Girls in a Factory Valley

A HURRYING, eager population fills the factory towns of one of the river valleys of New England. Changes in the social strata occur constantly. Various religions prevail, and different languages are spoken. New-coming races enter, and jostle the older inhabitants. A certain tendency to fuse into one people is observable, but it is still doubtful what will be the exact character of that people. The men of long American pedigree look on, half amused, half indignant, yet with an optimistic patience and a large amount of faith in the American destiny, as they find themselves possessed of less power and influence than citizens of foreign descent and foreign birth. Perhaps their faith in the nation’s destiny is well founded.

A little while ago I visited a factory family, and I inquired into its nationality. The mother answered in imperfect English, “ I am a Swede, my husband a German.”

Her eight-year-old boy interrupted her with superb self - assertion. “ I am a Yankee,” he said, with uplifted head.

Life is very materialistic in this valley, among both the rich and the poor. The prizes desired and eagerly scrambled for are seldom of a spiritual nature, — a bigger factory, a finer house, a more gorgeous gown, a faster horse, a brighter-colored calico, a newer hat, a larger loaf of bread, a more ample allowance of tobacco, a softer bed. Wherein do these things differ, when the question is as to the soul of man ?

There is a better side. The domestic affections are well esteemed. Fathers plan for their children ; mothers bend over their babies, and now and then, for an instant, the Madonna look creeps into their faces.

Experiences typical of the tenderer side of this life, as well as of its dangers, fill the pages that follow.

I.

Ellen McKay’s father, a night-watchman, long employed by one firm, decided some eight years ago that life with the wife who had borne him nine children was no longer tolerable, and he sought the safe shelter of a boarding - house. For a time he did nothing for his wife, but for two years past he has paid her two dollars a week. He earns nine dollars, and gives Ellen fifty cents weekly, and he paid the same sum to another daughter, Annie, after her health broke down, until her death. He also maintains a life insurance for Ellen’s benefit, which costs him fifty dollars a year. Mrs. McKay keeps house with several of her children. She drinks; and although her circumstances do not make it absolutely necessary, she sometimes goes on a begging expedition. It is a mild statement of the case to say that on these occasions she does not always tell the exact truth. Her oldest son, Joe, and his wife, Maggie, board with her. They both drink. He works in a thread-mill, and the wife works there sometimes. Once in a while Maggie is inspired with a spirit of enterprise, and visits some house in the town, soliciting assistance. She, like her mother-in-law, looks upon a visit of this nature as an opportunity to exercise her imaginative faculties. She has bean married six years, and her babies die at birth or in very early infancy. Other members of the McKay family are two lads, both working, and a ten-year-old girl. When I once asked Mrs. McKay the number of her children, she evidently suspected me of a desire to ascertain how many she had whose wages she could control, and her ability to count her offspring was curiously diminished by her habit of reckoning them merely according to their wage-earning value. She finally admitted the existence of an additional son of about twenty-two. “ He lives in Providence,”she said ; “ I don’t know just where. He would be no good to me if he were here,” — meaning that he would, at best, only pay board ; for he is of age, and would claim his own wages.

The McKays occupy an upstairs tenement in a large white house, whose garret is the abode of a hopeless drunkard and his family. As we climbed the stairs, I noticed that they were clean. We entered a kitchen, and passed through it to a front sitting-room, where Mrs. McKay sat down to entertain my companion and myself. She is a big woman, and has a face whose badness grows more evident the more it is looked at. Both the rooms were clean, and the floors were covered with bits of carpet and home-made rugs.

Maggie, the daughter-in-law, came after us into the sitting-room. She moved with a slow, feeble step, and her face betrayed an undisciplined character stirred by primitive passions. Her eyelids that day were heavy, but handsome, and her dark hair had a luxuriant look in its slovenliness. She went about restlessly from room to room, as if impelled by some inward torment of the flesh or the spirit.

On the little marble - topped centre table in the sitting-room stood a yellow baking-dish filled with green dandelion leaves. I could not decide whether they had been placed there for decorative purposes or were intended for eating at the dinner. I was somehow impressed with the idea that they were there for ornament, for just beyond the marble table was another stand supporting a tiny white coffin, with a candelabrum behind it. Within that coffin lay the body of Maggie’s last infant, aged six days when it died. It looked like a little doll dressed in white, and laid in a toy cradle for some happy child’s amusement.

The baby had been born one Thursday. Annie, Mrs. McKay’s consumptive daughter, had died on the following Sunday, and was buried on Tuesday. The baby had died on Wednesday, and was then, on Thursday morning, awaiting its burial that afternoon. The McKays had passed an eventful week. The two women were perfectly sober that day, and the house was clean for the second funeral. Mrs. McKay is credited with having possessed a great fancy for funerals in her earlier life, and with having spent much money for carriages to go in processions to the cemetery.

