“If you are asked to marry a poor man, whose only fault is his poverty, take him, if you love him, and do your part toward getting along and making a happy home for your husband. Besides, Fair, it would be easier for you to be happy as a poor man’s wife than it was for your mother, as she had been raised in luxury and did not know how to labor. But as you are a working girl, you would not expect anything else than to help your husband get along. Excuse me for speaking so plainly, but it is for your own good, as I can’t bear to see your little head filled with foolish fancies about getting a rich husband. You are very pretty, I own, but rich men do not often marry factory girls, no matter how pretty they are,” and, so saying, she turned away, followed by a murmur of approbation from everybody except Sadie Allen, who remained very silent, because she saw that Fair’s eyes were full of tears. CHAPTER II. HER MOTHER’S ADVICE. Poor little Fair! It was quite true, as the forewoman intimated, that she had not had a judicious training, for her mother was a foolish, weak-minded woman, who had, indeed, filled her child’s head with romantic notions about marrying above her station. “You are pretty enough to marry a king, my darling, and you would be a little fool if you threw away all your chances by marrying a poor man,” she had said often; and, as if to make her advice more impressive, she would add: “Besides, what would become of me if you married a poor man? He would not want to take care of me, and you would be so busy caring for his house and minding his children you would have to desert your poor old mother.” Little Fair shed tears at the thought of deserting her helpless mother. “I shall always work for you and live with you, dear mother,” she said, adding, as a clincher: “I shall never marry any one.” “Do not say that, my little Fair, for I should not like to have you live an old maid. I live in hopes that by a fortunate marriage you may some day be raised to the position in life that I once occupied,” answered the ambitious mother. And it became tacitly understood between them that Fair was to marry no one unless he was rich; and, as she had no expectation of that, she had long ago made up her mind that she would be an old maid. “Like that old crosspatch of a Miss Smith, who has worked in the factory thirty years, and hates the sight of a man,” the girl thought plaintively; but, in her devotion to her selfish mother, she vowed herself bravely to the sacrifice. Courtship, and love, and marriage such as her companions talked and dreamed of were not for her. Through her mother’s peculiar training, she had become quite worldly-wise.