When he came in that first day, Peter was in the factory and if Reuben had had any doubts of making this the headquarters of his apprenticeship, the sight of Phoebe Bradshaw would have removed them. To one man the finest scenery is improved by a first-class hotel in the foreground; to another, a stiff task is made tolerable by the presence, in his background, of a pretty woman. Phoebe had prettiness in her linsey-woolsey gown with the cotton print handkerchief about her shoulders; she was small and she was soft of feature. You could not look at her face and say, of this feature or of that, that it had shapeliness, but in a sort of gentle improvisation, she had her placid charm. She sat at needlework, at something obscurely useful, but her pose, as he entered, was that of a lady at leisure, amusing herself with the counterfeit of toil. Bradshaw’s daughter, had Bradshaw not thrived and lifted himself out of the class of the employed, would have been in the factory, at work like the other girls; but she aspired to ladyhood and, fondly, he abetted her. He was on the up-grade, and let the fact be manifest in the gentility of his daughter! There was pride in it, and somehow there was the payment of a debt due to her dead mother who had worked at home spinning while Peter wove the yarn she spun in a simpler day than this. What the late Mrs. Bradshaw would have thought of a daughter who aped the fine lady, or of a father who encouraged her, is not to the point: Peter idolized Phoebe, and she sat in his house to figure for Reuben as an unforeseen mitigation in his job of learning manufacture. He proceeded to address himself with gallantry to the pleasing mitigation. She rose, impressed, at the coming to that house of an authentic Olympian. “Pray be seated, Miss Bradshaw,” he said. “For it _is_ Miss Bradshaw?” he added, implying surprise to find her what she was. “I am Phoebe Bradshaw,” she told him. “You would see my father? He is in the factory. Will you not sit while I go and call him?” For a man intent upon stern purpose, Reuben felt remarkably unhurried. “My business can wait,” he said, gesturing her again to her chair. “It has no such urgency that you need disturb yourself for me and turn a lady into a message-bearer.” He noted the quick flush of pleasure which rose to her cheeks on the word “lady.” “Indeed,” he went on, “I find myself blame-worthy and unaccountably a laggard that this is the first time I have made your acquaintance.” “Oh! I... I am not much in the world, sir.” “The world is the loser, Miss Bradshaw. But it is not too late to find a remedy for that. They tell us the North is poor soil for flowers and with an answer like you to their lies it would be criminal to hide it.” Crude flattery, but it hit the target. “I? A flower? Oh, sir--”