Though she liked to know her friends from every
side of their characters, she was not pleased by this glimpse of Mr.
Metcalf's.

He saw her feeling in her face and took it merrily, dropping at last
into the manner which she knew and liked best.

"A small business, you're thinking, eh? Well, Miss Amy, let me tell you
that on this one deal, this one sale, my gaining that fraction of a cent
means the gaining to my employer of several thousand dollars. And that
is worth contesting, don't you think?"

"It doesn't seem possible. Just that tiny eighth! Why, how many, many
yards you must sell!"

"Indeed, yes. The mills are constantly turning out great quantities and,
fortunately, the market is free. We dispose of them as fast as we can
finish. We could sell more if we could manufacture more. But this is not
what has brought you here, I fancy. Tell me your errand, please. I have
much to get through with before closing."

The return to his business manner again chilled Amy's enthusiasm, but
she thought of her father and what she hoped to do for him, and needed
no other aid to her courage.

"I've come to ask a place in the mill. I want to work and get paid."

"Certainly. If you work, you will be paid. What makes you want to do it?
Does your father know?"

"He has consented. I think he understands, though he didn't seem to care
greatly, either way. I must do it, sir, or something. It was the only
thing I knew about."

"You know nothing about that, really. The girls here are from an
altogether different class than that to which you belong. You would not
find it pleasant."

"That wouldn't matter. And aren't we all Americans? Equal?"

"Theoretically. How much do you suppose you could earn?"

"I don't know. Whatever my work was worth."

"That, at the beginning, would be not more than two dollars a week, and
probably less. It would be fatiguing, constant standing in attending to
your 'jenny.' I really think that you would better abandon the idea at
once. Try to think of something nearer what you have known."

Yet he saw the deepening distress in her face and it grieved him. He was
bound, in all honesty to her, to set the dark side of things before her,
and he waited for her decision with some curiosity.

"If you'll let me try, I would like to do so."

CHAPTER XVI.

AMY BEGINS TO SPIN.

"Well, deary, it's time. Oh, me fathers, to think it! Wake up, Amy, me
colleen, me own precious lamb."

Six o'clock of a