The Other Girls

! I've cram

long atop

ute for res

n they are g

luck! lis

st there's a s

omes to its

kens! What wi

at had just come out of their shells into the world, and walked about already as if the great big world was only there, just as they had of course expected it to be. The hen was the most astonished. She was just old enough to begin to be able to be astonished. Her whole mind expressed

y; where there are rag carpets and "painted chamber-sets;" where they feed calves and young turkeys, and string apples to dry in the summer, and make wonderful patchwork quilts, and wax flowers, and worsted work, perhaps, in the long winters; where they go to church and to sewing societies from miles about, over tremendous hills and pitches, with happy-go-lucky wagons and harnesses that never come to grief; where they have few schools and intermitted teaching, yet turn out, somehow, young men who work their way into professions, and girls who t

h she loved the hills, and the lights, and the shadows, the sweet-blossoming springs and the jeweled autumns, the suns

the literal and prosaic limit of the farmhouse, where her father, as

there was reproach, and hard speech; partly deserved, but running over into that wherein she should not have been blamed,-the precinct of her step-mother's own busy and self-arrogated functions. She was taunted and censured for incapacity in that to which she was not admitted; "her mother made ten chee

ontent always do, to get away. The world wa

, and an inspiration of hope, i

ver it since she came there, a raw country girl, and began her apprenticeship to its wonders and to her own trade. She could not turn a water faucet, nor light her gas, nor count the strokes of the electric fire alarm, without feeling the grandeur of having Cochituate turned on to wash her hands,-of making her one little spark of the grand illumination under which the Three Hills shone every night,-of dwelling within ear-shot and protection of the quietly imposing system of wires and bells that worked by li

l work in the great warerooms, or now and then at days' seamstressi

now cannot manage things as they did in those days; for the same reason that you cannot buy old-fashioned "wearing" goods; they are not in the market. "Sell and wear out; wear out and sell;" that

n the daily chat, and listening over daily work: sitting at the same table; linking herself in with things, spring and fall, as the leaves do with their goings and comings; or like the equinoxes, that in March and September shut about us with friendly curt

hemselves measured, and leave the whole thing to result a week afterward in a big box sent home with everything fitted and machined and finished, with the las

o ran her own machine, cut her own basques and gores, and hired help for basting and finishing. She had almost done with even this; most people liked young help; brisker with their needles, sewing without glasses, nicer and fresher looking to have about. Poor "Aunt Bli

ngs of her employer, who had always been kind to her; she would not let her suspect or be afraid that the speech had come to her ears; she smoothed her thin old hair

yet she kept on; it was her lot and living; she looked out at her third-story window upon the roofs and spires, listened to the fire alarms, heard the chimes of a Sunday, saw carriages roll by

s of it, up in the country, to her nie

had the room below, and who came up sometimes and sat an hour with her, and took her cat when she came away, leaving in return, in her own absences, her great English ivy with Miss Bree. Of the landlady who lived in the basement, and asked them all down, now and then, to play a game of cassino or double cribbage, and eat a Welsh rabbit: of things outside that younger people did,-the girls at the warerooms and their friends. Of Peck's ch

pleasant to tell over these scraps of her small, husbanded enjoyments to Bel, what would it be to have her there, to share and make and enlarge them? To bring young girls home sometimes for a chat, or even a cup of tea; to fetch books from the library, and read them aloud of a winter evening, while she stitched on by the gas-light with her glasses on her little homely old nose? The little

no use to be wise an

er you, if you do!" said Miss Bree. "And two

aged music-mistress would like her,-perhaps even give her some fragmentary instruction in the clippings of her time. Mrs. Pimminy, the landlady,-old Mr. Sparrow, the watch-maker, who went up and down stairs to and from his nest under the eaves,-the milliner in the second-floor-back,-why, she would make friends with them all, like the sunshine! There would be s

sly, the difference between the free cou

e to be dressed up and go somewhere, when you go out. The streets are splendid, and

hich you could look through the delicate stems and flickering leaves of young far tips of branches. One little white cloud was shining down upon them as i

it all crowds up together; it gets just as close as it can, and everybody is after the same chances. 'Tain't all Fourth-of-July; you mustn't think it. M

