Poor Amy. This was like a dash of cold water over her enthusiasm. Just when she fancied that Gwendolyn was aspiring to all that was noble and uplifting, down she had dropped again into that idea of "style" and fashion and good times. But she remembered Mary. In the soul of that afflicted little mill girl was, indeed, a true ambition, and she felt glad again, from thoughts of her. "Hallam, how can you climb all the way to 'Charity House'? You will drop by the way. It's hard, even for me." "I can do it. I must. There is nothing else to be done." So they set out together, through the darkness. The days were at the shortest, and Christmas would come the following week. Hallam and Amy looked forward with dread to the festival, remembering their mother had striven, even under disadvantages, to keep the holiday a bright one for her children. There had never been either many or costly gifts at Fairacres, but there had been something for each and all; and the home-made trifles were all the dearer because Salome's gentle fingers had fashioned them. Now Gwendolyn was full of anticipation, and from her talk about it her neighbors judged she meant to expend a really large sum of money in presents for her friends. "But, Gwendolyn, how can you buy all these things? You told me you earned about five dollars a week, and you've bought so many clothes; and--I guess I'm not good at figures. My poor little two dollars and a half, that I get now, wouldn't buy a quarter of all you say." "Oh, that's all right. Mis' Hackett, she charges it. I always run an account with her." "You? a girl like you? What is your mother thinking about? I thought to buy a wheel that way was queer; but how dare you?" "Why, I'm working all the time, ain't I? Anybody that has regular work can get anything they want at Mis' Hackett's, or other places, too. Ma and pa do the same way." "But--that's _debt_. It must be horrible. It seems like going out of one debt into another as fast as you can. Oh, Gwen, don't do it." "Pshaw! that isn't anything. Why, look here, that's the very way your own folks did. If they hadn't been in debt, they wouldn't have had to move from Fairacres, and all that. Would they?" Both Hallam and Amy were silent. The keen common sense of the mill girl had struck home, and again Amy realized that her vocation was not that of "preaching." Finally, the cripple spoke:-- "It's like it, yet it isn't. We had something left to pay our debts. It wasn't money, but it was money's worth. We paid them. We are left poor indeed, but we haven't mortgaged our future. That's all. But we are too young to talk so wisely. If your parents approve, they probably know best. Hark! there is a wagon coming."