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+Project Gutenberg's The Portion of Labor, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Portion of Labor
+
+Author: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
+
+Release Date: March 18, 2006 [EBook #18011]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PORTION OF LABOR ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jeff Kaylin and Andrew Sly
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Portion of Labor
+
+By
+Mary E. Wilkins
+
+
+Author of
+"Jerome" "A New England Nun" Etc.
+
+Illustrated
+
+
+Harper & Brothers
+Publishers New York
+And London MDCCCCI
+
+
+To Henry Mills Alden
+
+
+
+[Illustration: What did such a good little girl as you be run away from
+father and mother for?]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+
+On the west side of Ellen's father's house was a file of Norway
+spruce-trees, standing with a sharp pointing of dark boughs towards
+the north, which gave them an air of expectancy of progress.
+
+Every morning Ellen, whose bedroom faced that way, looked out with a
+firm belief that she would see them on the other side of the stone
+wall, advanced several paces towards their native land. She had no
+doubt of their ability to do so; their roots, projecting in fibrous
+sprawls from their trunks, were their feet, and she pictured them
+advancing with wide trailings, and rustlings as of green draperies,
+and a loudening of that dreamy cry of theirs which was to her
+imagination a cry of homesickness reminiscent of their old life in
+the White north. When Ellen had first heard the name Norway spruce,
+'way back in her childhood--so far back, though she was only seven
+and a half now, that it seemed to her like a memory from another
+life--she had asked her mother to show her Norway on the map, and
+her strange convictions concerning the trees had seized her. When
+her mother said that they had come from that northernmost land of
+Europe, Ellen, to whose childhood all truth was naked and literal,
+immediately conceived to herself those veritable trees advancing
+over the frozen seas around the pole, and down through the vast
+regions which were painted blue on her map, straight to her father's
+west yard. There they stood and sang the songs of their own country,
+with a melancholy sweetness of absence and longing, and were forever
+thinking to return. Ellen felt always a thrill of happy surprise
+when she saw them still there of a morning, for she felt that she
+would miss them sorely when they were gone. She said nothing of all
+this to her mother; it was one of the secrets of the soul which
+created her individuality and made her a spiritual birth. She was
+also silent about her belief concerning the cherry-trees in the east
+yard. There were three of them, giants of their kind, which filled
+the east yard every spring as with mountains of white bloom,
+breathing wide gusts of honey sweetness, and humming with bees.
+Ellen believed that these trees had once stood in the Garden of
+Eden, but she never expected to find them missing from the east yard
+of a morning, for she remembered the angel with the flaming sword,
+and she knew how one branch of the easternmost tree happened to be
+blasted as if by fire. And she thought that these trees were happy,
+and never sighed to the wind as the dark evergreens did, because
+they had still the same blossoms and the same fruit that they had in
+Eden, and so did not fairly know that they were not there still.
+Sometimes Ellen, sitting underneath them on a low rib of rock on a
+May morning, used to fancy with success that she and the trees were
+together in that first garden which she had read about in the Bible.
+
+Sometimes, after one of these successful imaginings, when Ellen's
+mother called her into the house she would stare at her little
+daughter uneasily, and give her a spoonful of a bitter spring
+medicine which she had brewed herself. When Ellen's father, Andrew
+Brewster, came home from the shop, she would speak to him aside as
+he was washing his hands at the kitchen sink, and tell him that it
+seemed to her that Ellen looked kind of "pindlin'."  Then Andrew,
+before he sat down at the dinner-table, would take Ellen's face in
+his two moist hands, look at her with anxiety thinly veiled by
+facetiousness, rub his rough, dark cheek against her soft, white one
+until he had reddened it, then laugh, and tell her she looked like a
+bo'sn. Ellen never quite knew what her father meant by bo'sn, but
+she understood that it signified something very rosy and hearty
+indeed.
+
+Ellen's father always picked out for her the choicest and tenderest
+bits of the humble dishes, and his keen eyes were more watchful of
+her plate than of his own. Always after Ellen's mother had said to
+her father that she thought Ellen looked pindling he was late about
+coming home from the shop, and would turn in at the gate laden
+with paper parcels. Then Ellen would find an orange or some other
+delicacy beside her plate at supper. Ellen's aunt Eva, her mother's
+younger sister, who lived with them, would look askance at the
+tidbit with open sarcasm. "You jest spoil that young one, Fanny,"
+she would say to her sister.
