Katie Robertson

by Margaret E. Winslow

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.