I left Mrs. McKay and Maggie with my companion, and went out to talk with Ellen in the pantry. She sat there washing dishes. The pantry was well stocked with china, glass, and tin ware. Indeed, everything about the house showed that the family had not been in such reduced circumstances as to sell their furniture for liquor ; but Ellen explained to me, as I sat with her, that their income was an uncertain one. Maggie’s husband, Joe, omitted to pay his board when he was out of work, or when, as during the last week, he had “ trouble “ which increased his expenses, and he did not make up for the omission afterwards. I did not learn where the money for Annie’s funeral was to come from.

When Ellen was ten years old she was badly burned on the legs because of an accident with a lamp, and she has never walked since. She spoke very quietly of her sister Annie’s death. “ We lost a good friend in her,” she said, but she did not show any passionate grief. I asked her if she liked to read. Yes, she said she did. She read story-books that different girls lent her. She never read anything but story-books. I saw one of them afterwards in the house; its title was Cameron Pride. I have spent several hours since thinking whether it would be possible for anybody to write just the sort of books that it would be best for a girl like Ellen to read. She did not read a great deal, she said. It took her some time to get through a book. She did other things. She did all the family sewing. I learned afterwards that though her legs are so drawn that she cannot use crutches, she does manage to get one foot on the treadle when seated before a sewing-machine, so that she can run it.

“ You’re a very useful girl,” I ventured to say, hoping to please her. And then I added, “ You have a brother in Providence. Is he married ?”

“I don’t know,” she answered.

“ You don’t know ? ” I exclaimed in surprised reply. “ Why, are you on good terms with him ? Does he come here? ”

“ Oh yes, he comes here often. He’s been here this last week. He came Saturday, and when he saw Annie was so sick he stayed till Tuesday night. He told me a while ago he was married, an’ then again he says he is n’t. I don’t know when he ’s foolin’. I ’ve never seen his wife. He’s keepin’ company with a young lady, but I don’t think he’s got married.”

She said he was a jeweler, but she was not sure where he worked. The whole relation to this brother, as she and her mother betrayed it, seemed to betoken that lack of confidential family intimacy which is a melancholy element in the lives of many persons belonging to that class which forms the doubtful layer between the vicious and the criminal.

I asked her if she ever went outdoors.

“ Oh no,” she said pleasantly. “ Sometimes, when it’s very hot, I get downstairs to the back door. I’ve never seen the town. I wish I could see what Main Street is like. I was only ten years old when I was burned, and I ’d hardly ever been down street before that time. Mother would n’t let us go out alone, an’ she was always working, an’ could n’t go with us.”

I asked her if she could go to drive if I came for her with a carriage.

“ I have n’t any clothes of my own,” she said, as her mind evidently turned to hats and jackets, 舠 but I could wear my sister’s things.”

Mrs. McKay showed no especial interest when I told her that I was coming to take her crippled daughter out, though she said readily enough that she would get her ready. But Maggie looked up from her seat by the baby’s coffin, and spoke in a soft, pleasantly modulated voice : “ It would be a real blessing if you would come and take Ellen to drive. She’s young, and she has no pleasures. She ’s always just as patient and uncomplaining as you see her. I don’t see how she bears her life.”

When, on May-day, I went for Ellen, I found her on the floor sweeping. She was literally on the floor, and she looked very little, for her legs were bent under her in a pitiful fashion; and when she moved, she put her hands down one at each side, and in some way slid around, keeping her person erect from the waist. It was sad and strange enough to see her use a big broom, the handle rising much above her head.

At first Ellen seemed startled by the proposition to prepare to go immediately to drive. She felt as if she could not do it. She said afterwards that she did not know it would be so easy to be lifted into the carriage. Maggie helped her with her preparations. The mother contented herself with finding a hat and making an ineffectual search for gloves. She tried to get me alone, saying that she wished to have a talk with me ; but I suspected her motives, and gave her no opportunity to beg of me in private. I fancied that she was slightly under the influence of liquor. Ellen, however, appeared to have the natural childlike sentiment towards her mother. When she was dressed for her little journey, she went down the stairs sliding from step to step, and the driver took her in his arms and placed her in the open phaeton. Mrs. McKay followed us to the door. Ellen clambered upon the carriage-seat.

“ Good-by ! ” called the girl, with a little thrill in her voice ; and then “ Goodby ! ” once more ; and finally, “ Good-by, mother,” she said, “for a little while,— for the first time in thirteen years.”

