g their own interests cared for were all the more
likely to care for those of their employer. Katie Robertson certainly
never forgot Mr. James's judicious kindness on the morning of her
entrance into the mill; he was to her the kindest, sweetest, and most
lovable of gentlemen. She felt ready to do anything he should tell her
and to keep every rule he might make. Then, too, he was a Christian, and
understood all about what she meant when she had said God would help
her; surely it must be very easy to be good and resist temptation in a
place with such a master, and she felt like thanking God that, in spite
of the suffocating dust, "the lines had fallen to her in such very
pleasant places."

CHAPTER III.

THE FIRST DAY.

Left to herself Katie looked timidly round. It is always an ordeal to
meet so many strangers for the first time, and our little friend was
beginning to feel quite forlorn, when Miss Peters, the superintendent of
the rag-room, came to her and began to show her about the work to be
done; how, besides the rags being sorted, the buttons were to be taken
off and the larger pieces cut into small ones by pulling them
dexterously along and between two great sharp knives set on end for the
purpose. Katie had already covered her clean dress with the long-sleeved
blue apron and her hair with the little mob-cap her mother had provided,
and at once commenced her work, not at all seeing or noticing the
scornful looks that passed between some of the girls whose ragged finery
and dirty hair-ribbons full of dust and "_flue_" presented a lively
contrast to her own neat and suitable equipment. We may observe, in
passing, that before long this simple method of protection so commended
itself to some of the more sensible girls and their parents that many of
them adopted it and mob-caps and overalls became quite the fashion in
the mill.

Katie was a smart little girl and could work very quickly when she set
about it; of course to-day she was anxious to show how much she could
do, and her piles and boxes were fuller than those of any girls near her
by the time of the warning whistle, which indicated that in half an hour
the dinner-bell would sound. Then there was a bustle in the room. The
piles were taken away in long and deep barrows which men wheeled into
the room, the boxes were carried off, emptied into the vats, and brought
back again; some of the girls swept the floor and tables by which they
stood; talking was