At about this time a young girl was met in a Sunday-school class very attractive, always well and prettily dressed. She had been in the Sunday-school all her life, and had joined the church with her mother, a gentle, quiet woman, who leaned on her daughter for guidance. The daughter was a tower of strength. By accident it was learned that the girl was a wage-earner, working with her mother in a large suit house in New York; that they kept house, doing the housework, even the washing and ironing, before and after their day's work. Added to this they made all their own clothes, which must have involved a vast amount of labor, as they both dressed well. The position of this mother and daughter is fairly typical of a large army of women workers, and explains, in part, at least, why two women of so much character should have accepted charity for so many years and why they could not change their economic relation. The work they did was to a degree a trade. Each was a special "hand" on a certain part of women's suits. They were paid by the piece. When they had work, they made good wages; but the seasons were short. The beginning of every season found them in debt. By the time the debt was paid work had grown slack or stopped. It was simply impossible to get beyond this, try as they would. When the girl broke down, she explained it by saying, "I worked all night to finish my dress. If I could buy the material in the slack season I could make our things then. We never have the money, and they have to be made just when work is hardest at the store." She was but nineteen. The girl was pretty, ambitious, entirely above the men of her own station in refinement, and yet quite as far beneath the brothers of the girls she met in her Sunday-school class. She lived in mental terror lest they should attempt to call on her. It was pitiful to see the struggle she made to conceal the fact that she was poor. The other girls knew she worked, knew the church helped the family, but were very tactful in assisting her in keeping her secret. When the mother came to the notice of the officers of the church she was a widow with three young children, one a baby. She could support her family if the rent was paid. The church officers were glad to do this. They did not support a mission and had very little outlet for the church's generosity, except the mission societies--Home and Foreign--to which they were devoted as a church.