It was a shabby little town through which we drove, but in it Ellen saw the kingdoms of this world and the glory thereof. She did not talk much, but she recognized the names of many places as names she had heard, — of streets, shops, graveyards, factories, the convent, the Catholic church and other churches. It was as much of an experience to us who took her as it was to her to be taken out into the world, — she a girl twenty-three years old, who had never seen a pretty lawn, a large shop window, or the main street of a town since she was a little child.

She was quick at catching the meaning of things, though she said, “ I saw a thousand things I never saw at home.”

“ I does be afraid of the electric cars,” she murmured as the horses approached one ; but she was soon reassured, and gave herself up to quiet enjoyment.

“ Are you happy ? ” I asked.

“Does this make me happy? Oh yes.”

“ What do you think about when you are at home ? ” I inquired.

“ I don’t think,” she answered. “ It’s just like being dead.”

Afterwards she admitted that she spent a great deal of time wondering how it would be if she could go out from the house; but she knew that she could not, and so she was generally contented. She wanted to see the river, and we drove over many bridges and let her look up and down the stream ; and when she caught a glimpse of some little steamboats, she said, “I used to think they were like houses.” She admired the dolls dressed up in the shop windows to display clothing and millinery, and thought them so “ natural ” and “ handsome ; ” and she liked, though maybe not quite so well, the beauty of one or two magnolia-trees which were in full bloom, and the glowing color of some red bushes seen in the distance up the river.

“ I don’t know how to thank you for your kindness,” she said gently, as she found we were finally returning to the tenement house which she called home.

It seemed cruel to take her back. The driver lifted her with added tenderness out of the carriage, and insisted on carrying her up the outer steps into the house. She stopped on the entry staircase, and sat there facing us as we prepared to go. Her dreadful mother stood in the door repeating her maudlin request to me : “ I wan’ ter see yer, I wan’ ter see yer myself.”

Ellen called out good-by and waved a timid farewell from the stairs, and I scarcely noted the mother’s horrible face or voice, for the girl’s eyes were shining as I think I never saw any other human eyes shine.

II.

One October afternoon a girl called to see me ; and when I entered the sittingroom, she seemed perfectly at ease in a big armchair. She was about sixteen years old, noticeably clad in a red frock trimmed with black braid, a neat gray jacket, and a black and red hat. She had a pleasant, bright face, and she talked easily and agreeably, and tried to make me recall her, but I did not remember her. She told me that her name was Etta Burns, and that her family had once lived in this town. The strike that was pending in the town where she now lived had thrown the factory people out of work. She thought it would have been better for them to take the “ cutdown ” rather than quit their work. She speculated a little upon the loss per week that each operative would suffer under the reduction, and showed a general knowledge of mill work and wages, combined with some ignorance of arithmetic. Unable to get anything to do at home while the strike lasted, she had come, she said, two weeks before, to a factory village a mile farther up the valley than the town where I live. While seeking employment, she had been staying there with a woman whom she knew, who had not charged her board. “ But,” she declared, “ of course I must send her something after I get work. You can’t take so much from a person and pay nothing.”

On the day before, she proceeded to explain, a man had spread the tidings that work could now be had in the town where the strike had been, if the mill fugitives came back. Everybody was going back. She wanted to return, but she had no money, and she was trying to sell a leather music-roll for any sum that would enable her to go immediately home. She had taken music lessons, she said, when her family were in a more prosperous condition. I was familiar with the fact that girls in factory families often do take music lessons.

“If I give you a dollar for this roll, what will you do ? ”

“ Go right home on the four o’clock train,” she answered. It was then half past two.

“ Won’t you have to go back to the village, where your things are, first ? ”

“ No,” she replied promptly. “ I came away meaning to go right on if I sold the roll.”

“You must have clothes to take,” I insinuated.

She gave a frank, triumphant smile, as though at that moment she felt, like Thoreau, that earthly possessions would be a burden to her free spirit. She made a pretty little gesture as if she wished to reveal herself entirely to me. “ I ’ve got nothing,” she said, “but what I ’m wearing.”

I gave her the dollar and an addressed postal card, which she promised to post to me when she reached home. As she turned to leave the house, I saw that her short golden hair had been artificially curled. I followed her to the door with the conscience-prompted advice, “ Now go home to your mother. That’s where a girl like you should be.”

“ That’s so,” she said readily.

I watched her from the window, and saw her walk away with a steady, swift step. Her gown was not quite long enough to proclaim her a full-grown woman. I thought of certain well guarded, tenderly trained girls whom I knew, and the contrast between her lot and theirs struck me painfully.

