Flip's Islands of Providence by Annie Fellows Johnston

It was a rainy Sunday afternoon. A few lumps of coal burned in the dingy grate in Alec's room. He had slept for several hours, had finished reading his last library book, and now, as he clasped his hands behind his head, yawning lazily, he remembered that he had not written home for two weeks. Letter-writing had become a dreaded task now. What was there to tell them of himself that he cared for them to know? Only that he worked from seven until six, ate, slept, and rose to work again with the dreary monotony of a machine.

For seven months he had not been inside a church door. The only people he met now were the workmen at the factory and the boys with whom he spent his evenings. He could not mention them. Long ago he had exhausted his descriptions of the city. There was nothing for him to write but that he was well and busy, and to fill up the pages with questions about the people at home. It taxed his ingenuity sometimes to evade Flip's straightforward questions, and he often thought that his letters had an insincere ring.