November blew into December, December congealed into January, while she kept her silence.  Dick, in his honorable heart, seeing that she suffered, wearied himself with plans to make her eyes shine; brought her two pails of water instead of one, never forgot the fire, helped her home from the mill.  She saw him meet Del Ivory once upon Essex Street with a grave and silent bow; he never spoke with her now.  He meant to pay the debt he owed her down to the uttermost farthing; that grew plain.  Did she try to speak her wretched secret, he suffocated her with kindness, struck her dumb with tender words.

She used to analyze her life in those days, considering what it would be without him.  To be up by half past five o’clock in the chill of all the winter mornings, to build the fire and cook the breakfast and sweep the floor, to hurry away, faint and weak, over the raw, slippery streets, to climb at half past six the endless stairs and stand at the endless loom, and hear the endless wheels go buzzing round, to sicken in the oily smells, and deafen at the remorseless noise, and weary of the rough girl swearing at the other end of the pass; to eat her cold dinner from a little cold tin pail out on the stairs in the three-quarters-of-an-hour recess; to come exhausted home at half past six at night, and get the supper, and brush up about the shoemaker’s bench, and be too weak to eat; to sit with aching shoulders and make the button-holes of her best dress, or darn her father’s stockings, till nine o’clock; to hear no bounding step or cheery whistle about the house; to creep into bed and lie there trying not to think, and wishing that so she might creep into her grave,—­this not for one winter, but for all the winters,—­how should you like it, you young girls, with whom time runs like a story?

The very fact that her employers dealt honorably by her; that she was fairly paid, and promptly, for her wearing toil; that the limit of endurance was consulted in the temperature of the room, and her need of rest in an occasional holiday,—­perhaps, after all, in the mood she was in, did not make this factory life more easy.  She would have found it rather a relief to have somebody to complain of,—­wherein she was like the rest of us, I fancy.

But at last there came a day—­it chanced to be the ninth of January—­when Asenath went away alone at noon, and sat where Merrimack sung his songs to her.  She hid her face upon her knees, and listened and thought her own thoughts, till they and the slow torment of the winter seemed greater than she could bear.  So, passing her hands confusedly over her forehead, she said at last aloud, “That’s what God means, Asenath Martyn!” and went back to work with a purpose in her eyes.

She “asked out” a little earlier than usual, and went slowly home.  Dick was there before her; he had been taking a half-holiday.  He had made the tea and toasted the bread for a little surprise.  He came up and said, “Why, Sene, your hands are cold!” and warmed them for her in his own.