spirits, her mother
gentle and hospitable, the boys courteous and gentlemanly. Tessa had
never been in such society before, and yet there was in her a native
grace and refinement--due, perhaps, to the artistic atmosphere in which
she was born--that prevented her from doing anything rude or awkward, or
seeming at all out of place.

After tea the boys brought out the games, and the visitor showed herself
quick to learn and eager to enjoy. The heavy, half-sorrowful look went
out of her face, which became full of fun as her eyes sparkled and
danced, and she pushed back her long black hair.

When the clock struck nine Mrs. Robertson said:--

"It is time for young folks who have to get up early to go to bed. The
boys will see you home, dear; but perhaps you would like to stay and
have prayers with us first."

"Oh, yes, I am sure she would," said Katie, seeing that her friend
seemed not to know how to answer this proposition. So Eric handed his
mother the books, and she first read a chapter in the Bible, and then
kneeling down, with her little flock around her, read an evening prayer,
commending them all to the love and protection of their heavenly Father.
It all seemed very sweet to the visitor, who had never been present at
such a service before. She could not probably have told how she felt,
but a longing desire came over her to stay where everything seemed so
near the gate of heaven, and she said impulsively:--

"Oh, Mrs. Robertson, if you would only keep me always!"

Then Katie said:--

"Mother, why can't Tessa live with us? There's plenty of room for her
with me; and she has nobody belonging to her--nothing but a horrid room
in the factory boarding-house, where nobody cares for her, and she has
to read novels all the evening and all Sunday, and that makes her sick.
It would be so nice to have her go to the mill with me every day, and to
Sunday-school on Sunday--only she hasn't any clothes that are fit,
and"--

"My dear, do stop to take your breath," said the astonished mother, "and
let me get some idea of what you are talking about. Do I understand
that you want Tessa to come and live here? I should much like to have
her do so, my child, but you know--don't think me unkind, Tessa--that we
are poor people, and find it hard to fill the four mouths that must be
filled."

"Oh, I didn't mean that," said the girl, timidly, and turning crimson.
"Of course, I wouldn't let you and Katie support me; but I could pay you
my board, just as I do at the boarding-house. I suppose it would be
more, but perhaps I could work harder and earn something extra, as some
of the other girls do."

"How much do you pay now?"

"Two dollars and a half a week."

"And you have only three dollars! Katie makes five."

"Yes, I know; she works fast. Perhaps I could if there was any
use--anything to do it for. I didn't need any money. They gave me my
clothes at the workhouse, and I bought books with the other
half-dollar."

Both girls looked very beseechingly at Katie's mother, and Eric, who
had taken a great fancy to the dark-haired girl, added his entreaties;
but she said:--

"I can not answer you to-night; I must think about it and pray over it.
I will let you know when I have made up my mind. Now you must go home,
dear; Eric will go with you. Good-night, and God bless you."

Tessa felt the kiss that accompanied these words down to the bottom of
her heart. No one had ever kissed her before, so far as she could
remember, except her father, and she longed most ardently to be taken
into this home.

Katie followed her to the door and whispered: "Tessa, I shall ask God to
make mother decide the way we want her to. You ask him, too. You know it
says in the Bible: 'If any two of you shall agree on earth as touching
any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them.'" But Tessa did
not yet understand about "asking God." She only stared and bid her
friend good-night.

The next morning as she sat rather disconsolately on the doorstep of the
boarding-house, not knowing exactly what to do with herself, for in
consequence of last night's visiting she had neglected to provide
herself with a new book, Katie came by and greeted her brightly. She
looked so sweet and fresh in her simple Sunday dress that it was not to
be wondered at that Tessa, in her soiled mill-clothes, again refused to
accompany her friend to Sunday-school.

"You shall have my library book, any way. I don't care to get another
to-day, and mother says you are to come round this afternoon to get her
answer."

The book was a pleasant story, and though it lacked the species of
morbid excitement to which the girl had accustomed herself, it filled up
the time agreeably, and gave her a glimpse of a higher, purer plane of
life than any with which she was as yet familiar. Some precious truths
concerning the love of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the happiness of
serving him, were woven into it, and served as the indestructible seeds
which were yet to ripen in the girl's spiritual life. At about four
o'clock she put on her hat, and full of mingled anxiety and hope, made
her way to the corner house which seemed to her so much like heaven.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Robertson had thought the matter over in every
direction. She did not at first like the idea of increasing the home
party, or of introducing into it any element that might prove
discordant. She dreaded to have Katie or the boys come under any
influence that might counteract the earnest, religious training she was
endeavoring to give her children. But there seemed to be nothing
vicious, or even common, about Tessa; she was sweet and well-mannered,
and so friendless and forlorn that it would be a positive charity to
take her in. Then, too, the girl had evidently had no religious teaching
and was profoundly ignorant about spiritual things. Perhaps this was
missionary work sent to her very hands. She might at least try it for a
while. The board to be paid would make it possible to do so, and if the
plan were not a success, or proved hurtful to her own children, to whom
she owed her first duty, she could but send the girl back to her present
lodgings.

