boss came in. A weaver
works by the piece, but Mandy had been reproved too often for slovenly
methods not to know that she might be fined for neglect. Her looms stood
where she could continually get the newcomer's figure against the light,
with its swift motion, its supple curves, and the brave carriage of the
well-formed head. The sight gave Mandy a curious satisfaction, as though
it uttered what she would fain have said to the classes above her. Hers
was something the feeling which the private in the ranks has for the
standard-bearer who carries the colours aloft, or the dashing officer
who leads the charge. Johnnie was the challenge she would have flung in
the face of the enemy.

"I'll bet if you'd put one of Miss Lyddy's dresses on her she'd look
nobby," Mandy ruminated, addressing her looms. "That's what she would.
She'd have 'em all f--fa--faded away, as the feller says."

And so it came about that the next day Johnnie Consadine did not go to
the mill at all, but spent the morning washing and ironing her one light
print dress. It was as coarse almost as flour-sacking, and the blue dots
on it had paled till they made a suspicious speckle not unlike mildew;
yet when she had combed her thick, fair hair, rolled it back from the
white brow and braided it to a coronet round her head as she had seen
that of the lady on the porch at the Palace of Pleasure; when, cleansed
and smooth, she put the frock on, one forgot the dress in the youth of
her, the hope, the glorious expectation there was in that eager face.

The ladies assisting in Miss Lydia Sessions's Uplift

Club for work among the mill girls, were almost all young and youngish
women. The mothers in Israel attacked the more serious problems of
orphanages, winter's supplies of coal, and clothing for the destitute.

"But their souls must be fed, too," Miss Lydia asserted as she recruited
her helpers for the Uplift work. "Their souls must be fed; and who can
reach the souls of these young girls so well as we who are near their
own age, and who have had time for culture and spiritual growth?"

It was a good theory. Perhaps one may say that it remains a good theory.
The manner of uplifting was to select a certain number of mill girls
whom it was deemed well to help, approach them on the subject, and, if
they appeared amenable, pay a substitute to take charge of their looms
while those in process of being uplifted attended a meeting of the Club.
The gathering to whic