At a little after five o’clock, the same afternoon, I was walking on the main street in the town, and I met a young woman. We passed each other quickly ; then I wheeled about and laid a detaining touch on her shoulder. She stared blankly at me, but still I had courage to say, “ You are the girl who came to my house this afternoon.”

“ No,” she declared, “I’m not.”

I looked at her dress. I looked at her yellow frizzled hair. “Yes,” I said, “you are the girl.”

“No, I never saw you before,” she said.

“ You are the one,” I reiterated.

She smiled suddenly. “ Why, yes! ” she cried. “I did n’t know you.”

“You were deceiving me,” I said; “you did n’t go home.”

“ I found,” she answered, “ there was n’t any four o’clock train. There’s one about eight. I did n’t know you at all,” she added in a confident, winning sort of way,

“ You have been spending the money I gave you,” I remarked, noticing a small package in her hand.

“ No, I have n’t,” she replied, and she calmly showed me the dollar bill tucked into her jacket pocket, and also held up to my sight the postal card, which she had rolled in one hand. “ There,” she said, “ I would n’t have kept this, if I had been deceiving you.”

These proofs of an unaltered determination to go home appeared to deserve consideration, but I still had suspicion that there were features in the case meriting investigation. My eyes fell again on the package that she carried.

“ What have you there ? ” I asked, without stopping to reflect whether she had not an inalienable right to refuse to tell me.

The girl spared me any suggestion that I was impertinent, and instantly showed me two photographs. I gazed at them, half bewildered, perceiving, without really thinking about it, that while the pictures were not distinctly bad, they still were not such as I should like to see in the possession of the carefully guarded, tenderly trained girls whom this child had called to my mind. Etta wrapped up the photographs again, and said, confusing the details of her story somewhat, that a man whom she knew slightly had just met her on the street, had given her the pictures, and had asked her to take them to a girl in another part of the town. I told her that she must go at once with me to the railroad station and let me inquire about the train she intended to take. She asked if she might not go first to carry the photographs. I hesitated to permit her. She seemed to feel that I had some kind of power over her, — a matter concerning which I should have been in much doubt myself, had it occurred to her to question it, — for, as I hesitated, she said in her sweet voice, and with the politeness which characterized her manner, “You can go with me. It isn’t far.”

So I went. We passed through various streets, and I wondered why she was so willing that I should go with her, and whether she would slip away from me when she reached the house, and even whether there was any particular house that she was trying to find. It grew dark, and Etta looked here and there along the streets, and began to murmur incoherent remarks about the direction in which she was going. I had concluded that she did not know where to take me nor how to get rid either of me or of the photographs, when she announced happily that we had come to the right street; and in a moment more she said, “ This is the house. Wait here for me.”

“ Will you come out? ” I asked.

“ Oh yes,” she answered, still well mannered and good natured, “ I ’ll come out. “ She skipped up the stone steps and along a narrow paved passageway between the house and a fence. I followed, and heard a lively greeting as she went into the house and upstairs. An inside door shut as I came where I could see into the lower entry, but not before I had had a glimpse into a lighted interior which showed unmistakably that this was a tenement house occupied by families. I heard Etta’s voice saying with pleasant honesty, There’s a lady waiting for me.”In a moment more she came out with a girl whose face I could not clearly see in the evening light, but who had a pretty head and figure. She held the package of photographs. Both girls met me with an innocent and confiding air, as if I had been their kinswoman.

“ May I stay to supper?” asked Etta.

“ May she stay ? ” pleaded the other girl.

The situation threatened to become absurd, but since they were inclined to recognize me as in authority, I began to ask their plans. Etta assured me that Florence, as she called her companion, would go with her to the railroad station after supper. I turned to Florence, and asked, “ Where and when did you know this girl ? ”

“ About six weeks ago ; she worked with me in a store.”

“ I worked there two days,” admitted Etta.

“Six weeks ago ! ” I repeated. “ You said that you came from B舒only two weeks ago.”

She sputtered out some explanation that only half explained. I remembered her statement that she had brought no clothes from the town of B舒except those she had on, and I asked Florence to identify her gown. Yes, she said, she thought it was the one the girl had worn when working at the store. As for extra underclothing, the need for which grew more apparent as the time of her admitted absence from home increased, she declared that she did bring two suits with her, and that she had them both on at that moment.

Uncertain what to do, I changed the point of attack, and turned to Florence, telling her that the photographs were not such as a girl would do well to receive from a young man. I tried to make the suggestion with all tenderness, but it was hardly strange that at this moment Etta’s patience with my interference in her affairs suddenly failed. She began to speak in a harsh, violent, jeering tone.

