Why should he care to have one of his factory girls "feel at home and happy"? some one will say; his relations with them are only those of business: so much work for so much money; it was nothing to him what they thought or felt. Mr. James Mountjoy did not feel so. He thought that his father and he were placed in this responsible position and given the care of several hundred human souls expressly that some good work might be done for them. He felt that human beings are more precious than machinery, and that happiness is an important factor in goodness. He looked upon his work-people as those for whom he must give account, and tried to act in all his dealings with them "to the glory of God." Had he been actuated by the purest selfishness and the most approved business principles, he could not have chosen a wiser course; for men and women treated as friends become almost of necessity friendly, and seeing their own interests cared for were all the more likely to care for those of their employer. Katie Robertson certainly never forgot Mr. James's judicious kindness on the morning of her entrance into the mill; he was to her the kindest, sweetest, and most lovable of gentlemen. She felt ready to do anything he should tell her and to keep every rule he might make. Then, too, he was a Christian, and understood all about what she meant when she had said God would help her; surely it must be very easy to be good and resist temptation in a place with such a master, and she felt like thanking God that, in spite of the suffocating dust, "the lines had fallen to her in such very pleasant places." CHAPTER III. THE FIRST DAY. Left to herself Katie looked timidly round. It is always an ordeal to meet so many strangers for the first time, and our little friend was beginning to feel quite forlorn, when Miss Peters, the superintendent of the rag-room, came to her and began to show her about the work to be done; how, besides the rags being sorted, the buttons were to be taken off and the larger pieces cut into small ones by pulling them dexterously along and between two great sharp knives set on end for the purpose. Katie had already covered her clean dress with the long-sleeved blue apron and her hair with the little mob-cap her mother had provided, and at once commenced her work, not at all seeing or noticing the scornful looks that passed between some of the girls whose ragged finery and dirty hair-ribbons full of dust and "_flue_" presented a lively contrast to her own neat and suitable equipment. We may observe, in passing, that before long this simple method of protection so commended itself to some of the more sensible girls and their parents that many of them adopted it and mob-caps and overalls became quite the fashion in the mill.