Читать книгу Katie Robertson - Margaret E. Winslow - Страница 3

"Hallo, Katie, wake up, wake up!" and Eric rattled the knob of his sister's door. But he was compelled to do so many times before he heard a sleepy "What's the matter?"

"Matter? Why, it's high time you were up if you mean to get to the factory this morning."

"It's the middle of the night," said Katie, yawning.

"Indeed, it is not. It's after five o'clock, and work begins at half-past six. You haven't a moment to spare if you want to dress yourself, get your breakfast, and get to the mill in time; it's farther off than the bindery. Come, be a brave girl, and jump up quickly."

Thus adjured, the little girl jumped out of bed—but how cold and dark it was! although Eric had left the lamp in the hall outside. One of Katie's failings—not an uncommon one among girls and boys—was a great dislike to getting up early in the morning, and her mother had always humored her in the matter, getting up herself and giving the boys their breakfast early, and then waking her little girl just in time to eat her own and get to school at nine o'clock. Even then it was sometimes a difficult task.

The young work-woman had not included the necessity of getting up so very early in the morning as one of the many anticipated delights of her new position. This first taste of it seemed, on the contrary, quite a hardship. Still, when she was once out of bed, there was a certain romance in dressing by lamplight, and she knelt down by her bedside to offer her morning prayer, with a strange feeling of mingled awe and thankfulness.

Katie Robertson was a Christian girl, and was really desirous to please the blessed Saviour who had done so much for her. She could not remember the time when she did not love him; but for the last few years, since she had grown older and begun to understand things better, she had felt a longing desire to be like him and to please him in her life and actions. She found time to open her little Bible this morning and read one or two verses by the light of the lamp. They were these:—

"In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths"; "Whether, therefore, ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God," and "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

And then she prayed earnestly that she might in these "ways" upon which she was entering always "acknowledge" God, be faithful to her work, do it "to the glory of God," and have the strength which the Lord Jesus Christ has promised to give to those who ask him, to resist temptation and stand up for truth and righteousness in the new life which lay before her. She prayed, also, that her heavenly Father would give her some work to do for him among her companions in the mill, and then she went downstairs.

Breakfast was all ready, and it seemed quite funny to eat it by lamplight; but by the time it was over it was pretty light outside, and when, warmly wrapped up, Katie left the house with her brothers there was a rosy flush over the snow which sparkled and glistened, and the young factory-girl set out in high spirits for her first day's work. The boys escorted her as far as the great gates, where a good many other girls and boys were waiting among a crowd of men and women, and then ran back to be in time at the bindery, which was a little nearer home.

It was rather cold waiting outside, and, if the truth must be told, our little girl felt just a trifle homesick among so many strangers, for as yet she had not seen a familiar face, and something seemed to rise in her throat that she found hard to swallow; but just as she felt that she must have a good cry, and at the same time resolved that she wouldn't, the great steam-whistle shrieked, the bell in the tower rang, the gates opened from the inside, the gathered crowd rushed in, and all along the road might be seen flying figures of men, women, boys, and girls, hurrying to be in their places at the commencement of work and thus avoid the fine imposed upon stragglers. There was a pause of a few moments in the paved inside court while the inner doors of the great brick building were opened, and then the incoming crowd entering in various directions, scattered among the different corridors and left the "new girl" standing alone and bewildered at the entrance.

In front of her stretched a long, narrow hall, clean and fresh (Squantown Paper Mills were new and built after the most approved models), with doors opening from it at intervals on both sides. Some of these doors were open and some were shut; into some the work-people were constantly disappearing, as though the doors were mouths that opened suddenly and swallowed them up, and into some of the open ones Katie peeped timidly and turned back disconsolately as she discovered that they only afforded entrance to similar corridors, pierced by similar rows of doors.

At length the last straggler had entered, gone his way, and disappeared, and dead silence reigned. Katie felt as though she were alone in the universe, and almost wondered if she were to be left there forever, when a short, sharp, deafening whistle echoed through the hall, and at the same instant the great building vibrated from top to bottom, the roar of machinery swallowed up the silence, and the day's work began.

Immediately afterward a side door, close to where our little girl was standing, opened, and out of it came the foreman of the mill, who had been up to this moment in the office, receiving his orders for the day.

"Hallo, you!" he said crossly, seeing a girl standing idle in the hall; "why don't you go about your business? Go to work if you belong here; go home if you don't! No idlers or beggars allowed here, so close to the office door, too. Come, run away quickly."

"If you please, Mr. Thornton, I've come to work in the mill, in the rag-room, but I don't know which way to go."

"Oh!" said the foreman, "you're a new hand, eh? Rather a small one. It seems to me Mr. Mountjoy will end by having a nursery rather than a mill, but he knows his own business best, I suppose. New hands are not in my department, however. Mr. James," he called, reopening the office door and putting his head in again, "here's some work for you."

The "new hand" expected now to have an interview with the awful Mr. Mountjoy, Miss Etta's father, of whom she had heard so much, but had never yet seen, and began to tremble a little in anticipation. But, instead, a rosy-faced, light-haired young man appeared, to whom the foreman made a slight bow, and then went away. This was Mr. James Mountjoy, Miss Etta's brother, and the only son of the proprietor of the mill. Katie had heard her brothers, who were in his Sunday-school class, talk about him, but had never seen him before.

"Your name, little girl," he said pleasantly, as he ushered her into the office.