So, when Tessa came she was told, to her great joy, that her request
was granted, and she might commence her new life on Monday. A very
serious motherly talk followed, and among other things the new boarder
was obliged to promise never to introduce sensational literature into
the house.

Mrs. Robertson agreed to take Tessa for two dollars a week, on condition
that she would assist Katie with the housework before and after
mill-hours. The half-dollar a week thus saved would soon procure a
simple Sunday outfit, and enable her to accompany her friend to
Sunday-school and church.

Katie, with some of the remains of her precious fifty dollars, insisted
on advancing this; and on the first Sunday morning the young Italian,
looking very pretty but rather shy, took her place in Miss Etta's class,
and was at once enrolled among its members.

Mrs. Robertson never had cause to regret her kind-hearted decision.
Tessa was devotedly attached to Katie, and followed, rather than led,
her friend. She was shy with the boys at first, but soon came to show
them the same sisterly feeling that their sister did. Her wit,
quickness, and power of story-telling soon made her a valuable addition
to the family circle, while the genial home influences and good fare so
told upon herself that her extreme delicacy soon disappeared, and she
became capable of as much work or endurance as Katie herself.




CHAPTER XII.

GRETCHEN.


German Gretchen was absent from the mill one morning. No one noticed it
except Miss Peters, who marked her down for one less day's wages. The
young girl, who had drifted into the manufacturing town, as so many do,
in search of work, had never been a favorite or attracted particular
attention. She was a fair work-woman, obeyed rules, and went her way to
the boarding-house when night came; but she made no friends either there
or at the mill, and it would scarcely have been noticed had she
disappeared altogether. Somehow she had floated into Sunday-school, and
been placed in the class which afterward became Etta Mountjoy's, but
here her apparent stolidity made her perhaps the least interesting of
all the girls. Perhaps this was in part owing to the fact that one is
not likely to be very talkative in a strange language.

But Gretchen had a heart, although no one in Squantown had yet found,
or cared to find, it. It was safe at home in the fatherland, where the
house-mother and father had as much as they could do to put enough black
bread to support life into the mouths of the five little children, too
young to do as she had done, when she accompanied a neighbor's family,
who were emigrating to seek their fortune in the New World. These
neighbors had gone to the far West, and not caring to be burdened with a
possibly unproductive member of their party, had left the little girl in
the hands of a German employment agency, through which she had found her
way to Squantown Mills.

Gretchen had many homesick hours when she would have given a great deal
more than she possessed to be at home again sharing the poverty and
hardships of the Old World, but she expressed her feelings to no one.
Indeed, she knew no one to whom she could have expressed them. She did
her day's work faithfully, receiving her regular payment of fifty cents,
and occasionally a little more, which little she resolutely put away at
the bottom of her box, to be sent home to her mother and the little
ones when there should be a good opportunity.

But now Gretchen was absent from her work one, two, three, four days. It
was Miss Peters's duty to report all absentees on Saturday night, and
she did so after the hands had been paid off and gone home. The
book-keeper noted the absence in his pages, asked if work was so
pressing as to make the appointment of a substitute necessary or
advisable, and being answered in the negative quite forgot to inform his
employer of the girl's absence.

But when Sunday came, and Gretchen was absent from the place in the
class which she had so regularly occupied, it was a different thing.
Etta, among her other activities, had from the first been a good visitor
of absentees. Indeed, when her scholars lived with their families, as in
the case of Katie and one or two of the other girls, she had made more
visits and laid down the law more than was quite agreeable in all cases.
Now, with her newly awakened sense of responsibility toward the immortal
souls placed under her charge, she had begun to watch over them as one
who must give account of their souls. She had several times thought of
looking up Gretchen, in order to become acquainted with her
surroundings, etc., but had not yet put her design into execution, and
now the girl's absence from the class gave her teacher the very
opportunity she desired.