“ You did n’t believe I was me ! ’ she cried, facing me like an animal at bay, “ Now own up, you thought I was lying.”

“ I hoped you were telling me the truth,” I said, rather feebly. “ I wanted to do by you what I should want some one to do by my child.”

This sentiment softened her into an admission that she knew I had meant to be kind. From the time that Etta grew violent Florence showed signs of uneasiness, saying that she must go in, and now she left us abruptly. Etta did not seem to attach any significance to her departure, and went on storming at me.

“ You did n’t believe I was Etta Burns. Now you see there are people who know Etta Burns.”

Florence came suddenly back, and broke out angrily. “ My mother,” she said, “ won’t let me keep the photographs, an’ I don’t want them.” Then to Etta she continued tempestuously : “ Take ’em yourself. An’ my mother don’t want you to come to the house any more, an’ she says I mustn’t go with you.”

“Tear up the photographs,” I suggested.

“ No, I won’t have nothin’ to do with them ! ” cried Florence, and she stuck them between the palings of the fence.

Etta calmly picked them up. She had grown quiet when Florence cast off her friendship. “ I’m going in to see your mother,” she said, and she dauntlessly marched into the house.

Florence remained with me in the doorway, complaining incoherently, as if some injury had been done her; and now I observed that she spoke of Etta as “ Della.”

“ I don’t want Della coming here,” she whimpered. “ I don’t know her.

I ’ve only just seen her. I don’t want such a fuss at the house.”

I had not collected my thoughts at all, when Etta again came downstairs, and she and I stepped into the passage.

“ I’m ready to go,” was all she said. It was evident that she had been vanquished in the desperate raid she had made upstairs into the enemy’s country.

“ Now come with me to the railroad station,” I bade her; and without further words we went down into the street.

She walked submissively beside me.

I was wondering how I could most easily get her supper, when she broke the silence. “ I ’ll tell you the truth,” she said, calling me for the first time by my name, and with a perceptible quiver in her young voice. “ I live in the next village, not in the town where I told you I lived, and I ’ll give you the street and number, and my name is Della Mahone ; and I ’ll give you back your dollar. I told you that story because I thought you’d be more likely to buy my musicroll. I wanted the money to help my mother. She’s a good woman. My father don’t do much but drink. I did n’t like to tell you the truth.”

“ Did n’t you think I’d be as willing to help a girl who lives near by as one who lives farther off ? ” I asked.

“ No,” she answered. “ I ’d tried to sell the roll before, and I could n’t.” She took the dollar bill out of her pocket and handed it to me. “ I guess you’d better take this now,” she said.

It seemed to me that it might be encouraging fraud and falsehood to refuse the money, and I took the detestable bill, feeling a little as if I were myself doing something rather disreputable. We pursued our way in the direction of the village where she now claimed residence. She murmured occasional short sentences in a soft, troubled tone. Sometimes they were spontaneous utterances of her own agitation ; sometimes they were in answer to questions or remarks of mine.

“ I’ve told you an awful lot of lies. I’ve got a cousin named Etta Burns.

She lives in B舒, where the strike is.

I knew about the strike from her letters. Oh, I don’t mind about the lies I ’ve told. It’s those photographs I care about. I ’ve been such a fool. That’s always the way with me. I always do what people ask me to. That’s how I get into trouble. I never thought any harm when he asked me to take them to her. I ’ll send them back to him by mail. Oh, I don’t know his name ! I’ll go to-morrow and find his sister, and tell her to give them to him and tell him he can do his own errands after this. Yes,

I know his sister. I was standing with her a week ago, and she said, ‘ Oh, my brother’s got some photographs,’ and he came along and asked me to take them to Florence. I did n’t look at them then.

I took them home, and just looked at them once before I showed them to you.

I never thought of there being any harm in them. Yes, I see now. I ’ll never do anything anybody asks me to again.”

She said several times that she wished me to come and see her, and finally gave me minute instructions how to find the house where she lived, in the new part of the village, near a famous old oak-tree.

“ You can’t miss it,” she added. “ My father’s name is Jim. Just go along the alley and ask for Della Murray.”

“ Della Murray ! ” I repeated. “ What is your name ? ”

“ That’s it,” she declared.

舠 Is it ? I inquired. 舠 Then why did you tell me your name was Della Mahone ? ”

She was silent a moment, then answered helplessly, “ I was rather nervous when I came out of that house.” After a while she asked gently, “ Don’t you believe me ? ”

I mildly represented to her that in the course of the last hour or two she had herself placed several obstacles in the way of my putting absolute faith in her statements.

