shoulder, I shall get on better."

"I cannot," said the child. "If I make haste home I shall have some
dates," and she ran on.

Selene looked after her, and an inward voice, against which she had had
to rebel before to-day, asked her why she of all people must be a
sufferer for others, when they thought only of themselves, and with a
heavy sigh, she made a fresh attempt to proceed on her way.

When she had gone a few steps, neither seeing not hearing anything that
passed her, a girl came up to her, and asked her timidly, but kindly,
what was the matter. It was a leaf-joiner who sat opposite to her at the
works, a poor, deformed creature, who, nevertheless, plied her nimble
fingers contentedly and silently, and who at first had taught Selene and
Arsinoe many useful tricks of working. The girl offered her crooked
shoulder unasked as a support to Selene, and measured her step; to those
of the sufferer with as much nicety as if she felt everything that Selene
herself did; thus, without speaking, they reached the door of the
factory; there, in the first court-yard the little hunchback made Selene
sit down on one of the bundles of papyrus-stems which lay all about the
place, by the side of the tanks in which the plants were dipped to
freshen them, and arranged in order, built up into high heaps, according
to the localities whence they were brought. After a short rest, they
went on through the hall in which the triangular green stems were sorted,
according to the quality of the white pith they contained. The next
rooms, in which men stripped the green sheath from the pith, and the long
galleries where the more skilled hands split the pith with sharp knives
into long moist strips about a finger wide, and of different degrees of
fineness, seemed to Selene to grow longer the farther she went, and to be