As soon as tea was over, in the long June twilight, Etta put on her hat,
and walked down the hill upon which the grand house stood to the valley,
in which was the long row of boarding-houses occupied by such of the
mill-hands as had no homes in the place. It was stiflingly hot down
here, though it had been cool and fresh on the high ground above, and
the young lady, who had not often visited the purlieus of the mill, felt
as though she could scarcely breathe, and did not wonder that men sat at
the open windows in their shirtsleeves, and that tired-looking women
seemed gasping for air. The bare wooden buildings, with their long rows
of windows and doors all of the same pattern; the smooth, beaten yards,
all just alike; the swarms of children making it seem anything but
Sunday-like with their noise; the teeming population, which made the
tenements resemble ant-hills, and seemed to forbid any idea of privacy,
looked very dreadful to her.

On the other side of the street was a long row of brick cottages, each
inhabited by two or more families, the distinctive sign of each being
the family pig, kept, for greater convenience, in the front yard, from
which odors, not the most choice in their nature, were constantly wafted
across the way. In the doorways of most of these lounged Irishmen
smoking and swearing, in some cases in a state of intoxication; for,
although the rules of the mill concerning drinking were very strict, and
no habitual drinker was ever knowingly engaged in it, it was impossible
to prevent the men from depositing a part of the earnings received every
Saturday night in the hands of one or two liquor-dealers whom the law
licensed to sell death and ruin to their fellow-men.

How dreadful, thought the young lady, to be compelled to spend one's
life in such wretched surroundings. Is it any wonder that the women
become hopeless slatterns, and that the children grow up in vice and
sin? How thankful I ought to be to the heavenly Father who has
surrounded me with such different influences! how I wish I might do
something to raise and elevate these, and give them a few of the
blessings of which I have so many!

Etta Mountjoy had grown since that early June Sunday when she had
visited her pastor in such sorrow and perplexity. She had read and seen
and thought more and more of the wonderful love of our heavenly Father
in surrounding her with so many blessings and in sending his only Son to
be her Saviour and friend. She looked back upon the life of
self-pleasing she had so long led with sorrow amounting to disgust. How
could she have been so ungrateful? How could she have failed to love One
so altogether lovely? She was learning now to find pleasure in prayer,
and the Bible, which had been to her such a dull book, began to be more
interesting than any story which she had formerly devoured. And she was
trying, faintly and with many relapses, it is true, to take up her
neglected duties, especially those which had been most distasteful to
her, and perform them steadily "as unto the Lord." Out of all this was
springing up in her a desire to do something for Christ--something which
would be, if not a return for his favors, at least a token of her
gratitude to him. To-night just such an opportunity as she had desired
came to her hand.

If Etta had only known it, the dwellings of the operatives at Squantown
were palatial compared to those into which the working-classes are
huddled in cities; for here the many windows opened upon pure fresh air
and green fields, the little yards were scrupulously clean, and vines
clambered up the sides of the doors and windows, even to the roofs. The
fare, plain as it was, was not tainted by exposure in a city market, or
by being hawked about the city streets, and the price of living was no
higher than the wages received in the mill enabled the people to pay.

The young teacher had the number of the house at which her scholar
boarded written down in her class-book, and at that number she at once
knocked. No one came for some time, but at last repeated raps brought
the woman who kept the house, and who might perhaps be excused for her
want of greater promptitude on the ground of having so many dishes to
wash after the boarders' tea.

In answer to Miss Etta's inquiries the woman answered civilly enough,
for it would not do to offend one of "the family," that Gretchen's room
was the back garret; that she believed the girl had been sick for a day
or two, but she had not had time to look after her, though she had sent
her little boy up with her meals. The child couldn't have eaten much,
for the tray came down almost as it went up. She had been trying to find
time to go upstairs all day, and was just meaning to do so now that her
dishes were done. She would go up now, and let the young lady know how
her scholar was.

"Let me go with you," said Etta; but the request was only a form, as the
girl usually did just as she pleased without waiting for anybody's
permission, and, indeed, the woman of the house knew no reason why, on
this occasion, she should not follow her own inclination.

Three flights of stairs were climbed, a long narrow hall, studded with
doors on each side, traversed, and Mrs. Doyle opened one in the
southwest corner of the house, where, the sun having beaten on the
sloping roof all the afternoon, the temperature was something fearful.
The room was small, for Mr. Mountjoy had built the boarding-houses, and
desired to try the experiment of each inmate having a separate room
instead of a great many men or women being herded together in open
dormitories. It contained simply a cot, a wooden chair, and a table upon
which stood conveniences for washing and the untasted supper. On the cot
lay the German girl, blazing with fever and tossing about in the
greatest discomfort. At first she did not know her visitors, and seemed
a little frightened at seeing the room so full. But presently,
recognizing her Sunday-school teacher, she grasped her hand and drew her
down to the side of the bed, pointing to her German Bible, in which she
had been trying to study her Sunday-school lesson.