舠 I know,” she meekly admitted. “ I would n’t believe me if I were in your place. But I ’m telling the truth now. I ’m Della Murray.”

She was rather subdued and quiet after this. She showed an amiable solicitude that I should not stumble over some roughness in our path, and once she said humbly, 舠 I hope you ’ll forgive me,” and again, more childishly, “ I hope you are n’t mad with me.”

We reached my home at last. She waited inside the door while I got the music-roll, which I gave her. She looked quite pretty as she stood there. I asked her if she wanted supper before she went on.

“ No,” she said, “ I could n’t eat.”

I urged her to go straight home, and promised to go to see her soon.

“ I hope you will,” she answered in a bright, sweet way, and more cheerfully than she had spoken since she gave me the third name. Then she went out into the darkness, leaving me perplexed at the impotence of one human being to save the soul of another.

Two days later, on a beautiful Sunday morning, I drove to the row of tenement houses near the battered old oak, where she had said she lived. I could learn of nobody named Murray in that neighborhood, but some children told me of a girl living in a different part of the village, who wore a red gown and a black-andred-hat, a girl whose hair was short, and who had lately bleached it yellow, and her name, they said, was Della Mahone.

III.

Margaret Lombard became a pauper through the fault of others. She was a small, round-faced French Canadian woman, who was scarcely able to speak a word of English. Her husband deserted her. She had a willful old father, a fat, dark-skinned man of the peasant type, a man who looked as if he united the passions of an animal to the stolidity of a granite boulder. He had considerable property, but he declined to support his daughter unless she promised not to live with her husband again if he returned. She refused to make such a promise, and went to the state almshouse to be confined.

She had two children, a boy and a girl, when she entered the almshouse. They were taken from her for their good, and placed in the state school, an institution designed for the care of children who for any reason involving no offense of their own become the wards of the State. The poor young mother was thus left to wait alone, deserted by her husband, cast off by her father, deprived of her children, till another baby should be born.

The baby came, lived a year with its mother in the almshouse, and died. Then she went out again into the world, worked in the mill, and struggled on till she felt justified in trying to get her children. She obtained the boy with comparative ease, as he was still an inmate of the state school. But the little girl, Ada, had been “ bound out ” from the school when she was only five or six years old. There was a most conscientious board in charge of the school, and they had placed Ada in an excellent family, where the “ binding out ” was equivalent in effect, but not in form, to an adoption. The lady with whom she lived treated and loved her as if she were her own, and certainly gave her a home which promised a far more desirable future for her than any which her own mother could provide in her tenement life in a factory town. Margaret was told that the child had been given away from the school, but she refused to be contented with the assurance that it was in good hands. She went to her priest. She went to her father, and either his affection or his pride was roused. He announced his determination to spend his money, if necessary, to get back his grandchild. The French Canadians of the district were moved to some indignation on behalf of the mother. There appeared to be danger lest the matter should creep into politics.

When Ada herself was told that the other mother, whom she barely remembered, wanted her, she said to her adoptive parent, “ You tell her that Ada Lombard is dead, and it’s Ada A舒you’ve got.”

Several persons went to Margaret to urge her to relinquish the child voluntarily. “ It will be better for Ada to stay where she is,” said one.

She looked sadly back, with the helpless smile and the soft cowlike eyes of the French Canadian, and could only answer, “Yes, I know, but s’e my li’l’ girl. Ze feelin’ is here,” touching her breast. “ I wants my chile.”

The visitor grew dumb before the force of this unintelligent maternal impulse. Of course, Margaret, although site said “ I know ” so meekly, did not fully realize how much less desirable her home was than the one from which Ada was to be taken. It was, moreover, both touching and suggestive that in spite of her troubles the loving little Canadian mother had not found her tenement and factory life so hard to bear, or even her existence as a deserted wife so painful, as to make her shrink from bringing her daughter into a condition where she must take the chance of having no better fate. The mother also had the absolute justification to herself for her course implied in the fact that her religion was different from that held by the woman who had adopted her child. There was a legal flaw in the title by which the state school held Ada, and the Board could not carry out its contract with the woman to whom they had bound the child.

Ada therefore came back to her own mother. She was an extremely attractive little creature, eight years old, — a child to fondle and caress. She wore her hair in a long curly mass. Her clothes were neat and pretty. No woman, were she either a real or an adoptive mother, could have willingly renounced her to another. The old French grandfather sat and smoked in Margaret’s kitchen, and looked admiringly at the pretty child. He could not talk with her, for she did not speak French. The mother tried to devise amusement for her, and Ada sat happily in a visitor’s lap and prattled of the shop windows she had seen in a walk. Nevertheless, she longed for the other mother whom she had left, and wanted to return to her. Whether it troubled her or not, Margaret did not attempt to deny that Ada was homesick.

