"Very comfortable. You like your job, eh, Ben?" "Sure; it's a good one. Steady, an' wages regular. Good day, miss, you're welcome, I'm sure," he concluded, as she thanked him again for opening the furnace doors and explaining how it was he managed the great fires. "Now, the engine room; to see the object of all that heat," said Mr. Metcalf. "If only Hallam were here!" exclaimed Amy. "Is he your brother?" "Yes. Oh! it all seems just like fairyland; even better, for this is useful, while fairyland is merely pleasant." "Then you deem useful things of more account than pleasant ones? Hmm; most young ladies who have visited us have seemed afraid rather than pleased. The whir of the machinery frightened them." "It frightens me, too, and yet--I like it. The power of it all awes me." "Well, your enthusiasm is certainly agreeable." Nor was he the only one who found it so. Even the usually silent workmen in the fireproof storehouse, where the bales of wool were piled to the ceiling with little aisles of passage between, were moved to explanation by the alert, inquiring glances of this dainty visitor. So she quickly learned the difference between Turkish and Scottish fleeces, and remarked to her guide on the oddity of the sorted ones, "that look just like whole sheepskins, legs and tail and all, with the skins left out." In the scouring room she saw the wool washing and passing forward through the long tanks of alkaline baths; and in the "willying" house her lungs were filled by the dust that the great machines cleaned from the freshly dried fleeces. Indeed, she would have lingered long before the big chute, through which compressed air forced the cleansed fibres to the height of four stories and the apartment where began its real manufacture into yarn. Mr. Metcalf took her next to this top floor; and though the deafening noise of the machinery made her own voice sound queerly in her ears, she managed to ask so many questions, that before she again reached the ground floor and passed outward to the impatient Pepita, she had gained a clear general idea how some sorts of carpets are made. "And now, Miss Amy, that our little tour is over, I'd like to hear what, of all you've seen, has most impressed you," said Mr. Metcalf, kindly. "The girls." "The--girls? In the spinning room?" "Everywhere; all of them. They are so clean, so jolly, and--think! They are actually earning money." "Of course; else they wouldn't be here. Does it strike you oddly that a girl should earn her own living?" "I think it's grand." "Hmm. You caught but a fleeting glimpse of them. There's a deal of reality in their lives, poor things." "Why! Are you sorry for them?" "No,--and yes. They haven't much leisure, and I dare say that you are an object of envy to every mill girl who has seen you to-day."