Etta was touched, and began to think there might be some interest in
even the plain, undemonstrative Gretchen. She bent down to ask her some
questions about her sickness, during which Mrs. Doyle hurried to throw
the one window wide open, and to make the disordered room fit to be
seen.

"The child is very ill, I am afraid," said Etta, coming across to the
window and speaking to the woman in very low tones; "don't you think
so?"

"Yes, I am afraid she is," said the person addressed, uneasily, for
severe illness in a large, crowded boarding-house is no light matter.
She and her children were dependent upon their boarders, and a sudden
panic might empty the house.

"Can't you send for a doctor, Mrs. Doyle? Papa will gladly pay him, I
know."

"Yes; Johnny could run, I suppose, but he'd be sure to tell somebody,
and I wouldn't like it to get about till we know what it is, any way."

"Please go yourself, then. It's after tea, and there isn't much to do."

"But suppose the girl gets worse, and begins to scream and frightens the
boarders."

"Oh, I '11 stay with her till you come back. I'd rather; I shall be so
anxious to hear what the doctor says. Please go, Mrs. Doyle, and
hurry."

Etta Mountjoy had a way with her that could not be resisted by most
people, and even Mrs. Doyle, not overgifted with the milk of human
kindness, could not refuse her. So she went downstairs, and only
stopping to put on her bonnet and tell her eldest daughter to go on with
the preparations for breakfast,--which always had to be made over
night,--as she was going out for a little while, walked swiftly down the
street.

Etta sat on the hard chair by the patient's bed, and for some time
watched the tossing limbs, heavy breathing, and flushed, excited face.
She was not used to sickness. Indeed, she had never seen it since her
mother died, so long ago that she could not remember the pain and the
suffering, but only the terrible results, which were pale, cold death,
the coffin, the funeral, and the grave.

Did all severe sickness end in death, she wondered? Was this strong,
healthy girl about to die? And if so, was she ready? She had never
thought of the possibility of death in connection with any of her
scholars. Had she taught them the things which alone could be of value
to them when they came to stand face to face with a holy God? What
advantage then would be familiarity with dates, with geography, and with
catechisms? How would they then blame her for not having pointed them to
the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world? The
responsibility of undertaking to deal with human souls, upon which she
had so thoughtlessly rushed, now seemed to her something terrible. True,
she had not then known or understood anything about it; but,
nevertheless, it now seemed to her a great sin, and an earnest prayer
for forgiveness rose up from her heart, accompanied by another for the
salvation of the sick girl before her.

Meanwhile the moments rolled slowly by: the sick girl tossed and moaned;
the church-bells rang for evening service, first merrily, as glad to
call the people to the house of God; then slowly, as loth to stop while
any more stragglers might be induced to come; then with one or two long
sobs for those who, in spite of all persuasion and all "long-suffering
patience," wilfully stay outside, stopped, and the silence was only
broken by the shouts of the noisy children below. Even these ceased at
last, and as the sunset glow faded--flame red changing to pale yellow,
and that again to cool, sombre gray--the time of waiting seemed to the
unskilled watcher well-nigh interminable.




CHAPTER XIII.

SHIP-FEVER.


Presently Gretchen spoke. Her voice was thick, her accent even more
foreign than usual, and at first the listener could not understand the
words. But she put her ear close down to the bed and made out:--

"Miss Etta, am I going to die?"

"I don't know," said Etta, bewildered; "I hope not."

"I'm not afraid," said the German, "but--but it looks all so strange
and dark. You didn't use to tell us about Jesus, and I couldn't rightly
understand the minister; but don't it say _here_," putting her hand upon
the Bible by her side, "that he will save everybody that comes to him?"
Her teacher nodded. "Coming to him is asking him, isn't it?" Another
nod. "Then, please, Miss Etta, ask him for me. I can't. I can't seem to
think. Ask him _now_."

Poor Etta! never in her life had she been so confused. She had only
just learned to pray for herself. She had not yet overcome the reticence
which we all feel concerning our own interest in spiritual things
sufficiently to tell her own sister of her experience and purpose--how
could she bring herself to do this hard thing which her scholar asked of
her? But the scholar had a human soul, and that soul might be very near
to eternity. How could she refuse to do this thing which, by the very
nature of her position toward her, the scholar had a right to ask?