+
+"You can do jest as you are a mind to with your own young ones when
+you get them, but you can let mine alone. It's none of your business
+what her father and me give her to eat; you don't buy it," Ellen's
+mother would retort. There was the utmost frankness of speech
+between the two sisters. Neither could have been in the slightest
+doubt as to what the other thought of her, for it was openly
+proclaimed to her a dozen times a day, and the conclusion was never
+complimentary. Ellen learned very early to form her own opinions of
+character from her own intuition, otherwise she would have held her
+aunt and mother in somewhat slighting estimation, and she loved
+them both dearly. They were headstrong, violent-tempered women, but
+she had an instinct for the staple qualities below that surface
+turbulence, which was lashed higher by every gust of opposition.
+These two loud, contending voices, which filled the house before
+and after shop-hours--for Eva worked in the shop with her
+brother-in-law--with a duet of discords instead of harmonies, meant
+no more to Ellen than the wrangle of the robins in the cherry-trees.
+She supposed that two sisters always conversed in that way. She
+never knew why her father, after a fiery but ineffectual attempt to
+quell the feminine tumult, would send her across the east yard to
+her grandmother Brewster's, and seat himself on the east door-step
+in summer, or go down to the store in the winter. She would sit at
+the window in her grandmother's sitting-room, eating peacefully the
+slice of pound-cake or cooky with which she was always regaled, and
+listen to the scolding voices across the yard as she might have
+listened to any outside disturbance. She was never sucked into the
+whirlpool of wrath which seemed to gyrate perpetually in her home,
+and wondered at her grandmother Brewster's impatient exclamations
+concerning the poor child, and her poor boy, and that it was a shame
+and a disgrace, when now and then a louder explosion of wrath struck
+her ears.
+
+Ellen's grandmother--Mrs. Zelotes Brewster, as she was called,
+though her husband Zelotes had been dead for many years--was an
+aristocrat by virtue of inborn prejudices and convictions, in
+despite of circumstances. The neighbors said that Mrs. Zelotes
+Brewster had always been high-feeling, and had held up her head with
+the best. It would have been nearer the truth to say that she held
+up her head above the best. No one seeing the erect old woman, in
+her draperies of the finest black goods to be bought in the city,
+could estimate in what heights of thin upper air of spiritual
+consequence her head was elevated. She had always a clear sight of
+the head-tops of any throng in which she found herself, and queens
+or duchesses would have been no exception. She would never have
+failed to find some stool of superior possessions or traits upon
+which to raise herself, and look down upon crown and coronet. When
+she read in the papers about the marriage of a New York belle to an
+English duke, she reflected that the duke could be by no means as
+fine a figure of a man as Zelotes had been, and as her son Andrew
+was, although both her husband and son had got all their education
+in the town schools, and had worked in shoe-shops all their lives.
+She could have looked at a palace or a castle, and have remained
+true to the splendors of her little one-story-and-a-half house with
+a best parlor and sitting-room, and a shed kitchen for use in hot
+weather.
+
+She would not for one instant have been swerved from utmost
+admiration and faith in her set of white-and-gold wedding china by
+the contemplation of Copeland and Royal Sevres. She would have
+pitted her hair-cloth furniture of the ugliest period of household
+art against all the Chippendales and First Empire pieces in
+existence.
+
+As Mrs. Zelotes had never seen any household possessions to equal
+her own, let alone to surpass them, she was of the same mind with
+regard to her husband and his family, herself and her family, her
+son and little granddaughter. She never saw any gowns and shawls
+which compared with hers in fineness and richness; she never tasted
+a morsel of cookery which was not as sawdust when she reflected upon
+her own; and all that humiliated her in the least, or caused her to
+feel in the least dissatisfied, was her son's wife and her family
+and antecedents.
