A little while ago a girl—a lucky girl—had a "find," a bright silver quarter. Her good luck had been whispered up and down the row, but no one betrayed her fortune. When the overseer came through the room, no exultant look nor envious glance suggested anything unusual, for this band of "rag-pickers" had its honor, which it held to as closely as the most compact trades-union in the land.
To some of the girls the thought sometimes came, "Is what we find really ours?" but long generations of workers in the mill had appropriated these "finds," and it had become a custom if not a right.
To-day Nance, at the head of the table, felt a keener longing than usual to secure something. She had never felt the utter dreariness of her loneliness and poverty so strongly as she had in the last bright Christmas season, which had been to her only a vision; not the sweet reality that it becomes to us, who bring it close to us in happy anticipation weeks before it really comes, who live in its light and peace and cheer, in its sweet givings and receivings, and keep its memory with us throughout the year.
For a whole year Nance had been at work in the mill, and had had nothing but her regular five-cent salary. Now her long nervous fingers ran rapidly through the pieces, making four divisions, as she called; "Linen, cotton, woollen, silk—linen, cotton, woollen, silk," and the different bits dropped into their proper piles like falling leaves; while the girl on her right took the cottons, and assorted them, and the girl on her left went through the woollens in the same way, and a girl further on took the silks.
A stranger was always amused to watch the long rows of quiet bodies, nimble fingers, and moving lips, and to hear the half-whispered counting and calling of colors as they divided the pieces.
To-day Nance had a bag to pick from. Here lay her chance. The girls who took the rags from the bags were the most apt to find treasures, and their turn came only once a month.
She was fast nearing the bottom of the last bag. Every time she thrust her hand in, her heart beat fast, and she thought, "Shall I keep it, if I find anything?"
Once more, and her hand touches something cold; her fingers close round it, and she draws it out. Her head swims, she clutches the table with her other hand to keep from falling—perhaps, after all, it is only a button. She collects herself, and peeps slyly into her hand.
A gold thimble!
No one has seen it, no one knows, and Nance slips it into her pocket, and goes on with her work; but somehow it doesn't run smoothly. It is "Silk, cotton, woollen, linen," and then "Cotton, woollen, linen, silk," and the girls find fault because the piles are "mixed," and then the bell rings, and they are free for to-day.