Then an idea struck her, and opening her hymn-book,--for she had
expected to attend the evening service after ascertaining the cause of
her scholar's absence,--she knelt close to the window, and in the
fast-fading light read in a tone of reverent supplication the hymn
commencing,--

                "Just as I am, without one plea,
                 But that Thy blood was shed for me,
                 And that Thou biddest me come to Thee,
                   Oh, Lamb of God, I come!"

Every word of the hymn was prayer, and Etta felt grateful for this help
in doing what would have otherwise seemed to her impossible. She threw
her whole soul into the last line of each verse, and could not but hope
that Gretchen, who lay quite still now, though saying nothing, was
following and saying in her heart,--

                       "Oh, Lamb of God, I come!"

After this there was silence and darkness, and Etta continued to kneel
with her face hidden on the window-sill, praying silently that God would
indeed save this soul, teaching it that which heretofore she had been
unable and unworthy to teach. The effort at obedience to what was so
evidently her duty had greatly strengthened the girl; she felt that God
was with her in the still room, and the glad joy of those who against
their own inclinations work for him began to spring up in her soul.

The doctor and Mrs. Doyle found her thus, and springing to her feet,
Etta came over to the bed to hear what the former thought about
Gretchen.

Judging from Mrs. Doyle's account, the doctor seemed inclined to make
light of the case, until he had made a careful investigation, and then
he looked very grave, and asked where the patient had come from, and
how long she had been in this country. Hearing that it was nearly a year
since she crossed the ocean, and that she had worked for eight months in
Squantown Paper Mill, he looked still more puzzled, and finally
said:--

"I really can't account for it, but it certainly is a case of
ship-fever; a very bad case, too."

Mrs. Doyle's consternation was extreme. She muttered something about
having her children to care for, shut the door tight, and went hastily
downstairs, leaving the doctor and the delicately bred young girl to
decide what was to be done in the situation.

Doctor Bolen looked at his companion in somewhat quizzical perplexity.
Here was a patient dangerously ill with a contagious disorder, at the
top of a house swarming with human beings. She must have care and close
watching, and the only person within reach to give it was a girl whose
gay light-heartedness and instability were well known in the town. Had
she known what to do, she was too young and delicate for such a task.
And should she take the infection--what then? Would the wealthy
mill-owner thus expose his youngest child, and, as every one knew, his
idol?

"I must get hold of some responsible person," he said at last, aloud,
but more to himself than to his companion. "But whom? I don't know of a
nurse that would come even from the city. Besides, it would cause a
panic to do so, and a panic is the most likely thing in the world to
cause the infection to spread. Mrs. Doyle, it is clear, is frightened
out of her senses, and she can't be expected to risk her children and
her livelihood for a stranger. One of the Irishwomen across the way
might take care of her for money; but then she'd talk, and the whole
gang would be frightened. I don't really know which way to turn." But
Etta answered instantly with the intuitive perception for which she was
noted:--

"There's Eunice."

Why had he not thought of it? Eunice Mountjoy, with her calm, cool head,
her perfect unselfishness, her entire devotion to the good of others;
Eunice, who was known and blessed wherever throughout the village there
was sickness, suffering, or want; Eunice, who had many a time helped
him out of a perplexity,--Eunice was the very person. But how should he
get hold of her?

"I will go," said Etta, to whom he expressed the wonder.

"No! You are too young, and at the same time too old, to go through this
manufacturing village alone after dark."

"Then you go, and I will stay here, for I suppose Gretchen must not be
left alone."

"Of course not. She may become delirious at any moment, and there is no
saying what she may do. She does not know us now. Would not you be
afraid to stay with her?"

"No," said Etta, steadily. "Tell me just what to do and I will do it."

"But you might take the infection. Have you thought of that?"

"God will take care of me," said she, with a rising color; and the
doctor, remembering how he had found her, thought that perhaps he could
not do better than to leave her under such protection.

He was gone a long time, a very long time, it seemed to Etta, whose
patient became very restless and needed constantly to be soothed and
coaxed back to bed when she sprang up and insisted--in German--on going
to her mother. Her teacher, at such times, bathed her face with the warm
water the doctor had brought, or gave her a sip of cold water which had
been left when the tea-tray was carried away, spoke to her in soothing
tones, and finally sang hymns, which seemed to quiet her better than
anything else. She had sung all she knew and was commencing the
_repertoire_ over again, when a heavy step, followed by a lighter one,
came along the passage, and presently Dr. Bolen appeared, followed, not
by Eunice, as her sister had expected, but by Katie's mother, Mrs.
Robertson! There was no time for questionings. The doctor gave Mrs.
Robertson his directions, and then, leaving the patient to her, he took
the young girl's arm and led her from the room, down the stairs, and out
into the street, where the cool night air seemed wonderfully refreshing.

