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Show LOSE JOY OF LIFE HUSBANDS ANO CHILDREN NOT FOR ' MILL GIRLS. Have Little Choice But to Become Old , Maids One Glad Because She Misunderstood the Meaning of License. There were four Carroll girls, all over 18. Their father, a small, white- i haired, dignified man, was In the room 1 and smiled a timid welcome. The girls were still In black for the mother who died a year before, aays Rheta Dorr In the Droadway Magazine. . "It Is much' harder for us now that mother's gone," said Sallle Carroll. "But she made ns promise on her deathbed that we'd keep things just as she always haa and we're certainly bound to do It. We all work in the mill. We aro weavers, weav-ers, except Nannie there, the youngest. young-est. She Is a warper. We don't let father work any more. We make enough for us all and him, too, and somebody's Just got to be at homo to look out for things - or else Where's your home?" "Why do poor folks havo such big families?" demanded Nannie Carroll, Indignantly. "They've got no business to. Why do poor folks marry at all?" "Don't you expect to?" I asked. Tho faces of all the girls were sober. "Wo can't figure out that there's any choice for us between breaking up our home and being old maids," said the oldest Carroll girl. "It may be a disgrace dis-grace to be an old maid. People say It is. but at least we are comfortablo and happy. Why, what would becomo of father if we married?" I instantly thought of a girl I know in Fart River. She was a weaver, too, and earned $11 a week, which made her an object of desire to more than one young man in the town. But at 25 sho was still single. In the course of a confidential talk I asked her why sho had never married and sho told mo with much laughter the reason. "When I was 18," sho said, "I was foolish enough to fall In love with the timekeeper in the clothroom at the Iron works "mills. He was better look, ing then than he is now. Well, he asked me to marry him and I said I would. Then he said we ought to go and get the license. 'What license?' I asked, flaming mad. You see, we girls had a dog we were awfully fond of and one day the poundkeeper came around and said we'd have to take out a license or he would kill the dog. So we skimped and saved and went without with-out carfare until we had enough to pay for the dog's license. "Well, 6omehow, the word license seemed to me to be connected with a dog. I didn't know that people had to have licenses. I told my young man that if he couldn't marry me without a license, as if he were paying for a dog, I wouldn't marry him. Ho arg-ued and argued and we both got madder and madder, and finally we broke It off. Mother was glad enough. Sho always hates to have one of us marry. Less money carried home, you see." She added thoughtfully: "Of course, I was a silly goose, but somehow, when I see him with his wife, she looking ten years older than sho is, with care and raising children whose only future Is In the mills, I think a marriage license and a dog license are not so very different." |