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.