e, I suppose, by the departed Teagarden. That was all
inside. She looked out of the window. In it, as if set in a square
black frame, was the dead brick wall, and the opposite roof, with a cat
sitting on the scuttle. Going closer, two or three feet of sky appeared.
It looked as if it smelt of copperas, and she drew suddenly back.

She sat down, waiting until it was time to go; quietly taking the dull
picture into her slow, unrevealing eyes; a sluggish, hackneyed weariness
creeping into her brain; a curious feeling, that all her life before had
been a silly dream, and this dust, these desks and ledgers, were real,
--all that was real. It was her birthday; she was twenty. As she
happened to remember that, another fancy floated up before her, oddly
life-like: of the old seat she made for herself under the currant-bushes
at home when she was a child, and the plans she laid for herself when
she should be a woman, sitting there,--how she would dig down into the
middle of the world, and find the kingdom of the griffins, or would go
after Mercy and Christiana in their pilgrimage. It was only a little
while ago since these things were more alive to her than anything else
in the world. The seat was under the currant-bushes still. Very little
time ago; but she was a woman now,--and, look here! A chance ray of
sunlight slanted in, falling barely on the dust, the hot heaps of wool,
waking a stronger smell of copperas; the chicken saw it, and began to
chirp a weak, dismal joy, more sorrowful than tears. She went to the
cage, and put her finger in for it to peck at. Standing there, if the
life coming rose up before her in that hard, vacant blare of sunlight,
she looked at it with the same still, waiting eyes, that told nothing.

The door opened at last, and a man came in,--Dr. Knowles, the principal
owner of the factory. He nodded shortly to her, and, going to the desk,
turned over the books, peering suspiciously at her work. An old man,
overgrown, looking like a huge misshapen mass of flesh, as he stood
erect, facing her.

"You can go now," he said, gruffly. "To-morrow you must wait for the
bell to ring, and go--with the rest of the hands."

A curious smile flickered over her face like a shadow; but she said
nothing. He waited a moment.

"So!" he growled, "the Howth blood does not blush to go down into the
slime of the gutter? is sufficient to itself?"

A cool, attentive motion,--that was all. Then she stooped to tie her
sandal