? you are all I have got in the world.' Nat
did not reply; but all that evening his face looked as I never saw it
before. Nat was fifteen; instinct was beginning to torture him with a
man's sense of his helplessness, and it was almost more than even his
childlike faith and trust could bear.

"The next day I told Miss Penstock. She had been as kind to us as a mother
through this whole year and a half, and I really think we had taken the
place of children in her lonely old heart. But she never could forget that
we were her minister's children; she always called me Miss Dora, and does
to this day. She did not interrupt me while I told her my plan, but the
color mounted higher and higher in her face. As soon as I stopped
speaking, she exclaimed:--

"'Dora Kent, are you mad--a girl with a face like yours to go into the
mills? you don't know what you're about.'

"'Yes I do, dear Pennie,' I said (Nat had called her Pennie ever since his
sickness, when she had taken tender care of him night and day). 'I know
there are many rude, bad men there, but I do not believe they will trouble
me. At any rate I can but try. I must earn more money, Pennie; you know
that as well as I do.'

"She did indeed know it; but it was very hard for her to give approbation
to this scheme. It was not until after a long argument that I induced her
to promise not to write to Aunt Abby till I had tried the experiment for
one month.

"The next day I went to the mill. Everything proved much better than I had
feared. Some of the women in the room in which I was placed had belonged
to papa's Sunday-school, and they were all very kind to me, and told the
others who I was; so from the outset I felt myself among friends. In two
weeks I had grown used to the work; the noise of the looms did not
frighten or confuse me, and it did not tire me to stand so many hours. I
found that I should soon be able to do most of my work mechanically, and
think about what I pleased in the mean time. So I hoped to be able to
study at home and recite my lessons to myself in the mill. The only thing
that troubled me was that I could not take Nat to and from school, and he
had to be left alone sometimes. But I found a very pleasant and faithful
Irish boy, who was glad to earn a little money by drawing him back and
forth, often staying with him after school till I came home at six
o'clock. This boy was the son of the Irish gardener on the overseer's
place. The overseer was an Engli