"I would not have exposed you thus," he said, "if there had been any
other way. Do you feel very tired, very much exhausted?"

"Oh, no," she said bravely, for the air had greatly revived her. "I
don't believe it will hurt me a bit. It's time I learned to do something
besides amuse myself, you know. I've never been of much use in the world
yet, but I mean to be."

"You have great capacities and opportunities for usefulness," said he,
gravely, "but you know none of us is sufficient for these things."

"I am asking God to help me," she said in a low tone. "Don't you think
he will?"

"No one ever sought his help in vain. I am glad you are setting out in
the right way. All success be with you. Now you must attend to my
directions and obey me exactly. As soon as you get home take off every
garment you have on; throw away or burn up everything that can't be
washed, take a warm bath, and go to sleep as soon as you can, and,
remember, you are not to go near my patient again till I give you
permission. Will you promise?"

Then he told her how sensibly Eunice had planned that Mrs. Robertson,
who often went out to nurse the sick, should be engaged to take care of
Gretchen; that to-morrow a certain empty house belonging to Mr.
Mountjoy should be fitted up as a temporary hospital, and the sick girl
moved there that the battle of life and death might be fought where
there were not crowds of people to take the infection. He also cautioned
Etta not to spread a report concerning the nature of Gretchen's disease,
as a panic might result which would be not only deleterious to her
father's business interests, but also disastrous to the lives of
multitudes of the employees of the mill.

By this time they had reached the door of Etta's home, and Dr. Bolen
bade the girl good-night, after reiterating his directions.

Eunice came to her sister's room that night after she was in bed to see
if the doctor's orders had been complied with. She gave her such a
caress as her undemonstrative nature rarely gave way to, and it somehow
opened Etta's heart and mouth as well. A long talk followed, and Eunice
heard a great deal that made her very happy to hear. Etta begged her
pardon for the many times she had refused obedience to one standing
toward her almost in the position of a mother, and promised to be more
docile and helpful for the future. Both felt that the sisterly bond
which had been so weak between them was linked afresh to-night, and that
they were now sisters in reality because they were one in Christ.

The next day Eunice's plan was fully carried out. The vacant house,
which had been for some months without a tenant, was swept out and
furnished with a few necessary articles, and Gretchen, now entirely
delirious, was taken there in a close carriage, and Mrs. Robertson
established as resident nurse. The good woman fretted and grumbled a
good deal at leaving her home and her children,--whom, of course, she
could not see for a long time,--but she _was_ a good woman in spite of
her grumbling. She was a very experienced nurse, and here was service
for the Master from which she dared not turn away. Katie, assisted by
Tessa, was fully competent to manage the house and cook what they and
the boys needed to eat, so she resolutely accepted the trust.

Eunice and Etta went down to the empty house early in the morning, and
both worked hard, with a woman who had been hired to do so, to get the
rooms in readiness, but when all was prepared, they went home, for Dr.
Bolen said there was no use for either to be unnecessarily exposed to
infection. He did not want more patients than were sent him in the
natural course of events.

Great pains were taken to keep the whole matter quiet. Katie and Tessa
and the boys were cautioned not to speak about it, and the removal of
the patient was effected during the forenoon when all the factory
"hands" were safe in the mill. But the precautions were useless. Before
the next night there were four more patients in the temporary hospital,
all from the rag-room, and the consternation was extreme. Many refused
to work, and the mill was in danger of being forced to stop just in the
middle of filling some very important contracts, when the doctor, taking
his own life in his hands, as doctors must, made a thorough
investigation of the rag-room, where all the cases had occurred, and
found the contagion to be in a bale of rags imported from Ireland, which
had not received the usual overhauling before being brought to the mill.
These were all collected and burned, and the room thoroughly fumigated,
the operatives receiving full wages for the days they were thus shut out
from work, and one good result of the fever was that henceforth the
bales were all opened and smoked in a separate building before they ever
entered the mill at all.

