The young operatives—and all that dwelt within the corporation boarding-house walls—began that very night to pick up their effects, and make ready to move into their new quarters. Mrs. French had all she could attend to in preparing for her large family, assigning rooms, and attending to the thousand details of opening the Hall. But before the week was closed, every old boarding-house was closed and the new home full.
Marion Shaw found her time altogether occupied. Her work was to lie directly among the girls, as Villard’s influence was to save the boys and young men. Marion had a gentle and pleasing manner that made friends everywhere she went. She had had a good deal of experience in managing boarding-school girls, and although they are a widely different class from factory girls, human nature—girl-nature, is the same everywhere. Before the week was over, Marion had made friends with many of the girls, and had already interested them in keeping their rooms tidy, in forming a girls’ club, which should embrace all sorts of good ends, and in rousing in them what was of infinite value in the work she had laid out,—a desire to become as near like her and Salome as it was possible for them to be.
“We shall have to endure the cross of having them cut all their dresses like ours, wear ribbons like ours, do up their hair like ours, and get up the most astonishing hats purporting to be like ours,” said she to Salome one night; “but if it all comes of their wanting to be like us,—you understand me, dear,—I mean of their wanting to reach a higher ideal of course,—we can bear it.”
“We shall have to,” was the answer. “The truth of it is, they will be trying to copy our habits and manners and characters, too.”
“Then we shall have to be all the more careful,” said Marion seriously.
Life to Marion Shaw was a serious thing. Although she was but twenty-seven years old, she had come to realize that life may not be for any what the fancy of youth pictures it; and even to realize that the highest good which life can hold is not to be happy. Already she knew that happiness is but a relative term, and that only by ceasing to search and plan for it, can any of us find it even in small degree.
Just now, she walked dangerously near to happiness. On the opening night, Geoffrey Burnham had kept closely at her side all the evening, and after the affair was over, he had walked home with her, while Robert Fales had gone ahead with Salome.
At the door, the two had paused a little, looking at the exquisite, moonlit October night. Suddenly the extraordinary interest Burnham had felt in this young woman had culminated. He seized both her hands in his, and pressed them close to his breast.
“Why have you not come to me before?” he murmured, passionately. “Why have you waited all these years?”
“I was waiting for you,” she answered, with a smile.