She thought, as she looked upon the spacious, convenient chamber in which she was sitting, how hard it would be to have no place to which she could retire and be alone, and how difficult it would be to keep her things in order in the fourth part of a small apartment, and how possible it was that she might have unpleasant room-mates, and how probable that every day would call into exercise all her kindness and forbearance. And then she wondered if it would be possible for her to work so long, and save so much, as to render it possible that she might one day return to that chamber and call it her own. Sometimes she wished she had not undertaken it, that she had not let the deacon know that she hoped to be able to pay him; she feared that she had taken a burden upon herself which she could not bear, and sighed to think that her lot should be so different from that of most young girls. She thought of the days when she was a little child; when she played with Henry at the brook, or picked berries with him on the hill; when her mother was always happy, and her father always kind; and she wished that the time could roll back, and she could again be a careless little girl. She felt, as we sometimes do, when we shut our eyes and try to sleep, and get back into some pleasant dream, from which we have been too suddenly awakened. But the dream of youth was over, and before her was the sad waking reality of a life of toil, separation, and sorrow. When she left home the next morning, it was the first time she had ever parted from her friends. The day was delightful, and the scenery beautiful; a stage-ride was of itself a novelty to her, and her companions pleasant and sociable; but she felt very sad, and when she retired at night to sleep in a hotel, she burst into tears. Those who see the factory girls in Lowell, little think of the sighs and heart-aches which must attend a young girl's entrance upon a life of toil and privation, among strangers. To Susan, the first entrance into a factory boarding-house seemed something dreadful. The rooms looked strange and comfortless, and the women cold and heartless; and when she sat down to the supper-table, where, among more than twenty girls, all but one were strangers, she could not eat a mouthful. She went with Esther to their sleeping apartment, and, after arranging her clothes and baggage, she went to bed, but not to sleep.