The contagion did not spread any farther after this, and the hands
returned without more delay to the mill. Mr. Mountjoy sent to the city
for an experienced hospital nurse, and promised to pay all the expenses
of the illness, in addition to the wages of those who were thus
prevented from earning anything. The "hospital" was supplied from the
kitchen of the "great house," and both Eunice and her young sister found
full occupation in the preparation of dainties and food for the sick.

The interest in the five sick girls was intense, and when one--a poor,
sickly little thing--died, every one felt as though death had come very
close, and many were compelled to listen to the voice which said:--

                       "Prepare to meet thy God."




CHAPTER XIV.

GOOD FOR EVIL.


"Bertie Sanderson has not been in the mill for a week," said Tessa to
Katie, as the two friends walked home together one hot afternoon. "One
of the rag-room girls said so. I wonder if she has the fever!"

"That's not likely; the girls are all getting better," said her
companion.

"Yes; but she's been absent for more than a week," persisted Tessa.
"Let's go round that way and inquire."

But Katie, somehow, shrank from this. While she knew nothing with
absolute certainty, she could not help feeling that Bertie was in some
way connected with the general avoidance of herself by the girls of the
Sunday-school class, and the evident suspicion with which both Miss
Eunice and Miss Etta regarded her. What her former companion could have
said or done, she had no idea; but the sense of an undefined something
had made her of late keep as far as possible from Bertie. She was about
to say with her usual impulsiveness:--

"No; I hate Bertie! Don't let's go near her," when she remembered all
her purposes of doing Tessa good and setting her a Christian example. Is
it Christian to cherish a dislike of another because one has reason to
suppose that other has done one an injury? Katie's enlightened
conscience knew it was not. It was not like him who said:--

"Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which
despitefully use you and persecute you;" and who, by acting in strict
accordance with his own teachings, "left us an example that we should
follow in his steps."

For a few moments the little girl said nothing as she walked silently by
the side of her companion; then, having during those silent moments sent
up an earnest prayer that the hateful feelings might be taken away from
her heart, that so she might become more like Christ, she answered by
turning her steps in the other direction.

The two girls found, as Tessa had suggested, that Bertie had indeed
taken the fever, and was very ill in her own comfortable home. Dr. Bolen
had suggested her being removed to the temporary hospital, and being
cared for by the competent nurses there; but her mother would not hear
of it. She was always a very foolish woman, had been very much opposed
to her daughter's going into the mill, and now told her husband that
this fever was all the result of his obstinacy, and she hoped he enjoyed
having murdered his own child. Now, however, she meant to have her own
way. Her Bertie, who was every bit as good as the city young ladies, her
cousins, was not to go to an empty house and be nursed with a lot of
common mill-girls. If her mother couldn't take care of her, she should
like to know who could--which would have been unanswerable if Mrs.
Sanderson had known how to nurse anybody--a thing of which she was
profoundly ignorant. So poor Bertie had a hard time of it, and daily
grew worse instead of better; and as if this were not enough, Mrs.
Sanderson never thought of isolating the patient, or of keeping the
other children from her, and before long the third child, a boy of six
years old, was taken down with the fever also, and the incompetent
mother had her hands more than full with the care of her house, the two
patients, and two fretful, badly trained little children, with only
Nina, who had never been taught to do anything in the world, to help
her.

Matters were in this state on the evening when the girls called, and
poor Mrs. Sanderson, coming to the door, without an atom of prudence or
caution, insisted on dragging in Katie at least, because in her wild
delirium Bertie had been incessantly shouting her name. Katie was
impulsive, not very old or experienced, and had, moreover, been always
taught to obey grown people, so without a thought of possible danger to
herself, she followed the woman into the house, while Tessa waited for
her outside, and was soon standing by the bedside of her old
acquaintance.

She would never have known Bertie Sanderson. The long, disorderly hair,
as well as the disfiguring "bangs," had, by the doctor's orders, all
been shaved off; the round, rosy cheeks were pallid and sunken; the
solid frame was wasted almost to a skeleton, and there was a fierce,
wild look in the eyes alternated with an expression of intense fear.

Katie stood aghast, and even as she looked the wasted lips suddenly
shrieked out:--

"Katie, Katie Robertson! Send her here. I want to tell her something."

"I am here," said Katie, as soothingly as she could, for her fright.

But Bertie took no sort of notice of her; evidently did not recognize
her at all, and went on:--

"It wasn't a lie! I did see her find it and put it in her pocket. That's
being a thief, isn't it? It was money--a great deal of money. I saw a
five and a nought. It wasn't a lie, I tell you! She did steal it!
Katie's a thief, for all she's so saintly."

