machinery frightened them."

"It frightens me, too, and yet--I like it. The power of it all awes me."

"Well, your enthusiasm is certainly agreeable."

Nor was he the only one who found it so. Even the usually silent workmen
in the fireproof storehouse, where the bales of wool were piled to the
ceiling with little aisles of passage between, were moved to explanation
by the alert, inquiring glances of this dainty visitor. So she quickly
learned the difference between Turkish and Scottish fleeces, and
remarked to her guide on the oddity of the sorted ones, "that look just
like whole sheepskins, legs and tail and all, with the skins left out."
In the scouring room she saw the wool washing and passing forward
through the long tanks of alkaline baths; and in the "willying" house
her lungs were filled by the dust that the great machines cleaned from
the freshly dried fleeces. Indeed, she would have lingered long before
the big chute, through which compressed air forced the cleansed fibres
to the height of four stories and the apartment where began its real
manufacture into yarn.

Mr. Metcalf took her next to this top floor; and though the deafening
noise of the machinery made her own voice sound queerly in her ears, she
managed to ask so many questions, that before she again reached the
ground floor and passed outward to the impatient Pepita, she had gained
a clear general idea how some sorts of carpets are made.

"And now, Miss Amy, that our little tour is over, I'd like to hear what,
of all you've seen, has most impressed you," said Mr. Metcalf, kindly.

"The girls."

"The--girls? In the spinning room?"

"Everywhere; all of them. They are so clean, so jolly, and--think! They
are actually earning money."

"Of course; else they wouldn't be here. Does it strike you oddly that a
girl should earn her own living?"

"I think it's grand."

"Hmm. You caught but a fleeting glimpse of them. There's a deal of
reality in their lives, poor things."

"Why! Are you sorry for them?"

"No,--and yes. They haven't much leisure, and I dare say that you are an
object of envy to every mill girl who has seen you to-day."

"Oh! I hope not. I liked them so. It seems so fine to really earn some
of the money which everybody needs so much, just by standing before one
of those 'jennies' and doing what little they did. They laughed often,
as if they were glad. Nobody looked sorrowful, so I don't see why you
pity them."

"It may be misp