"'I am the Captain of my Soul,
I am the Master of my Fate,'"
I quoted.
"Yes, you are; but I am not," she replied simply, and turned and looked at me with her hopeless eyes.
Poor, unfortunate Eunice! That night, as we walked home together, she revealed a little more about herself by telling me that she had recently been discharged from the hospital on "the Island." I did not need to inquire the nature of the illness that had left her face so white and drawn. Brief as my experience had been among the humble inmates of the "home," I had learned the expediency of not being too solicitous regarding the precise facts of such cases.
The next day was Saturday, and still no Bessie. As we worked we speculated as to her absence, and decided to spend the afternoon looking her up. Meanwhile, although I had been managing to do my work a little better each day, Eunice had not been succeeding so well. Her apathy had been increasing daily, until she had lost any interest she might ever have had in trying to do her work well. On this morning the forewoman was obliged to give her repeated and sharp reproofs for soiling her materials and for dawdling over her work.
"You seem to like to work," Eunice said once, breaking a long silence.
"Not any better than you do, only I've got to, and I try to make the best of it."
"Yes, you do. You like to work, and I don't, and that's the difference between us. And it's all the difference in the world, too. If I liked work for its own sake, like you do, there'd be some hope for me living things down."
"I wonder," she whispered, again breaking a long silence—"I wonder if Bessie had any man after her."