Katie started. This, then, was the mystery; this was the secret thing
that had been setting so many against her. She had never in all her
speculations concerning the general avoidance thought of this as a
cause. Bertie must have seen her find that fifty-dollar bill and put it
in her pocket. But even if, from mere idleness, she had repeated the
story to her companions, had she told simply what she really saw, could
it be called stealing? And if Miss Eunice or Miss Etta had heard it they
would naturally have spoken of it to their brother; he would have told
the facts as he knew them, and that would have made matters all
straight.

Bertie must have altered her tale in some way, exaggerated it, or
suppressed a part. What for? Could her companion be so malicious as
simply to desire to make her unpopular and to prevent the young ladies
from looking upon her with approbation? She could not understand it. Of
course she could not, for malice and jealousy were entirely foreign to
Katie's nature, even if she had not been striving "in all her ways to
acknowledge" her Saviour. She did wish, however, that she had thought of
mentioning her good fortune and Mr. James's kindness at the time, that
all this trouble might have been avoided.

Meanwhile Bertie began to moan and cry and call for Katie; and the
latter, after speaking in vain again and again, turned to go.

"Oh, don't go away!" said Mrs. Sanderson, imperatively. "She'll know
you by-and-by; and I can't stand her calling for you; besides, if you
can just stay with Bertie and give her the medicine and drink, I might
get a chance to see to Alf., who is most as bad as she is, and see what
Nina's doing with those children; they've been screaming this half-hour.
I don't believe she's given 'em a mite of dinner, and I guess there
ain't anything in the house for supper. You just stay where you are."

Not a thought had selfish Mrs. Sanderson for the fact that she was
exposing a neighbor's child to the same evil which had overtaken her
own. Nor in Katie's inexperience did she think of it either; but she did
feel very indignant at the tone of command and very much inclined to
rebel.

Moreover, she did not want to stay and take care of a girl who had
behaved so shamefully toward herself. One by one the bitter things she
had been forced to endure through this girl's treachery and
deceitfulness came to her remembrance--the avoidance of her companions,
the disapprobation and suspicion of the overseer, the changed manner of
her Sunday-school teacher, the tears she had shed in secret, and the
discouragement she had felt in her efforts to be good; and a sense of
indignation possessed her which for a moment made her feel almost glad
that the girl had thus got her deserts.

But this feeling was not of long continuance. The Good Spirit, who was
leading Katie along the paths of righteousness, would not allow her to
turn aside from them because for the moment the way seemed unpleasant
and opposed to her natural inclinations. Unheard by outward ears, but
heard quite plainly in her heart, he whispered words that made the
little girl pause and think a second time before she refused to do as
she was commanded. Here was a good opportunity of being like Christ. He
forgave his enemies. He was kind to the unthankful and the evil. He gave
up his life that those who hated and persecuted and finally killed Him
might be saved. This thought decided her.

"Let me speak a word to Tessa first," she said; "then I'll stay."

She then told her waiting companion how ill Bertie was, and how Mrs.
Sanderson was overwhelmed with so many to see to, and wanted her to
stay and help. She asked Tessa to get tea for the boys and send one of
them for her at bedtime, all of which her friend promised faithfully to
attend to, and went her way.

When Katie returned to the sick-room, Mrs. Sanderson actually thanked
her, and then went off, glad to attend to other responsibilities, and
the young nurse was left with the excited, tossing patient. Strangely to
herself, she did not feel the least anger or bitterness toward her now,
in spite of all her unkindness to herself. The words which had been in a
recent Sunday-school lesson, "I was sick and ye visited _me_," came
again and again to her mind, and it hardly seemed to be Bertie to whom
she was called to minister. She had no experience in sickness, but to
some people nursing is an intuitive gift, and Katie inherited it from
her mother. Her touch was cool and light. She seemed to know by instinct
when the patient needed drink or change of position. She smoothed the
disordered bed, shook up the pillows, turned the cool side uppermost,
closed the open blind through which the western sun was blazing into
the sick girl's eyes, and finding a large newspaper lying on the floor,
made a fan of it, keeping off the flies and creating a current of air,
till by degrees the tossings and cries ceased, the wildly staring eyes
closed, and Bertie fell into a light, though restless, sleep.

Meanwhile, Mr. Sanderson had come home from the bindery, and seemed
surprised to find Katie sitting so quietly by his sick child. He
remonstrated with his wife--in another room--for exposing a stranger to
such danger of infection; but when she asked him what she was to do with
two sick children and three well ones on her hands, and who was to get
the meals for t

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