"Katie Robertson, sir. Mr. Sanderson"—

"Oh, I know; Mr. Sanderson recommended you to my father. You look almost too small to work. Can you do anything?"

"I can cook, and wash dishes, and help mother, and sew; I was in the first class at school"—

"That is not any of it precisely the kind of work we do here," said the young gentleman, pleasantly; "but no doubt you are a quick little girl, and if you are used to doing some kinds of work others will not come so hard to you. But you must understand in the beginning that work in a factory is work, not play; work that cannot be laid aside when one is tired of it, or when one wants to go on an excursion or to do something else. It is work, too, for which you are to be paid, and it would be dishonesty not to do it faithfully as in the sight of God. Our rules are no stricter than they must be for the best good of the work and the comfort and protection of all, but we expect them to be obeyed. You will remember that. There must be no playing or whispering in work hours, and you must always be on time. We want all our work-people to be happy, and I am sure that the best kind of happiness comes from fidelity to duty. Can you be a faithful little girl?"

"Yes, sir," said Katie, with a slight blush, though she did not feel at all afraid of him; "I am trying to please God everywhere, and I am sure he will help me to do so here."

"I am glad to hear you say that," said the young man, with a smile. "If every man, woman, and child in this factory were really trusting in God and trying to please him, we wouldn't need so many rules and the work would not be so hard. One thing more: I believe you are to be in the rag-room; that is a dirty place, in spite of all our efforts to keep it clean and well ventilated; you won't find it very pleasant there always, but perhaps you can learn to endure for Christ's and duty's sake; and every one has to begin at the bottom, you know, who means to climb to the top of the ladder."

During the latter part of this talk the gentleman and the child had been ascending flight after flight of broad, open staircases, as well as several narrow, spiral ones, crossing machinery-rooms, where great arms and wheels and screws, in constant motion, made the little girl shudder, and threading narrow passages and outside balconies, where the broad raceway foamed and roared fifty or sixty feet beneath them. Katie had never been inside of the great paper-mill before, though she had always admired its fine proportions and handsome architecture from the outside. She was surprised now to see how really beautiful everything was. The floors were laid in wood of two contrasting colors; the balusters were of solid black walnut; there were rows and rows of clear glass windows in the rooms and corridors, while the machinery was either of shining steel or polished brass. In some of the rooms were girls tending the ruling and cutting and folding machines, and occasionally one would nod to Katie, but no one spoke except where the work rendered it necessary.

At last the room next to the top of the vast building was reached, and there Mr. James opened a door and ushered Katie into a room which extended the whole length of one side of the building. The windows, of which there were fifteen, were wide open, but for all that the air was so thick with dust that at first Katie drew back with a sense of suffocation.

"I told you it would not be pleasant," said Mr. James, "but this is your appointed place. Be a brave girl, and when you are used to it it won't seem so bad."

The sense of suffocation was caused by the particles of dust with which the air was heavily laden, and which flew from the piles of rags which over fifty girls were busily engaged in sorting, putting the dark-colored ones by themselves, the medium-colored by themselves, and the white ones—or those that had been white—into large boxes. As soon as these boxes were filled they were placed on wheelbarrows and emptied into long slides by men who waited for them and returned the boxes. Mr. James explained to his young companion that these slides emptied their contents into great vats in the room below, where after lying some days in a certain purifying solution they were boiled with soda to loosen the dirt, thoroughly washed by machinery, and passed into great copper kettles, where they were boiled to a pulp and ground at the same time, horizontal grindstones reducing them to the finest powder. He also showed her that the dust was rendered much less hurtful than it would otherwise have been by a great fan kept constantly at work on one side of the room, which drove it out of the windows in front of the girls, who were thus not compelled to breathe it unless they turned directly around facing the blast, as Katie had done on entering the room. He then put her under the care of a pleasant-faced woman, whose duty it was to oversee the little girls, saw that she had a comfortable seat, shook hands with her, and went away.

Mr. James was by no means called upon to be so polite to a "new hand"; most employers would have told the child which way to go and then left her to shift for herself, or at best have sent a man or boy to show her the way. Perhaps he would have done so with some girls, but he saw that the child was timid and homesick, and knew that a few kind words would go a great way toward making her feel at home and happy, and would serve as an offset against the disagreeable first impressions of the rag-room, and the weariness of regular work undertaken for the first time.

Why should he care to have one of his factory girls "feel at home and happy"? some one will say; his relations with them are only those of business: so much work for so much money; it was nothing to him what they thought or felt. Mr. James Mountjoy did not feel so. He thought that his father and he were placed in this responsible position and given the care of several hundred human souls expressly that some good work might be done for them. He felt that human beings are more precious than machinery, and that happiness is an important factor in goodness. He looked upon his work-people as those for whom he must give account, and tried to act in all his dealings with them "to the glory of God." Had he been actuated by the purest selfishness and the most approved business principles, he could not have chosen a wiser course; for men and women treated as friends become almost of necessity friendly, and seeing their own interests cared for were all the more likely to care for those of their employer. Katie Robertson certainly never forgot Mr. James's judicious kindness on the morning of her entrance into the mill; he was to her the kindest, sweetest, and most lovable of gentlemen. She felt ready to do anything he should tell her and to keep every rule he might make. Then, too, he was a Christian, and understood all about what she meant when she had said God would help her; surely it must be very easy to be good and resist temptation in a place with such a master, and she felt like thanking God that, in spite of the suffocating dust, "the lines had fallen to her in such very pleasant places."