"It isn't a bit nicer. It's work anywhere, and I hate work. I never mean to do a bit of it that I can help. Ma says pa'll have money enough to make us all rich, and I want to be a lady." "Ma" had been a factory-girl herself, which was perhaps one reason why Bertie despised the business. She had married the foreman of the mill, who had now risen to be overseer of the bindery, and yearly laid up a large portion of his salary, while her sister had married a city grocer, who was spending all he made as he made it, and his children were growing up to be useless, fine ladies, and a positive injury to their country cousins. "But while you do work you might do it faithfully, not spend time for which you are paid in idleness, and crowd in rags with the buttons all on, which will be sure to spoil the machinery when they come to be ground." "Bah! what difference does it make? I'm paid for my time. Provided I stay here all day, they haven't a right to claim anything more." "But, Bertie, they have. Don't you remember the text which is painted on the wall at the foot of the corridor? "'Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.'" "It seems to me just like stealing to waste time that we're paid for, or not to do work entrusted to us just as well as we possibly can." "Oh, well, you're one of the saints, you know. If it's saintship to be rude and call other people thieves I'm glad I'm a sinner, that's all. I guess we'll catch the saint in a slip before long, don't you, girls?" said she, appealing to several other idlers who naturally congregated around a bird of the same feather as themselves. Bertie and Katie did not walk home together any more. The former, never having finished her work, was always obliged to remain in the mill till the closing-bell rang, while the former went home, as we have seen, at four o'clock, and at noon she was generally met by her brothers. "Eric," she said on the day of the above conversation, "do you think it's right to idle and talk instead of doing your work?" "We can't in the bindery; the machine won't let us. Everything would go to thunder if we looked off." "But suppose you could, and nobody knew anything about it?" "They couldn't fine you if they didn't know," said Alfred, whose ideas of the righteousness of law were modified by the possibility of escaping its penalty. "What difference would that make?" said Eric. "God would know." "Yes," said Katie, "I always wish the words 'Thou God seest me,' were written up on the walls of the mill. It helps you not to get tired and want to stop." "Do you ever want to stop, Katie?" said her brother, tenderly. "Yes, lots of times, It's just the same thing day after day, no change, no variety, the dust suffocates you, and it's so hard to get up in the morning, and"-- "Sho!" shouted Alfred, "I thought you'd sing a different tune after you'd been in the factory a little while. Don't you remember I told you so?"