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rang very heavily and respectably to call people to the weekly
prayer-meetings, but they did not call the girls in the little
pink bows. Sometimes there were fire-bells, that shrieked
at Deb out of a yellow sky and frightened her. At nine
o’clock, when it was darkest, Deb heard the closest, pleasant-
est, awfullest bell of all. This was the great Androscoggin
bell, the largest in New England. Deb held her breath —
every night she held her breath —to listen to this bell. It
was more like a voice than a bell. Sometimes the little
cripple thought it cried. Sometimes she thought it prayed.
But she never heard it laugh. The streets, the river, the
crowd, weddings, funerals, church-spires, all the strange
things that Deb in the daytime saw with her eyes shut,
came, or seemed to come, at night, when her eyes were open,
and talk to her —but always prayed or cried and never
smiled — out of the solemn Androscoggin bell.

The solemn Androscoggin bell was ringing the mill-girls in
by broad sunlight one noon, a little testily, when there came
a knock at the door, and behind it the young lady of whom
Theard. Deb was startled by the knock, and frightened by
the young lady. It was not often that visitors came to Brick
Alley, and it was still less often that Brick Alley had a
visitor who knocked.

This was a young lady for whom Deb’s mother did fine
washing. Deb’s mother wiped her hands and a chair, and
the young lady sat down. She was a straight young lady
with strong fect, and long brown feathers in her hat, and soft

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