gious teaching
and was profoundly ignorant about spiritual things. Perhaps this was
missionary work sent to her very hands. She might at least try it for a
while. The board to be paid would make it possible to do so, and if the
plan were not a success, or proved hurtful to her own children, to whom
she owed her first duty, she could but send the girl back to her present
lodgings.

So, when Tessa came she was told, to her great joy, that her request
was granted, and she might commence her new life on Monday. A very
serious motherly talk followed, and among other things the new boarder
was obliged to promise never to introduce sensational literature into
the house.

Mrs. Robertson agreed to take Tessa for two dollars a week, on condition
that she would assist Katie with the housework before and after
mill-hours. The half-dollar a week thus saved would soon procure a
simple Sunday outfit, and enable her to accompany her friend to
Sunday-school and church.

Katie, with some of the remains of her precious fifty dollars, insisted
on advancing this; and on the first Sunday morning the young Italian,
looking very pretty but rather shy, took her place in Miss Etta's class,
and was at once enrolled among its members.

Mrs. Robertson never had cause to regret her kind-hearted decision.
Tessa was devotedly attached to Katie, and followed, rather than led,
her friend. She was shy with the boys at first, but soon came to show
them the same sisterly feeling that their sister did. Her wit,
quickness, and power of story-telling soon made her a valuable addition
to the family circle, while the genial home influences and good fare so
told upon herself that her extreme delicacy soon disappeared, and she
became capable of as much work or endurance as Katie herself.

CHAPTER XII.

GRETCHEN.

German Gretchen was absent from the mill one morning. No one noticed it
except Miss Peters, who marked her down for one less day's wages. The
young girl, who had drifted into the manufacturing town, as so many do,
in search of work, had never been a favorite or attracted particular
attention. She was a fair work-woman, obeyed rules, and went her way to
the boarding-house when night came; but she made no friends either there
or at the mill, and it would scarcely have been noticed had she
disappeared altogether. Somehow she had floated into Sunday-school, and
been placed in the class which afterward became Etta Mountjoy's, but
here her ap