Time passed, and once when I went to see the family I found Ada alone. She had to “ keep house ” all through the long hours that she was out of school and her mother was in the mill, — “ keep house ” or play in the street. On this particular day she was perched on a chair by the open window. She was well enough clad, but she did not look as daintily cared for as when she first came. As she sat there, I saw her throw back her curly head indignantly, when a man, passing outside, a man who lived upstairs in the same house, addressed her with a familiarity which may have been innocent enough, but which still reminded one that this beautiful child might be much exposed every day while the mother was in the mill. I asked her how she felt about her former home.

“ I did want to go back at first,” she said, “ but now I love my own mamma best.”

Some months later, word was brought that two little children, each engaged in eating a big piece of molasses candy, had appeared at my door. They were Ada and her brother, who was younger than she. We entertained them for a while, and guarded the furniture from their sticky fingers, after which I walked home with them.

Margaret had moved into another part of the town, where an aunt who lived near by could look after the children a little during mill hours. The little Canadian occupied the lower floor of a tenement house which appeared to have no cellar. The rooms were bare, but cleanly kept, and at night the mother and the two children slept in one bed.

While I was there, Ada demanded permission to go out and play, and the mother gave her many admonitions about coming in again soon, mixed with general warnings against running about the streets. The little girl laughed in response and sputtered back with a bright, sweet impertinence, as though this was a nagging discipline to which she was well used, and whose value she esteemed at a very low figure. The mother smiled fondly, but somewhat helplessly, at the charming face, and I felt that the child’s would soon be the dominant spirit. This was my last knowledge of them, and the memory of the pretty little figure dancing that Sunday gleefully before the mother’s adoring eyes, offers no sure clue to the problem of the maiden’s future.

IV.

Elsie Kearney was a girl whose life had passed through the crucible of some institutional home for children. When she was not quite sixteen years of age her little individual fate became complicated in the great issues of financial distress in which the whole nation was involved, and all her past seemed to throw its force into an effort to wreck her present and threaten her future. At this time she was so fortunate as to secure the friendship of Miss W., a young lady whose better position in society and more sheltered existence had happily served to render her the more sympathetic with girls who had no shelter.

To her Elsie told her story. She and her sister lost their mother when they were little more than babies, and their father, with that fine contempt for parental responsibilities which seems to be largely a masculine prerogative, vanished calmly from the scene of his former life. Elsie said very little about him, but it was evident, when she spoke of it, that his desertion had made her feel very bitterly towards his memory.

The two little sisters were placed in a home for children, and in due time were both given out to families. Whether Elsie was bound to the Mr. and Mrs. Kearney who took her, or was legally adopted by them, I cannot say, but they gave her their name. She lived with them for several years. Mr. Kearney was a not very successful wage-earner, a man who drove wagons or did other work of a similar grade. Mrs. Kearney was rather self-indulgent and inefficient, and at times the household became indebted to charitable relief for its comforts.

Elsie was put to work in the mill when very young, and she had to do a great deal of housework in addition to her labors in the factory. She washed for the family in the morning before going to work in the mill, — mill-hours begin at half past six or seven, — and she ironed in the evening after her return.

When she was fifteen the child rebelled, and, leaving the home, went to live with some cousins in a neighboring city. The Kearneys took no legal steps to force her to come back, but they made idle speeches, and carelessly tossed about damaging insinuations that Elsie had fled to some evil resort.

Elsie’s cousins were so poor that she could not stay long with them, and she returned to the town she had left, to find herself, as a consequence of this unkind gossip, under a cloud of suspicion, while she was still so young that, had her lot been differently cast, she would hardly have known there was any such wrong as that of which she was suspected, in a world which would then probably have seemed to her made up mostly of nurseries for children and Sunday-school rooms.

The tears came into her beautiful blue eyes as she told Miss W. of this trouble which had befallen her.

“It’s an awful thing,” she said, “for a respectable girl to bear.”

She took refuge with a kindly woman who could not afford to give her board, but who readily agreed to accept no recompense until the girl got to earning money. Day by day Elsie haunted the mills, and day by day she turned away from them heartsick because not one of them had any place for her within its walls.

Mrs. Kearney heard that Elsie was back in the town, and went to tell her that if she got work in the mill she should hold to the old legal bond, and claim and take her wages.

Poor Elsie’s clothes were all black, and once Miss W. asked her if she was wearing mourning. Then the poor little thing confessed to the bit of childish sentimentality which had led her for years past, whenever she got anything to wear, to get only black garments.

