ore. I earn real good wages now."

"Do you?" asked Amy, so wistfully that the other was confirmed in her
opinion of the poverty.

"I should think you would like to work in the mill, wouldn't you? If
your folks have lost their money, it would seem real handy to have a
little coming in."

"Yes, it would, indeed. But I couldn't do it."

"Why not? You're strong enough, I guess, if you aren't so big."

"Yes, I'm strong and well. But father has forbidden me to think of it."

"Pshaw! He'd come round. If you want to do it, I _would_; and once you
were settled he wouldn't care, or he couldn't help himself, anyway. He's
kind of queer, isn't he? I've heard that."

"Queer? Yes; just as queer as a splendid gentleman like him must always
seem to common people," flashed the daughter, all the more disturbed
because she realized that there had been once, if not now, just a little
truth in the suggestion.

"Pshaw! I didn't mean to make you mad. O' course, I hadn't ought to have
spoke so about your own father. I s'pose I'd be mad, too, if anybody
said things about pa. They do, sometimes, or about ma, their naming us
children by fancy names, as they did. You see, they're English, pa and
ma are, and so they named us after English aristocratics. Ma's a master
hand for reading novels, too, and she gets notions out of them. We take
the _Four Hundred Story Paper_, and the _Happy Evening Gazette_. Do you
take them?"

"No; I never heard of them."

"My land! you didn't? Ain't that queer? Why, they're splendid. They have
five serial stories running all the time. As fast as one is finished
another is commenced. Umm, they're awful exciting. You can't hardly wait
from week to week to get the new instalments. Trouble is, ma says, we'd
ought to each of us have a copy, we're so crazy to get hold of it when
it comes. Some of the girls take fashion papers, and we lend them
'round. Some lend, I mean. Some are stingy, and won't. They have
patterns in them. You can get some of the patterns free, and some cost
ten or fifteen cents. Say, how do you like my dress?"

Amy looked critically at her companion's attire. She admired it far less
than Gwendolyn had her own simple frock, and she found the question
difficult to answer without giving offence. She compromised by saying:--

"Your mother must be very industrious to have made it, with all the
housework and the children."

"If you ain't the greenest girl I know! My mother couldn't make a dress
li