The dirty old factory! But Say hesitated only a moment. “Yes, I’ll do that if you’ll promise sure.”
“Sure it is!” and Tryphosa held out a dirty brown hand; “but you don’t mean it; you’re only foolin’.”
Say’s mother might have to sew very hard for a living, but it was very different from taking in washing and having a drunken husband to worse than waste the greater part of his own and the others’ earnings. Say was very different from the factory girls. Phosy could see that.
“But I do mean it,” said Say, shaking the soiled hand so heartily Tryphosa actually grinned with delight.
There was a whole suit ready Saturday night. Miss Cox attended to that, and Say was on hand in the afternoon. The girls said it was a shame and pitied her dreadfully, but never once thought of offering to go with her to the “horrid old mill.” And oh, how hateful Tryphosa was! She introduced Say to the mill-girls as “Sister Sainty,” kept them in a roar over her probable exploits in the Sabbath-School line, and held Say in suspense with a dread of impossible accidents.
But she made her appearance, bright and early, Sabbath morning, comparatively quite docile, submitted to be washed, shampooed, braided, and ruffled, with a most martyr-like air, and came out from the process not so very unlike the five other girls, among whom Say seated her, with such a happy look in her own blue eyes. Just to see her sitting there more than repaid the trouble.
“The faith that conquers,” said Miss Marvin, watching the two go away from Sabbath School together, “is the faith that goes right to work, and keeps at it.”
III.
PLAYING “INJUNS.”
“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”