She sat watching the fowls sc

nd half the time concludes it ain't there!-What was it you were saying? About mother? O, she don't want me! The trouble is, Aunt Blin, we two don't want each other, a

t being told; but she wouldn't have pre

reat for turning off, and going ahead, and she ain't got much patience. Such folks never has. You can't be smart and easy going too. 'Tain't possible. She's ri

see. I feel as if I ought to; I want to have my heart go out to her; but it keeps coming back again. I could be happy with you, Aunt Blin, in you

that she would speak to Kellup;

t, and Blin saw best." He let his child go out from his house down into the great, unknown, struggling, hustling, devouring city, without much thought or inquiry. It settled that point in his family. "Bel had gone down to Boston to be a dress-maker, 'long of her Aunt Blindy," was what he had to say to his neighbors. It sounded natural and satisfactory. House-holds break up after the children are grown, of course; they all settle to something; that is all it com

ce thinking that after this she

the orchard, and leaving the house quiet of a Sunday or a busy baking-day. It had been "all Bel was good for;" and it had been more than Mrs. Bree had appreciated at the time. Bel cried when she kissed them and bade

er wings, or been shut up in strange places with fierce,

down for him in his especial corner upon the hearth. He took his airings on the window-ledge where the sun slanted in of a morning, beside the very brown paper parcel in which was wrapped the mutton chop for dinner; he never touched the cheese upon the table, though he knew the word "cheese" as well as if he could spell it, and

ve years. He knew when she was coming back at one o'clock to dinner, or at nine in the evening, by the ringing of the bells. After she h

es of honor and confidence. They would not attempt to keep the cage out of his reach; that would be almost to keep it out of their own. She would talk to Bartholomew. She would show him the bird,

, "and may be Bartholomew suspects that it is old and

ne side to the place; and though the street way was very narrow, the opposite walls shut in the grounds of a public building, where there were trees and grass, and above which there was really a chance at the sky. Further along, at the corner, loomed the eight stories of an apartment hotel. All up and down this great structure, and up and down the little three-storied fronts of the Court as well, the whole place was gay with illumination, for these last were nearly all lodging houses, and at night at least, looked brilliant and grand; certainly to Bel Bree's eyes, seeing three-storied houses and gas-lights for the first time. Inside, at number eight, the one little gas jet revealed presently just what Aunt Blin had told about: the scarlet and black three-ply carpet in a really han

upon a chair. "Now I'll go and get Bartholomew, and then I'll run for some m

elcome; treating her at once as

owly, bringing the great Bartholomew in her ar

ed over it. Aunt Blin pulled the paper off with one hand, holding Bartholomew fast under the other arm. H

t, most confident, most deliberate tones, "see he

eyes sent out green sparks; hair and whiskers were on end; he devoured poor littl

He's just ready to spring. He do

w against Bartholomew's sides, and went o

omew! We wouldn't have it touched for all the w

lashing now, behind her back, nor the fierce eyes, glowing l

s, while you eat your breakfast. And you shall have CHEESE fo

Don't show it to him any more! Let me

that we're precious of it. Don't you, Ba

he cat down, and turned roun

ching and creeping; he must wait till nobody looked. He knew very well what he w

lin, with a big pin in her mouth, and settling her shoulders into

sin; but for the resistance of evil enticements hereafter, under Miss Bree's trustful system,-though he walked off now like a deacon after a benedict

ed from the closet with her hands full of kindlings, and pushed the

. Then she and Aunt Blin came together at a sharp angle of incidence in the middle of the room, the kindlings scattered about the carpet; and there was the corollary to the exhortation. The overturned cage,-the dragged-off table-cloth,-the clumsy Bartholomew, bi

dropped discomfited, and chirping to Cheepsie with a vehemence meant to be reassuring, but failing of its tender i

nt Blin let loose more desperately her denunciations. There is something in hu

u're a horrid, monstrous, abominable

e fairly

I could have trusted you! Was you a murderer in your heart all the time? Go

so as to suggest their grieved abandonment

ugh for the moment, under the table. He knew he was scolded at; he was found out and disappointed; but there was

face of greed, mortified, but persistent; not a bit changed to any real humility. Why do they s

re," said Aunt Blin, with a terrible mildness.

re. She might give the creature cheese,

her now. Before, there had only been Bartholomew; he had had to

,-it was so funny in its meek manifestation,-t

our beautiful Bartholomew, w

n shook

n-fidence in him! You'd better hang the cag

it over again, as she

o-con-fiden