w."

The "new hand" smiled into the eager face of her willing helper, and the
poor hunchback's heart glowed. That so bright a creature should ever
come to be a worker in that busy mill, side by side with her own self,
was stranger than the strangest of the cheap novels she read so
constantly.

"It beats all, don't it?" demanded Mary, clasping Amy's little brown
hand.

"What, dear? What beats what? Have I done that one better? Do you think
I'll ever, ever be able to keep up my side of the 'frame' after this
other one leaves me?"

Mary's laugh was good to hear. Mr. Metcalf, entering the room, heard it
and smiled. Yet his smile was fleeting, and his only comment a reprimand
to "Jack doffer" for his carelessness.

"It must not happen again. Understand?"

"Yes, sir," answered the youth, humbly.

Of Amy herself the superintendent took no notice whatever beyond a curt
nod. She did not understand this, and a pain shot through her sensitive
heart. Then she reflected that he might not have seen her.

"Do you suppose he did, or that he knew me? You see, I've always worn
white before, and maybe he did not recognize me."

"Oh, he saw you all right. He wouldn't more 'n nod to his own wife, if
he's on his rounds, and full of business. I've heard that he was very
pleasant outside the mill and among his folks, but I never saw him any
different from just now. Seems to me he looks on us like he does the
spools on the spinners. I always feel as if I were part of the
machine--the poorest part--and I guess you will, too. There, it's fixed
and starting up. Hurry to your place and don't get scared. Sallie's
cross, but she can't help it. She used to be one of the 'fainters.' Yes;
that's right. Now all there is, is to keep at it till twelve o'clock
whistle."

That meant nearly five hours of the steadiest and most difficult labor
which Amy had ever undertaken. Yet these others near her, and the crowds
of spinners all through the great apartment, appeared to take this labor
very easily, and were even able to carry on a conversation amid the
deafening noise.

Amy watched so intently, and tried so faithfully to do just what and all
that was expected of her that she did, indeed, make a rapid progress
for one beginning; and when the welcome whistle sounded, she was
surprised to see how instantly every frame was stopped, and to hear Mary
saying:--

"If you don't want to go with anybody else, I'd admire to have you eat
your lunch with m