eason. So the report traveled
from one mouth to another, losing nothing in its passage, and poor Katie
was obliged to endure the general avoidance and reprobation as best she
might. It was a hard trial and one in which she had no one to sympathize
with her, for Mrs. Robertson's gloomy disposition inclined her children
to keep from her anything that might add to her unhappiness, and somehow
she did not feel like making confidants of the boys. But hard as the
trial seemed in the passing, it was, in the end, good for our heroine,
for it drove her to the only Friend who knew all about it, who knew that
she was innocent of the charge, whatever it might be, and pitied and
loved her, whoever else might cast her out. The things which drive us
close to Him, no matter how hard they seem, are really blessings in
disguise. Katie had now but one friend in the mill, a slight, pale
girl, who stood by the folding-table next to herself. She had only just
come to the mill, was intimate with no one, and, so far, had not heard
the story, whatever it was, about Katie Robertson. Her name was Tessa.
Her father, who had been a traveling organ-grinder, was taken sick and
died very suddenly at Squantown. His little dark-eyed girl, who
accompanied him, was left perfectly destitute and in a most desolate
condition. She was at first taken care of in the poor-house, but as she
grew older, and it was thought best that she should do something for her
own support, Mr. Mountjoy had been appealed to, and had given her a
place in the mill. Not in the rag-room, however, for she had such a
delicate constitution that it was supposed she never could stand the
dust. Her work consisted in pasting the fancy paper over the edges of
little "pads," intended for doctors' use in writing their prescriptions,
and when she was tired she was allowed to have a seat. She could not
make much, but what she did receive sufficed to pay for her room in the
factory boarding-house, and Tessa was as happy as she could be without
her father.

The Italian girl had conceived a strong admiration for our bright
little Katie, and by degrees the two girls became great friends. Tessa's
love was the silver lining to the cloud under whose shadow her companion
lived.

But the heaviest part of the cloud was that the story reached Miss Etta.
She had noticed the general avoidance of Katie by the other girls in her
class, and was very much at a loss to account for it, for to her this
scholar h