It was stated some time since that Mrs. Robertson had other plans with reference to her family of girls and boys, which she intended to put in operation when the long winter evenings came. This was the formation of a class for regular study, of at least one or two of the branches which her own children had attended to at school. But these plans were afterward merged in those of the young manufacturer. The mill-girls, although they had generally had fair common-school advantages before they commenced work, were, of course, from that time totally deprived of them. They knew how to read, write, and "do examples" in the simpler rules of arithmetic. Perhaps this would be quite education enough for those girls who are to pass their lives in factories of the older world. But it is not so in America, where everybody reads and everybody thinks, where no one is stationary, no position permanent--where the operative of to-day is the employer of to-morrow--where many a girl steps from a position of toil and honorable self-support into that of mistress of a mansion, and is called to dispense a hospitality which in other lands would be called princely. In our as yet unsettled mode of existence, education is the one thing needful, because education is the only thing of which the "chances and changes" of life can not strip us--the only thing which will adapt itself gracefully to any position, from the cottage and tenement-room to the presidential chair. Eunice and James Mountjoy had often talked over the loss of educational advantages to which boys and girls entering the mill at so early an age were of necessity subjected, and this winter they took their youngest sister into confidence. The result was the commencement of a "night school," held, however, from four o'clock till seven. The mill was now only working three-quarters time, so these three hours remained to be filled up, and no one objected to putting off supper an hour for this purpose. The school-house did double duty--the day scholars departing just as the more advanced classes assembled, and the trustees gladly gave the use of the building for so beneficent a purpose. But it was not to be expected that the poor young overworked teacher could do double duty too. She was, in fact, only a girl, not much in advance of the "night scholars," either in age or acquirements, and well calculated to profit with them by superior advantages. Another hired teacher was not to be thought of, for the school committee were not entrusted with spare funds, and the Mountjoys, who might have furnished a teacher's board and salary upon ordinary occasions, were this winter taxed to the utmost strain their finances would bear. In this dilemma Etta made the startling proposition of becoming teacher herself.