little less than a year in the
colliery."

"And she has fulfilled all conditions?"

"In every way. The child is most industrious. She is every morning the
first to come and the last to leave. She never complains of the work,
as many of them do; she treats it as if it were a pleasure to her. If
her wheelbarrow is overloaded, she encourages the digger to put on
still more; then she runs away gayly with her burden, and comes back
singing as if she had been amusing herself. At the end of the
recreation she drives the other girls back to their work."

"Is she vain?"

"No; she wears the same holiday clothes in which she was dressed when
she came a year ago; naturally they are not quite as fresh as they
were. She has a little string of beads round her throat, and in her
hair a narrow ribbon. At night she washes her clothes in the stream,
for she has one peculiarity--she wears fresh linen every day; but she
makes it up herself, so she alone has the trouble."

"Is she saving?"

"She has more in our savings-bank than any one of the girls. She would
have still more, only that on Sundays she gives a whole day's wages to
the beggar who sits at the church door."

"Does she go to church regularly?"

"Every Sunday she comes with us, but she never sits with the other
girls; she kneels before a side-altar, covers her face with her hands,
and prays all through mass."

"Is she good-tempered?"

"She has offended no one and has never been angry. Once a woman said
something very offensive to her, for which we gave her a heavy fine.
The woman was ready to pay it, but the girl denied that she had been
offended. Soon after the woman got ill; she had no one to nurse her,
because she is a solitary widow, and this girl nursed her every night,
and fetched the medicine from the apothecary for her."

"Do you think she is a hypocrite?"

"She is too merry for that, and ready for a joke. Hypocrites are
gloomy folk. Our people would soon find her out if she wasn't on the
square; but she is a prime favorite with every one. We don't choose
our words exactly, but we can make a fair guess at the girl who
respects herself. We like one that gives a good box on the ear to a
fellow who would make too free. Sharp with the hand, but soft with her
tongue; that's our sort. And still, sometimes I have watched her when
she was in quite another mood; for instance, on Sunday afternoons,
when we sit under the mulberry-trees, they all get round me and make