Susan Coolidge - Just Sixteen.

"Do you really think that? But what's the use of talking? I may stick where I am for years, and never do more than just make a living."

"I wouldn't!" said Georgie, throwing back her pretty head with an air of decision. "I should scorn to 'stick' if I were a man! And I don't believe you will either. If you once go into it heartily and put your will into it, you're sure to succeed. I always considered you clever, you know. You'll go up – up – as sure as, as sure as dust , – that's the thing of all the world that's most certain to rise, I think."

"'Overmastered with a clod of valiant marl,'" muttered Robert below his breath; then aloud, "Well, if that's the view you take of it, I'll do my best to prove you right. It's worth a good deal to know that there is somebody who expects something of me."

"I expect everything of you," said Georgie confidently. And Bob went back to his post at the end of the fortnight infinitely cheered and heartened.

"Bless her brave little heart!" he said to himself. "I won't disappoint her if I can help it; or, if I must, I'll know the reason why."

It is curious, and perhaps a little humiliating, to realize how much our lives are affected by what may be called accident. A touch here or there, a little pull up or down to set us going, often determines the direction in which we go, and direction means all. Robert Curtis in after times always dated the beginning of his fortunes from the day when he walked into his uncle's library and found Georgie Talcott cataloguing books.

"It set me to making a man of myself," he used to say.

Georgie did not see him for more than a year after his departure, but he wrote twice to say that he had taken her advice and it had "worked," and he had "got a rise." The truth was that the boy had an undeveloped capacity for affairs, inherited from the able old grandfather, who laid the foundations of the fortune which Bob's father muddled away. When once will and energy were roused and brought into play, this hereditary bent asserted itself. Bob became valuable to his employers, and like Georgie's "dust," began to go up in the business scale.

Georgie had just successfully re-established the Algernon Parishes, who arrived five months later than was expected, in their home, when Bob came up for a second visit to his uncle. This time he had three weeks' leave, and it was just before he went back that he proposed the formation of what he was pleased to call "A Labor Union."

"You see I'm a working man now just as you are a working woman," he explained. "It's our plain duty to co-operate. You shall be Grand Master – or rather Mistress – and I'll be some sort of a subordinate, – a Walking Delegate, perhaps."

"Indeed, you shall be nothing of the sort. Walking Delegates are particularly idle people, I've always heard. They just go about ordering other folks to stop work and do nothing."

"Then I won't be one. I'll be Grand Master's Mate."

"There's no such office in Labor Unions. If we have one at all, you must have the first place in it."

"What is that position? Please describe it in full. Whatever happens, I won't strike."

"Oh," said Georgie, with the prettiest blush in the world, "the position is too intricate for explanation; we won't describe it."

"But will you join the Union?"

"I thought we had joined already, – both of us."

"Now, Georgie, dearest, I'm in earnest. Thanks to you, I know what work means and how good it is. And now I want my reward, which is to work beside you always as long as I live. Don't turn away your head, but tell me that I may."

I cannot tell you exactly what was Georgie's answer, for this conversation took place on the beach, and just then they sat down on the edge of a boat and began to talk in such low tones that no one could overhear; but as they sat a long time and she went home leaning contentedly on Bob's arm, I presume she answered as he wished. He went back to his work soon afterward, and has made his way up very fast since. Next spring the firm with which he is connected propose to send him to Chicago to start a new branch of their business there. He is to have a good salary and a share of the profits, and it is understood that Georgie will go with him. She has kept on steadily at her various avocations, has made herself so increasingly useful that all Sandyport wonders what it shall do without her when she goes away, and has laid up what Miss Sally calls "a tidy bit of money" toward the furnishing of the home which she and Bob hope to have before long. Mrs. St. John has many plans in mind for the wedding; and though Georgie laughingly protests that she means to be married in a white apron, with a wreath of "dusty miller" round her head, I dare say she will give in when the time comes, and consent to let her little occasion be made pretty. Even a girl who works likes to have her marriage day a bright one.

Cousin Vi, for her part, is dimly reaching out toward a reconciliation. For, be it known, work which brings success, and is proved to have a solid money value of its own, loses in the estimation of the fastidious its degrading qualities, and is spoken of by the more euphonious title of "good fortune." It is only work which doesn't succeed, which remains forever disrespectable. I think I may venture to predict that the time will come when Cousin Vi will condone all Georgie's wrong-doings, and extend, not the olive-branch only, but both hands, to "the Curtises," that is if they turn out as prosperous as their friends predict and expect them to be.

But whatever Fate may have in store for my dear little Georgie and her chosen co-worker, of one thing I am sure, – that, fare as they may with worldly fortune, they will never be content, having tasted of the salt of work, to feed again on the honey-bread of idleness, or become drones in the working-hive, but will persevere to the end in the principles and practices of what in the best sense of the word may be called their Labor Union.

THE weather was very cold, though it was not Christmas yet, and to the great delight of the Kane children, December had brought an early and heavy fall of snow. Older people were sorry. They grieved for the swift vanishing of the lovely Indian summer, for the blighting of the last flowers, chrysanthemums, snow-berries, bitter-sweet, and for the red leaves, so pretty but a few days since, which were now blown about and battered by the strong wind. But the children wasted no sympathy on either leaves or berries. A snow-storm seemed to them just then better than anything that ever grew on bush or tree, and they revelled in it all the long afternoon without a thought of what it had cost the world.

It was a deep snow. It lay over the lawn six inches on a level; in the hollow by the fence the drifts were at least two feet deep. There was no lack of building material therefore when Reggie proposed that they should all go to work and make a fort.

Such a wonderful fort as it turned out to be! It had walls and bastions and holes for cannon. It had cannon too, all made of snow. It had a gateway, just like a real fort, and a flag-staff and a flag. The staff was a tall slender column of snow, and they poured water over it, and it froze and became a long pole of glittering ice. The flag had a swallow-tail and was icy too. Reggie had been in New London and Newport the last summer, he had seen real fortifications and knew how they should look. Under his direction the little ones built a glacis . Some of you will know what that is, – the steep slippery grass slope which lies beneath the fort walls and is so hard to climb. This glacis was harder yet – snow is better than grass for defensive purposes – if only it would last.

"Now let's make the soldiers," shouted little Paul as the last shovel-full of snow was spread on the glacis and smoothed down.