"Well, I'm not quite so sure of that," replied Minnie, shaking her head wisely. "Perhaps it has been there a long while, and only required some one to tap it out."
"Well, well," returned Mr. Kimberly with an amused expression, "as you have been so clever as to tap this one out, who knows how many more you may tap out before long, so go on and prosper, and remember if you run short of funds you may draw on me, because I should like to see my work-people in a better condition, though I haven't time to attend to it myself, and they wont. They don't seem to see the good of spending money on anything but drink, and that is how it is, though they have good houses and fair pay, they are always dirty and miserable and discontented." And a weary look took the place of his former amused one, as he turned again to the heap of papers on his desk.
Minnie saw that he was busy, and though she would have liked to stay and cheer him up, she thought it better to retire, her request being granted.
"He sees I am in earnest, anyhow," she observed to herself as she closed the door softly behind her, "and he sees too that we are doing something. Oh, I will be so glad if I can do anything to make it easier for him. These people try him so—I suppose they have been threatening another strike." And she went to bed, her head full of plans for getting further into the hearts of these rough miners, and drawing them to better things.
CHAPTER V.
AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR.
Meanwhile, Mona Cameron, who had no such philanthropic schemes to occupy her energies, was no less busy with schemes of an altogether different character. She was thoroughly roused by this time, by Minnie's utter impregnability to all established methods of provocation, so that she found herself obliged to invent new ones, which up to this time had been attended with no better success.
She was not naturally malicious, nor did it afford her any sort of pleasure to rouse and anger Minnie as she so often did, neither did she dislike the girl herself; but circumstances had been too much for her in the beginning, and her nature was such that now it seemed to her almost impossible to change her policy and adopt any other line of conduct. She sometimes rebelled against the rivalry which, she considered, stood between them and any possibility of friendship, but was still firm in her belief, that it was a difficulty which could not be bridged, and the subject had not hitherto been considered by Minnie at all; she simply accepted it, as she did most other things, as it stood, and it had not yet occurred to her that it could or should be changed.