+
+Mrs. Zelotes Brewster had considered that her son Andrew was
+marrying immeasurably beneath him when he married Fanny Loud, of
+Loudville. Loudville was a humble, an almost disreputably humble,
+suburb of the little provincial city. The Louds from whom the
+locality took its name were never held in much repute, being
+considered of a stratum decidedly below the ordinary social one of
+the city. When Andrew told his mother that he was to marry a Loud,
+she declared that she would not go to his wedding, nor receive the
+girl at her house, and she kept her word. When one day Andrew
+brought his sweetheart to his home to call, trusting to her pretty
+face and graceful though rather sharp manner to win his mother's
+heart, he found her intrenched in the kitchen, and absolutely
+indifferent to the charms of his Fanny in her stylish, albeit
+somewhat tawdry, finery, though she had peeped to good purpose from
+her parlor window, which commanded the road, before she fled
+kitchenward.
+
+Mrs. Zelotes was beating eggs with as firm an impetus as if she were
+heaving up earth-works to strengthen her own pride when her son
+thrust his timid face into the kitchen. "Mother, Fanny's in the
+parlor," he said, beseechingly.
+
+"Let her set there, then, if she wants to," said his mother, and
+that was all she would say.
+
+Very soon Fanny went home on her lover's arm, freeing her mind with
+no uncertain voice on the way, though she was on the public road,
+and within hearing of sharp ears in open windows. Fanny had a pride
+as fierce as Mrs. Zelotes Brewster's, though it was not so well
+sustained, and she would then and there have refused to marry Andrew
+had she not loved him with all her passionate and ill-regulated
+heart. But she never forgave her mother-in-law for the slight she
+had put upon her that day, and the slights which she put upon her
+later. She would have refused to live next door to Mrs. Zelotes had
+not Andrew owned the land and been in a measure forced to build
+there. Every time she had flaunted out of her new house-door in her
+wedding finery she had an uncomfortable feeling of defiance under a
+fire of hostile eyes in the next house. She kept her own windows
+upon that side as clear and bright as diamonds, and her curtains in
+the stiffest, snowy slants, lest her terrible mother-in-law should
+have occasion to impeach her housekeeping, she being a notable
+housewife. The habits of the Louds of Loudville were considered
+shiftless in the extreme, and poor Fanny had heard an insinuation of
+Mrs. Zelotes to that effect.
+
+The elder Mrs. Brewster's knowledge of her son's house and his wife
+was limited to the view from her west windows, but there was
+half-truce when little Ellen was born. Mrs. Brewster, who considered
+that no woman could be obtained with such a fine knowledge of
+nursing as she possessed, and who had, moreover, a regard for her
+poor boy's pocket-book, appeared for the first time in his doorway,
+and opened her heart to her son's child, if not to his wife, whom
+she began to tolerate.
+
+However, the two women had almost a hand-to-hand encounter over
+little Ellen's cradle, the elder Mrs. Brewster judging that it was
+for her good to be rocked to sleep, the younger not. Little Ellen
+herself, however, turned the balance that time in favor of her
+grandmother, since she cried every time the gentle, swaying motion
+was hushed, and absolutely refused to go to sleep, and her mother
+from the first held every course which seemed to contribute to her
+pleasure and comfort as a sacred duty. At last it came to pass that
+the two women met only upon that small neutral ground of love, and
+upon all other territory were sworn foes. Especially was Mrs.
+Zelotes wroth when Eva Loud, after the death of her father, one of
+the most worthless and shiftless of the Louds of Loudville, came to
+live with her married sister. She spoke openly to Fanny concerning
+her opinion of another woman's coming to live on poor Andrew, and
+paid no heed to the assertions that Eva would work and pay her way.
+
+Mrs. Zelotes, although she acknowledged it no social degradation for
+a man to work in a shoe-factory, regarded a woman who worked therein
+as having hopelessly forfeited her caste. Eva Loud had worked in a
+shop ever since she was fourteen, and had tagged the grimy and
+leathery procession of Louds, who worked in shoe-factories when they
+worked at all, in a short skirt with her hair in a strong black
+pigtail. There was a kind of bold grace and showy beauty about this
+Eva Loud which added to Mrs. Zelotes's scorn and dislike.
