The reasons why a girl of Roberta's type should be seeking employment with Griffiths and Company at this timeand in this capacity are of some point. For, somewhat after the fashion of Clyde in relation to his family and hislife, she too considered her life a great disappointment. She was the daughter of Titus Alden, a farmer--of nearBiltz, a small town in Mimico County, some fifty miles north. And from her youth up she had seen little butpoverty. Her father--the youngest of three sons of Ephraim Alden, a farmer in this region before him--was sounsuccessful that at forty-eight he was still living in a house which, though old and much in need of repair at thetime his father willed it to him, was now bordering upon a state of dilapidation. The house itself, while primarilya charming example of that excellent taste which produced those delightful gabled homes which embellish theaverage New England town and street, had been by now so reduced for want of paint, shingles, and certain flagswhich had once made a winding walk from a road gate to the front door, that it presented a decidedly melancholyaspect to the world, as though it might be coughing and saying: "Well, things are none too satisfactory with me."The interior of the house corresponded with the exterior. The floor boards and stair boards were loose andcreaked most eerily at times. Some of the windows had shades--some did not. Furniture of both an earlier and alater date, but all in a somewhat decayed condition, intermingled and furnished it in some nondescript mannerwhich need hardly be described.

　　As for the parents of Roberta, they were excellent examples of that native type of Americanism which resistsfacts and reveres illusion. Titus Alden was one of that vast company of individuals who are born, pass through and die out of the world without ever quite getting any one thing straight. They appear, blunder, and end in a fog.

　　Like his two brothers, both older and almost as nebulous, Titus was a farmer solely because his father had been afarmer. And he was here on this farm because it had been willed to him and because it was easier to stay here andtry to work this than it was to go elsewhere. He was a Republican because his father before him was aRepublican and because this county was Republican. It never occurred to him to be otherwise. And, as in thecase of his politics and his religion, he had borrowed all his notions of what was right and wrong from thoseabout him. A single, serious, intelligent or rightly informing book had never been read by any member of thisfamily--not one. But they were nevertheless excellent, as conventions, morals and religions go--honest, upright,God-fearing and respectable.

　　In so far as the daughter of these parents was concerned, and in the face of natural gifts which fitted her forsomething better than this world from which she derived, she was still, in part, at least, a reflection of thereligious and moral notions there and then prevailing,--the views of the local ministers and the laity in general.

　　At the same time, because of a warm, imaginative, sensuous temperament, she was filled--once she reachedfifteen and sixteen--with the world-old dream of all of Eve's daughters from the homeliest to the fairest--that herbeauty or charm might some day and ere long smite bewitchingly and so irresistibly the soul of a given man ormen.

　　So it was that although throughout her infancy and girlhood she was compelled to hear of and share a deprivingand toilsome poverty, still, because of her innate imagination, she was always thinking of something better.

　　Maybe, some day, who knew, a larger city like Albany or Utica! A newer and greater life.

　　And then what dreams! And in the orchard of a spring day later, between her fourteenth and eighteenth yearswhen the early May sun was making pink lamps of every aged tree and the ground was pinkly carpeted with thefalling and odorous petals, she would stand and breathe and sometimes laugh, or even sigh, her arms upreachedor thrown wide to life. To be alive! To have youth and the world before one. To think of the eyes and the smileof some youth of the region who by the merest chance had passed her and looked, and who might never lookagain, but who, nevertheless, in so doing, had stirred her young soul to dreams.

　　None the less she was shy, and hence recessive--afraid of men, especially the more ordinary types common tothis region. And these in turn, repulsed by her shyness and refinement, tended to recede from her, for all of herphysical charm, which was too delicate for this region. Nevertheless, at the age of sixteen, having repaired toBiltz, in order to work in Appleman's Dry Goods Store for five dollars a week, she saw many young men whoattracted her. But here because of her mood in regard to her family's position, as well as the fact that to herinexperienced eyes they appeared so much better placed than herself, she was convinced that they would not beinterested in her. And here again it was her own mood that succeeded in alienating them almost completely.

　　Nevertheless she remained working for Mr. Appleman until she was between eighteen and nineteen, all the whilesensing that she was really doing nothing for herself because she was too closely identified with her home andher family, who appeared to need her.

　　And then about this time, an almost revolutionary thing for this part of the world occurred. For because of thecheapness of labor in such an extremely rural section, a small hosiery plant was built at Trippetts Mills. Andthough Roberta, because of the views and standards that prevailed hereabout, had somehow conceived of thistype of work as beneath her, still she was fascinated by the reports of the high wages to be paid. Accordingly she repaired to Trippetts Mills, where, boarding at the house of a neighbor who had previously lived in Biltz, andreturning home every Saturday afternoon, she planned to bring together the means for some further form ofpractical education--a course at a business college at Homer or Lycurgus or somewhere which might fit her forsomething better--bookkeeping or stenography.

　　And in connection with this dream and this attempted saving two years went by. And in the meanwhile, althoughshe earned more money (eventually twelve dollars a week), still, because various members of her family requiredso many little things and she desired to alleviate to a degree the privations of these others from which shesuffered, nearly all that she earned went to them.

　　And again here, as at Biltz, most of the youths of the town who were better suited to her intellectually andtemperamentally--still looked upon the mere factory type as beneath them in many ways. And although Robertawas far from being that type, still having associated herself with them she was inclined to absorb some of theirpsychology in regard to themselves. Indeed by then she was fairly well satisfied that no one of these here inwhom sh............