Crawford avalanche. (Grayling, Mich.) 1879-19??, 1898-02-10
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|, MEG'S VALENTINE.
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n n EG was only one of the "hands"
Nl in the great factory of Weaver
4 l. & Co.. and with about the same
regularity as the machinery she perform
ed her daily tasks.
Nobody in the factory had ever given
her so much as sympathetic glance; the
whirr of wheels the grind of machinery
the everlasting hum of moving belts and
singing Of spindles do not encourage sym
patty, and besides Meg was quiet, even
timid, and her companions, after the first
day of now and then half curious, half
critical inspection, paid no attention to
her.
And yet Meg's trouble" had been
romance; a sort OF flower which blooms
sometimes along the hedgerows with the
same beauty and sweetness as in the con-
servntory.
Born was all Meg knew about her orig
in: brought up, at first in charitable in
stitution, later as the chore girl in
boarding house, which always smelled Of
dirt and rancidity; and still later as
boarder at the same place, because it was
more like home to her after her long, hard
days work at the factory, where she had
secured employment at the age OF Is.
Meg's life had been an uneventful one.
Meg was ignorant, her schooling hav-
Ing been encompassed by a six months
course Mt grammar school in the neigh
borhood, and for which educational au-
vantage" she had toiled for the mistress
OF the boarding house until her health
threatened to give way under the strain.
But since somebody, back in the past
OF Meg's unknown ancestry, had sent a
drop of ambitious blood flowing through
her veins, within the six months she had
learned to read easy words, both in print
and writing, and she was proud of the
fact.
She did glory in her power to read and
spell out the meaning of such cheap books
as came in her way, and once, having
watched a postman deliver a letter across
the street. she was seized with wish
that was somewhat akin to pain to re-
ceive letter from somebody-just to see
If she could frame an answer.
She had never received a letter and
thinking it over from this standpoint,
Meg felt that she was very lonely and she
vaguely wondered how it all came about
that nobody in all the thousands which
made up the big city-the big city was
Meg's world-had cared whether she liv-
eu VI uleu.
Once a sweet little girl, who was walk
Ing with her nurse, had looked up into
her face and with that free fasonry which
knows nothing of rules and which has in
it the element, nay, the very essence of
fraternity, had pressed n tiny cluster of
yiolets into her hand.
And so the days went on, to-day as yes
terday, tomorrow as to-day, until one
morning Meg oversight herself, by some
method of calculation which did not con-
slider time in the light Of dollars and cents
added to her income, and she went to her
breakfast late. The landlady was usu-
ally pleasant when a boarder happened
TO be late at breakfast and, as became
one in her exalted position, she made an
Offensc of this kind on Meg's part an af-
fair of great importance.
Not that Meg in all the years she had
worked for Weaver & Co. had been late
to breakfast more than three or four
times. but the landlady never quite forgot
that Meg had at one time been her will
Ing slave and any dereliction on her part
which was savored of independence was
not A thing to lightly pass over.
On the morning in question, the land
lady, much to Meg's surprise, greeted her
in IN affable manner and her grim mouth
quivered with something which might,
under favorable conditions, have been
mistaken for a smile. but which had had