The agent's father and mother, young people who lived for a short time
in the village, had both died when he was only three years old, and
between that time and his ninth year he had learned almost everything
that poverty could teach, being left like little Maggie to the mercy
of his neighbors. He remembered with a grateful heart those who were
good to him, and told him of his mother, who had married for love but
unwisely. Mrs. Kilpatrick was one of these old friends, who said that
his mother was a lady, but even Mrs. Kilpatrick, who was a walking
history of the Corporation, had never known his mother's maiden name,
much less the place of her birth. The first great revelation of life
had come when the nine-years-old boy had money in his hand to pay his
board. He was conscious of being looked at with a difference; the very
woman who had been hardest to him and let him mind her babies all the
morning when he, careful little soul, was hardly more than a baby
himself, and then pushed him out into the hungry street at dinner
time, was the first one who beckoned him now, willing to make the most
of his dollar and a quarter a week. It seemed easy enough to rise from
uttermost poverty and dependence to where one could set his mind upon
the highest honor in sight, that of being agent of the mills, or to
work one's way steadily to where such an honor was grasped at
thirty-two. Every year the horizon had set its bounds wider and wider,
until the mills of Farley held but a small place in the manufacturing
world.
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