“Harrie!” said the Doctor, at his wit’s end, “this will never do in the world.  I believe—­I declare!—­Miss Hannah!—­I believe I must send you to bed.”

“And then I’m SUCH a little skeleton!” finished Harrie, royally, with a great gulp.

Dr. Sharpe gathered the little skeleton all into a heap in his arms,—­it was a very funny heap, by the way, but that doesn’t matter,—­and to the best of my knowledge and belief he cried just about as hard as she did.

The Tenth of January.

The city of Lawrence is unique in its way.

For simooms that scorch you and tempests that freeze; for sand-heaps and sand-hillocks and sand-roads; for men digging sand, for women shaking off sand, for minute boys crawling in sand; for sand in the church-slips and the gingerbread-windows, for sand in your eyes, your nose, your mouth, down your neck? up your sleeves, under your chignon, down your throat; for unexpected corners where tornadoes lie in wait; for “bleak, uncomforted” sidewalks, where they chase you, dog you, confront you, strangle you, twist you, blind you, turn your umbrella wrong side out; for “dimmykhrats” and bad ice-cream; for unutterable circus-bills and religious tea-parties; for uncleared ruins, and mills that spring up in a night; for jaded faces and busy feet; for an air of youth and incompleteness at which you laugh, and a consciousness of growth and greatness which you respect,—­it—­

I believe, when I commenced that sentence, I intended to say that it would be difficult to find Lawrence’s equal.

Of the twenty-five thousand souls who inhabit that city, ten thousand are operatives in the factories.  Of these ten thousand two thirds are girls.

These pages are written as one sets a bit of marble to mark a mound.  I linger over them as we linger beside the grave of one who sleeps well; half sadly, half gladly,—­more gladly than sadly,—­but hushed.

The time to see Lawrence is when the mills open or close.  So languidly the dull-colored, inexpectant crowd wind in!  So briskly they come bounding out!  Factory faces have a look of their own,—­not only their common dinginess, and a general air of being in a hurry to find the wash-bowl, but an appearance of restlessness,—­often of envious restlessness, not habitual in most departments of “healthy labor.”  Watch them closely:  you can read their histories at a venture.  A widow this, in the dusty black, with she can scarcely remember how many mouths to feed at home.  Worse than widowed that one:  she has put her baby out to board,—­and humane people know what that means,—­to keep the little thing beyond its besotted father’s reach.  There is a group who have “just come over.”  A child’s face here, old before its time.  That girl—­she climbs five flights of stairs twice a day—­will climb no more stairs for herself or another by the time the clover-leaves are green.  “The best thing about one’s grave is that it will be level,” she was heard once to say.  Somebody muses a little here,—­she is to be married this winter.  There is a face just behind her whose fixed eyes repel and attract you; there may be more love than guilt in them, more despair than either.