“ I felt so alone in the world,” she said, “ I felt as if I ought to wear black. I have n’t anybody belonging to me. If I only had some one person, it would be so different ! ”

Elsie’s sister, all this while, was living not many miles away. The choice of a home for her when she was put out from the asylum had been more wisely made than in Elsie’s case. She had been given to people who loved and cherished her as a child should be loved. They had taken her for their own, and secured her a comfortable and happy existence. They did not desire her to continue relations with persons with whom they had no connection. Elsie had seen her only once in five years.

“It is quite right,” she said, but still she felt the more bereaved because of this separation from her sister.

Elsie did not want to work in the mill. She preferred to do housework in some nice family, and at last—for even experiences pitiful as hers had been do not always end in utter tragedy — she heard of a place she could have, and came hopefully to Miss W. to tell her that the lady had a kind face, and that, best of all, she had a little child, so the girl felt sure there would be something bright and sweet in the life to which she was going.

V.

The house was in a part of the valley somewhat unfamiliar to me. It was a high, square box with windows that looked like black holes. I entered, climbed two or three staircases that led through entries with board partitions, and finally made my way into a large kitchen lighted by two sunny windows. The sunshine was the only cheerful thing there. On a hard, narrow cot placed against the wall lay a seventeen-year-old girl covered with dirty bedclothes. Her nightgown was dirty. She owned but one, so perhaps it would be unfair to blame anybody for its condition, but her hands and wrists and face were dirty. She looked old, as persons in the last stages of consumption are likely to look, however few may be their years. She had probably once been pretty. Her features were delicate, and over her forehead waved loose hair of golden brown. Its color was still bright. She hardly understood that bathing might relieve her sufferings, but gratefully accepted the comfort it brought when tried. She needed nourishment, too. Some one had sent her custard, which stood in a cup on the table. Black cinders and dust had fallen in and floated on the top, but her aunt fed her from it unhesitatingly, and omitted to wipe her lips afterwards.

She was in the care of two aunts, small, round-faced, white-haired, middleaged creatures. To call them women would seem to confer on them a dignity beyond their deserts. They were not only dwarfish in stature, but distinctly elfish in character, and were apparently incapable of sustained mental effort or intelligent purpose, though they had undoubtedly a kind of interest, not wholly selfish, in the three children of their brother who had fallen to their care. Annie was the eldest of these. Her aunts showed fitful impulses of kindness towards her. They simply did not know and could not be made to know that she ought to be properly fed and bathed. They were not degraded or brutish, but they seemed like beings apart from those upon whom has been laid the burden of either mental or moral responsibility.

They did manifest a slight consciousness of the relation of cause and effect when they told how Annie had had to walk a mile or two on cold winter mornings to the mill where she worked, and the exposure had been bad for her ; but I doubt if they suspected that if they had drank less beer, and had worked more themselves, either in the house or out of it, to procure her better food and warmer clothes, she might perhaps not have been brought thus pitifully to her deathbed, with life’s morn yet golden in her hair.

These diminutive women were beerdrinkers ; I do not know that they were guilty of other vices. A few years before this time they had lived in my own village, and the moment I opened the door, on my second visit, they began hopping before me, uttering wild little cries in a sort of elfish glee at having found out who I was ; calling me, as the factory folk had been wont to call me before my marriage, by my Christian name preceded by a courteous title. Their excitement and the use of the old name almost bewildered me. For a moment it seemed as if their eerie salutations summoned me to partake with them some odd communion, growing out of an old association of their lives with mine, — the association of a common village life.

In one of my later visits, Annie lay so still that I was deluded into thinking she did not hear what was said. I was undeceived with a shock. Her aunts peered at her and commented on her appearance, and told me they had thought her dying a night or two before, and assured me that she certainly would die very soon. As they gabbled on I looked at her, and to my surprise saw tears flowing down her cheeks.

“ Why, she hears what you are saying,” I whispered in dismay.

“ Oh yes, she hears every word,” they cheerfully admitted, as though they were rather proud of her ability.

“ You must not talk that way, then,” I said. “ You must not let her hear you say she is dying.”

I drew one of the women aside. I explained ; I entreated that they should not chatter about death before the child.

“ Oh no, we will not, — we never do,” replied this human elf ; and then she and her sister went on talking as before about how ill Annie was and how soon the girl would die, and they did not appear to know that they were doing what one of them had said they never did and never would do.

Thank Heaven, it was not long before this poor, neglected child did die ; and when I saw her body laid out for burial, it struck me as both strange and pitiful that it was all clean and covered with a spotless white garment.

Lillie B. Chace Wyman.