Katie Robertson

by Margaret E. Winslow

CHAPTER XXIV.

EDUCATIONAL.

With so many interests to fill her leisure hours, as well as such a pleasant and restful home, our little Katie continued to bear the confinement and hard work of the mill better than her friends had expected she would. Though she grew rapidly taller, she did not become either pale or thin. She continued to like her work, and became more and more of a favorite, both with her companions and her employers. The affair of the fifty-dollar bill had been thoroughly explained, and for a time Katie was looked upon quite as a martyr heroine. She was a little in danger of being spoiled by the attention she received, and but for the remembrance of how nearly she had yielded to the temptation to do wrong, her Christian character might have been seriously injured.

Poor Bertie, however, had a hard time of it when she first went back to the mill. Of course, it had been impossible to right her companion without implicating herself, and it was hard for her to meet the significant looks and tones of some of the other girls, who did not believe in the new saintship and did very much despise the old malice and deceit.

Although forgiven for the guilt of her sin, the poor girl had to find that she could not avoid all its punishment. No one can; and though God may forgive us freely for the sake of his dear Son, and give us a new heart or a new purpose of action, we shall still have to suffer many of the consequences of the wrong we have done, and it can never be quite as though we had never sinned, which fact it would be well to remember before we are led into evil.

Many a time the poor girl, quite unaccustomed to control herself, would almost break out into some furious response to an unkind word or implied taunt, and remember just in time that she was pledged to the Lord's service and must not disgrace his cause. A swift, silent prayer for help then would always bring the promised aid of the Holy Spirit, and so by degrees Bertie learned to conquer herself and to lead others to see that her repentance was sincere and her faith genuine. Katie's friendship was a great blessing to her at this time. Katie had entirely forgiven her treacherous friend's part in the affair which had caused her so much sorrow. She remembered only her dangerous illness, and that they were both now fellow-Christians and members of the same church. She was anxious to do all in her power to help Bertie in her struggle against the sins of her heart and the bad habits of her life, and, as is apt to be the case when we forgive and try to help any one, she soon came to love her very much. And this friendship and support served, more than anything else, to reinstate Bertie in the good graces of the other girls.

It was stated some time since that Mrs. Robertson had other plans with reference to her family of girls and boys, which she intended to put in operation when the long winter evenings came. This was the formation of a class for regular study, of at least one or two of the branches which her own children had attended to at school. But these plans were afterward merged in those of the young manufacturer.

The mill-girls, although they had generally had fair common-school advantages before they commenced work, were, of course, from that time totally deprived of them. They knew how to read, write, and "do examples" in the simpler rules of arithmetic. Perhaps this would be quite education enough for those girls who are to pass their lives in factories of the older world. But it is not so in America, where everybody reads and everybody thinks, where no one is stationary, no position permanent—where the operative of to-day is the employer of to-morrow—where many a girl steps from a position of toil and honorable self-support into that of mistress of a mansion, and is called to dispense a hospitality which in other lands would be called princely. In our as yet unsettled mode of existence, education is the one thing needful, because education is the only thing of which the "chances and changes" of life can not strip us—the only thing which will adapt itself gracefully to any position, from the cottage and tenement-room to the presidential chair.

Eunice and James Mountjoy had often talked over the loss of educational advantages to which boys and girls entering the mill at so early an age were of necessity subjected, and this winter they took their youngest sister into confidence. The result was the commencement of a "night school," held, however, from four o'clock till seven. The mill was now only working three-quarters time, so these three hours remained to be filled up, and no one objected to putting off supper an hour for this purpose.

The school-house did double duty—the day scholars departing just as the more advanced classes assembled, and the trustees gladly gave the use of the building for so beneficent a purpose. But it was not to be expected that the poor young overworked teacher could do double duty too. She was, in fact, only a girl, not much in advance of the "night scholars," either in age or acquirements, and well calculated to profit with them by superior advantages. Another hired teacher was not to be thought of, for the school committee were not entrusted with spare funds, and the Mountjoys, who might have furnished a teacher's board and salary upon ordinary occasions, were this winter taxed to the utmost strain their finances would bear.