Amid this environment the girl lives. She studies her lessons
in school and at the library. Her mother constantly urges her to give up
school and go to work but an uncle who furnishes her meager supply of
dresses, shoes, coats and hats, says it would only make her father feel
that he could give still less to the family's support and so she
continues to attend. Every evening she helps her mother and on Saturday
works hard for a neighbor with only a pittance for pay.
The school and the Sunday-school have furnished all her ideals and she
is holding on to them while her father taunts her with being a "saint,"
and the girls of the neighborhood tempt her to join with them in the
things she knows are wrong. The hour on Sunday is a great help and on
Monday she loses herself in her lessons and enjoys her school friends.
She is only sixteen and she cannot help hoping that things will be
better soon. But Wednesday there is another dreadful quarrel, bitter
words and her father's drunken threats. When late at night all is quiet
and she creeps into bed beside her little sister, her ideals seem far,
far away, out of her reach, but she says, "I _must_ reach them, I
_must_, I _will_." And so day after day she presents to all the waves of
discouragement and evil the strong, granite-like determination that will
not let the tide come in.
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