“The next day after I left him at school I went to the largest mill and saw the overseer.  He was a coarse, disagreeable man; but he had known my father and he treated me respectfully.  He said they could not give me very good wages at first; but if I learned readily, and was skillful in tending the looms, I might in time make a very good living.  The sums that he named seemed large, tried by my humble standard.  Even at the beginning I should earn more than I had been able to for many months at my needle.  After tea I told Nat.  He lay very still for some moments; the tears rolled down his cheeks; then he reached up both hands and drew my face down to his, and said, ’Dear sister, it would be selfish to make it any harder for you than it must be at best.  But oh, Dot, Dot! do you think you can dream what it is for me to have to lie here and be such a burden on you?’

“‘Oh, Nat!’ I said, ’if you don’t want to break my heart, don’t speak so.  I don’t have to earn any more for two than I should have to alone; it does not cost anything for you; and if it did, you darling, don’t you know that I could not live without you? 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