At last the room next to the top of the vast building was reached, and there Mr. James opened a door and ushered Katie into a room which extended the whole length of one side of the building. The windows, of which there were fifteen, were wide open, but for all that the air was so thick with dust that at first Katie drew back with a sense of suffocation. "I told you it would not be pleasant," said Mr. James, "but this is your appointed place. Be a brave girl, and when you are used to it it won't seem so bad." The sense of suffocation was caused by the particles of dust with which the air was heavily laden, and which flew from the piles of rags which over fifty girls were busily engaged in sorting, putting the dark-colored ones by themselves, the medium-colored by themselves, and the white ones--or those that had been white--into large boxes. As soon as these boxes were filled they were placed on wheelbarrows and emptied into long slides by men who waited for them and returned the boxes. Mr. James explained to his young companion that these slides emptied their contents into great vats in the room below, where after lying some days in a certain purifying solution they were boiled with soda to loosen the dirt, thoroughly washed by machinery, and passed into great copper kettles, where they were boiled to a pulp and ground at the same time, horizontal grindstones reducing them to the finest powder. He also showed her that the dust was rendered much less hurtful than it would otherwise have been by a great fan kept constantly at work on one side of the room, which drove it out of the windows in front of the girls, who were thus not compelled to breathe it unless they turned directly around facing the blast, as Katie had done on entering the room. He then put her under the care of a pleasant-faced woman, whose duty it was to oversee the little girls, saw that she had a comfortable seat, shook hands with her, and went away. Mr. James was by no means called upon to be so polite to a "new hand"; most employers would have told the child which way to go and then left her to shift for herself, or at best have sent a man or boy to show her the way. Perhaps he would have done so with some girls, but he saw that the child was timid and homesick, and knew that a few kind words would go a great way toward making her feel at home and happy, and would serve as an offset against the disagreeable first impressions of the rag-room, and the weariness of regular work undertaken for the first time.