FORTUNATELY Jessica Lawton’s humble little business enterprise began to bring in returns before her slender store of money was quite exhausted. Even more fortunate, at least in her estimation, was the fact that the lion’s share of this welcome patronage came from the poor working-girls of the village. When the venture was a month old, there was nearly enough work to occupy all her time, and, taking into account the season, this warranted her in believing that she had succeeded.

The result had not come without many anxious days, made bitter alike by despairing tremors for the future and burning indignation at the insults and injuries of the present. Now that these had in a measure abated, she felt, in looking back upon them, that the fear of failure was always the least of her troubles. At the worst, the stock which, through Mrs. Fairchild’s practical kindness, she had been able to bring from Tecumseh, could be sold for something like its cost. Her father’s help had sufficed for nearly all the changes needed in the small tenement, and she had money enough to pay the rent until May.

The taking over of Lucinda was a more serious matter, for the girl had been a wage-earner, and would be entitled to complain if it turned out that she had been decoyed away from the factory on an empty promise. But Lucinda, so far from complaining, seemed exceptionally contented. It was true that she gave no promise of ever acquiring skill as a milliner, and she was not infrequently restless under the discipline which Jessica, with perhaps exaggerated caution, strove to impose, but she worked with great diligence in their tiny kitchen, and served customers in the store with enthusiasm if not finesse. The task of drilling her into that habit of mind which considers finger-nails and is mindful of soap was distinctly onerous, and even now had reached only a stage in which progress might be reported; but much could be forgiven a girl who was so cheerful and who really tried so hard to do her share.

As for the disagreeable experiences, which had once or twice been literally terrifying, the girl still grew sick at heart with rage and shame and fear that they might jeopardize her plans, when she thought of them. In their ruder aspects they were divisible into two classes. A number of young men, sometimes in groups of twos or threes, but more often furtively and alone, had offensively sought to make themselves at home in the store, and had even pounded on the door in the evening after it was shut and bolted; a somewhat larger number of rough factory-girls, or idlers of the factory-girl class, had come from time to time with the obvious intention of insulting her. These latter always appeared in gangs, and supported one another in cruel giggling and in coarse inquiries and remarks.

After a few painfully futile attempts to meet and rebuff these hostile waves, Jessica gave up the effort, and arranged matters so that she could work in the living-room beyond, within call if she were needed, but out of the visual range of her persecutors. Lucinda encountered them instead, and gave homely but vigorous Rolands for their Olivers. It was in the interchange of these remarks that the chief danger, to the struggling little business lay, for if genuine customers heard them, why, there was an end to everything. It is not easy to portray the girl’s relief as week after week went by, and time brought not only no open scandal, but a marked diminution of annoyance. When Jessica was no longer visible, interest in the sport lagged. To come merely for the sake of baiting Lucinda was not worth the while. And when these unfriendly visits slackened, and then fell off almost altogether, Jessica hugged to her breast the notion that it was because these rough young people had softened toward and begun to understand and sympathize with her.

It was the easier to credit this kindly hypothesis in that she had already won the suffrages of a considerable circle of working-girls. To explain how this came about would be to analyze many curious and apparently contradictory phases of untutored human nature, and to recount many harmless little stratagems and well-meant devices, and many other frankly generous words and actions which came from hearts not the less warm because they beat amid the busy whir of the looms, or throbbed to the time of the seamstress’s needle.

Jessica’s own heart was uplifted with exultation, sometimes, when she thought upon the friendliness of these girls. So far as she knew and believed, every one of them was informed as to her past, and there was no reason beyond their own inclination why they should take stock in her intentions for the future. To a slender few, originally suggested by Lucinda, and then confirmed by her own careful scrutiny, she had confided the crude outlines of her scheme—that is, to build up a following among the toilers of her own sex, to ask from this following no more than a decent living for work done, and to make this work include not merely the details of millinery and hints about dress, but a general mental and material helpfulness, to take practical form step by step as the means came to hand and the girls themselves were ready for the development. Whenever she had tried to put this into words, its melancholy vagueness had been freshly apparent to her, but the girls had believed in her! That was the great thing.

And they had brought others, and spread the favorable report about, until even now, in the dead season, lying half way between Christmas and the beginning of Lent, she was kept quite busy. To be sure, her patrons were not governed much by these holiday dates at any time, and she was undoubtedly doing their work better and more cheaply than it could ever have been done for them before, but their good spirit in bringing it was none the less evident for that.

And out of the contact with this good spirit, Jessica began to be dimly conscious of getting great stores of strength for herself. If it could be all like this, she felt that her life would be ideally happy. She had not the skill of mind to separate her feelings, an............