"Well, I needn't talk to them, I suppose. I needn't be common, at any rate, and I can't get dirty in those great long-sleeved aprons and these nice little caps. You don't know how smart I'm going to be, and won't you be proud of your big girl when she brings home her first three-dollar bill, all earned in one week? Eric will see that a girl's worth something, after all, and Alfred sha'n't make fun of me any more." Mrs. Robertson did not say anything else just now; she did not like to be always checking the exuberance of her child's spirits with the dull forebodings of her own, but she could not see the paper-mill through the same halo that invested it in Katie's eyes. She knew there were snares and temptations, besides disagreeable and hard work to be met and encountered there, and she feared that the child's future disappointment would be proportioned to the brightness of her present hopes. Still, as the matter was determined upon, she knew it was right to make the best of it, and she tried to talk pleasantly and at least seem to sympathize with her daughter's enthusiasm. So passed the day, and at night when the boys came home they were called upon to listen for the hundredth time to all the rose-colored plans, and were pressed to declare that there could be nothing in the world more delightful than working in a factory. But the boys could not see it in that light any more than their mother. They were as content to work as are most men and boys who seem to take it for granted that it is in the course of nature for them to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, but they had been at it long enough to have lost the sense of novelty and to understand that it was work and not play which their sister was undertaking. "Won't you be sick of it!" said Alfred, in answer to one of Katie's outbursts, "and long, when Saturday comes, to go out nutting with the girls, or off on a hay-ride, or something! You'll wish you were free before you've been a slave many months, or I'm no prophet." "Well, she shall be free if she wants to," said Eric, kindly. "Our only little sister sha'n't work if she don't want to; we can take care of her, Alfred, can't we?" "But I do want to work," said Katie; "I know I sha'n't get tired, or if I do get tired of the work, I sha'n't of getting the money; for, boys, I mean to be a rich, independent woman, and help take care of mother. You needn't suppose that I'm going to be dependent upon you." "All right, young lady," said Alfred, "only I think you'll sing a different tune before many months are over." "The tune you ought to sing just now, children," said Mrs. Robertson, "is 'Good-night.' You all have to go to work very early, and Katie is not used to it. Good-night, darling, and don't forget to ask God to bless you and shield you in your new undertaking."