This girl, Asenath Martyn, when left to herself, fell into a contented dream not common to girls who have reached her age,—­especially girls who have seen the phases of life which she had seen.  Yet few of the faces in the streets that led her home were more gravely lined.  She puzzled one at the first glance, and at the second.  An artist, meeting her musing on a canal-bridge one day, went home and painted a May-flower budding in February.

It was a damp, unwholesome place, the street in which she lived, cut short by a broken fence, a sudden steep, and the water; filled with children,—­they ran from the gutters after her, as she passed,—­and filled to the brim; it tipped now and then, like an over-full soup-plate, and spilled out two or three through the break in the fence.

Down in the corner, sharp upon the water, the east-winds broke about a little yellow house, where no children played; an old man’s face watched at a window, and a nasturtium-vine crawled in the garden.  The broken panes of glass about the place were well mended, and a clever little gate, extemporized from a wild grape-vine, swung at the entrance.  It was not an old man’s work.

Asenath went in with expectant eyes; they took in the room at a glance, and fell.

“Dick hasn’t come, father?”

“Come and gone child; didn’t want any supper, he said.  Your ’re an hour before time, Senath.”

“Yes.  Didn’t want any supper, you say?  I don’t see why not.”

“No more do I, but it’s none of our concern as I knows on; very like the pickles hurt him for dinner; Dick never had an o’er-strong stomach, as you might say.  But you don’t tell me how it m’ happen you’re let out at four o’clock, Senath,” half complaining.

“O, something broke in the machinery, father; you know you wouldn’t understand if I told you what.”

He looked up from his bench,—­he cobbled shoes there in the corner on his strongest days,—­and after her as she turned quickly away and up stairs to change her dress.  She was never exactly cross with her father; but her words rang impatiently sometimes.

She came down presently, transformed, as only factory-girls are transformed, by the simple little toilet she had been making; her thin, soft hair knotted smoothly, the tips of her fingers rosy from the water, her pale neck well toned by her gray stuff dress and cape;—­Asenath always wore a cape:  there was one of crimson flannel, with a hood, that she had meant to wear to-night; she had thought about it coming home from the mill; she was apt to wear it on Saturdays and Sundays; Dick had more time at home.  Going up stairs to-night, she had thrown it away into a drawer, and shut the drawer with a snap; then opened it softly, and cried a little; but she had not taken it out.

As she moved silently about the room, setting the supper-table for two, crossing and recrossing the broad belt of sunlight that fell upon the floor, it was easy to read the sad story of the little hooded capes.