same
machine. There'll be another girl on your side till you learn; then
she'll be taken off and we'll be alone. I'll like that. Shall you?"

"I--think--so," responded Amy, absently, her attention now engrossed by
the excitement about her. Girls were hurrying to take their places
before the long frames filled with reels, on which fine woollen threads
were being wound by the revolutions of the machinery overhead. These
reels whirled round so rapidly that Amy could not follow their motion,
and the buzz-buzz, as of a thousand bees humming, filled her ears and
confused the instructions of the girl who was to give her her first
lesson in winding and "tending."

Across the great frame Mary nodded encouragingly, but it is safe to say
that Amy had never felt so incompetent and foolish as she did while she
was striving to understand what was expected of her.

"No, no, no; you must be quicker. See, this spool is full. This is how.
'Doffer,' here!"

The lad who had created the ripple of admiration on his passage to this
room, now approached. His motions were exact and incredibly swift. It
was his duty to remove full spools and replace them by empty ones, and
he did this duty for sixteen spinning frames. Seeing the "new hand's"
astonishment at his deftness he became reckless and, intending an
unusually dexterous movement, miscalculated his reach, and the result
was a momentary tangle among the whirling spindles.

"Stupid, see what you're at!" cried Amy's instructor, as by a swift
movement of her foot she brought the rapidly circling frame to a
standstill. "Now, you've done it!"

"And I'll undo it," he returned, casting a side glance at the stranger.

"If those who've worked here so long make mistakes, I'll not give up,"
she thought; and Mary came round from behind the frame in time to read
this thought.

"Don't you mind. You see, we have to be on guard all the time. If we're
not, something happens like this. Wait. While they're fixing those
spools, you watch me tie these threads. That's what you have to do. To
keep everything straight and fasten on the new ends as the old ones run
out."

"But I don't see you 'tie' it. There is no knot."

"Of course not. We couldn't have rough things in the thread that is
going to make a carpet. We just twist it--so. Do you see? It can't pull
apart, and it makes no roughness. Try; keep on trying; and after you
have practised awhile, you'll be as swift as swift."

"I feel as slow as slo