-house, and since I've been in the mill
I've been too tired after work was over."

"Are you very tired now?"

"Not so very; I did not sleep much last night."

"Was it a _very_ interesting story?" said the other, archly.

"Oh, yes," said Tessa, becoming at once very much excited; "she,
Amanda, I mean, married the most elegant count, and he took her to his
castle, and she had pearls and diamonds and silks and satins, and never
had to do a thing all the rest of her life; and only think, Katie, she
was a mill-girl in the beginning, just like us." The sentence finished
with a sigh.

"Would you like a count to come and carry you off to a castle by-and-by,
and give you all those things?"

"Oh, indeed, yes; when the light goes out, and I can't read any more I
lie awake thinking about it, and wondering if such a count will ever
come along. He might, you know, any day."

"Does that make the mill seem any pleasanter in the morning?"

"No! no! I hate the mill. It looks so rough and bare, and the girls all
seem so common. I feel like crying to have to spend so many hours
there."

"And then you can't do your work well. I know just how that feels. Miss
Eunice says it isn't _honest_ to do anything that will unfit us for the
work we are paid for doing."

This was a new definition of dishonesty to Tessa, but she only said:--

"Who's Miss Eunice?"

"Oh, she's the teacher of the Bible-class; the nicest, most splendid
lady in the Sunday-school, except, of course, Miss Etta. She's our
teacher, you know, but she's so young she seems just like one of
ourselves."

"Do you go to Sunday-school?" said Tessa opening her eyes. "I thought
only little children went. Father said it was so in Italy."

"But everybody goes here. There's great big girls, quite young women, in
Miss Eunice's class. Tessa," said Katie, struck with a sudden idea,
"what do you do with yourself on Sundays?"

"I read," said the person addressed; "read all day long. I lie on the
bed in my room, and forget how hot it is and how lonely, and then when
it gets dark I remember beautiful Italy and cry."

"What a lonely life," said Katie, sympathetically. "Why don't you go to
church?"

"We never went to church, my father and I. He said the church had
ruined Italy, and he was not a Catholic any more."

"But we're not Catholics. Oh, I wish you would come to our church and
our Sunday-school! It's just as nice!--there's Miss Etta, and Bertie and
Gretchen and Cora, and