One day the teacher of the school had been called out on other business, leaving me to attend to visitors and customers. The throng that morning was so great that it was full two o'clock before I found time to sit down, hungry enough, to the slight dinner I had brought with me in a little basket. I had taken only the first mouthful, when Miss Effie came in from dining at home. She drew her chair close up to me, her sweet face blooming with the roses of perfect health, and her bright eyes sparkling with animation and intelligence. Much as I admired and loved her, I thought she had never before looked so perfectly beautiful. "Lizzie," she said, taking in her hand a spool of cotton to adjust on her machine, "how I like this work! Pa intends to buy me a machine as soon as I have completed my apprenticeship here. He don't believe there is any real gentility in the idleness of a girl who, because she happens to be rich, or to have great expectations, chooses to do nothing but fritter away her time on company and parties and dress and trifles unworthy of a sensible woman. He has brought us all up to think as he does. He tells us that every woman should be so educated, that, if at any time compelled by reverse of fortune to support herself, she would be able to do so. Why, he made us all learn the old story of the Basket-Maker before we were ten years old. It was only last week that he said there was no knowing what might happen to us girls,--you know, Lizzie, there are three of us,--that some day we might possibly be married." I am sure that the faintest of all innocent blushes rose up from the half-conscious heart of the truly lovely speaker as she uttered the word, giving to her cheeks a tinge of crimson that added new beauty to the soft expression which her countenance habitually wore. "_Possibly_, did you say, Miss Effie?" I interposed. "You might have said _probably_,--but would have been nearer the truth, if you had said _certainly_." "Oh, Lizzie, how you talk!" she rejoined; and there was an unmistakable deepening of her blushes. But in a moment she resumed:-- "Pa remembers how his mother was left a widow with five young children, but with neither trade nor money, and how both she and he had to struggle for a mere subsistence, she at keeping boarders, and he as apprentice to a mean man, who gave him only the smallest weekly pittance. He says that we shall never go out into the world as destitute of resources as his mother was, and so we all have what may really be called trades. My brother is in the counting-house, keeping the books, and is provided for. But you don't know how we have all been laughed at by our acquaintances, and sneered at by impudent people, who, though not at all acquainted with us, undertake to prescribe what we should and what we should not do. They call us work-women! With them, work of any kind is regarded as degrading, especially if done by a woman, and more especially if she is to be paid for it."