+
+"She walks off to work in the shop as proud as if she was going to a
+party," she said, and she fairly trembled with anger when she saw
+the girl set out with her son in the morning. She would have
+considered it much more according to the eternal fitness of things
+had her son Andrew been attending a queen whom he would have dropped
+at her palace on the way. She writhed inwardly whenever little Ellen
+spoke of her aunt Eva, and would have forbidden her to do so had she
+dared.
+
+"To think of that child associating with a shop-girl!" she said to
+Mrs. Pointdexter. Mrs. Pointdexter was her particular friend, whom
+she regarded with loving tolerance of superiority, though she had
+been the daughter of a former clergyman of the town, and had wedded
+another, and might presumably have been accounted herself of a
+somewhat higher estate. The gentle and dependent clergyman's widow,
+when she came back to her native city after the death of her
+husband, found herself all at once in a pleasant little valley of
+humiliation at the feet of her old friend, and was contented to
+abide there. "Perhaps your son's sister-in-law will marry and go
+away," she said, consolingly, to Mrs. Zelotes, who indeed lived in
+that hope. But Eva remained at her sister's, and, though she had
+admirers in plenty, did not marry, and the dissension grew.
+
+It was an odd thing that, however the sisters quarrelled, the minute
+Andrew tried to take sides with his wife and assail Eva in his turn,
+Fanny turned and defended her. "I am not going to desert all the
+sister I have got in the world," she said. "If you want me to leave,
+say so, and I will go, but I shall never turn Eva out of doors. I
+would rather go with her and work in the shop."  Then the next
+moment the wrangle would recommence, and the harsh trebles of wrath
+would swell high. Andrew could not appreciate this savageness of
+race loyalty in the face of anger and dissension, and his brain
+reeled with the apparent inconsistency of the thing.
+
+"Sometimes I think they are both crazy," he used to tell his mother,
+who sympathized with him after a covertly triumphant fashion. She
+never said, "I told you so," but the thought was evident on her
+face, and her son saw it there.
+
+However, he said not a word against his wife, except by implication.
+Though she and her sister were making his home unbearable, he still
+loved her, and, even if he did not, he had something of his mother's
+pride.
+
+However, at last, when Ellen was almost eight years old, matters
+came suddenly to a climax one evening in November. The two sisters
+were having a fiercer dispute than usual. Eva was taking her sister
+to task for cutting over a dress of hers for Ellen, Fanny claiming
+that she had given her permission to do so, and Eva denying it. The
+child sat listening in her little chair with a look of dawning
+intelligence of wrath and wicked temper in her face, because she was
+herself in a manner the cause of the dissension. Suddenly Andrew
+Brewster, with a fiery outburst of inconsequent masculine wrath with
+the whole situation, essayed to cut the Gordian knot. He grabbed the
+little dress of bright woollen stuff, which lay partly made upon the
+table, and crammed it into the stove, and a reek of burning wool
+filled the room. Then both women turned upon him with a combination
+of anger to which his wrath was wildfire.
+
+Andrew caught up little Ellen, who was beginning to look scared,
+wrapped the first thing he could seize around her, and fairly fled
+across the yard to his mother's. Then he sat down and wept like a
+boy, and his pride left him at last. "Oh, mother," he sobbed, "if it
+were not for the child, I would go away, for my home is a hell!"
+
+Mrs. Zelotes stood clasping little Ellen, who clung to her,
+trembling. "Well, come over here with me," she said, "you and
+Ellen."
+
+"Live here in the next house!" said Andrew. "Do you suppose Fanny
+would have the child living under her very eyes in the next house?
+No, there is no way out of the misery--no way; but if it was not for
+the child, I would go!"
+
+Andrew burst out in such wild sobs that his mother released Ellen
+and ran to him; and the child, trembling and crying with a curious
+softness, as of fear at being heard, ran out of the house and back
+to her home. "Oh, mother," she cried, breaking in upon the dialogue
+of anger which was still going on there with her little tremulous
+flute--"oh, mother, father is crying!"
+
+"I don't care," answered her mother, fiercely, her temper causing
+her to lose sight of the child's agitation. "I don't care. If it
+wasn't for you, I would leave him. I wouldn't live as I am doing. I
+would leave everybody. I am tired of this awful life. Oh, if it
+wasn't for you, Ellen, I would leave everybody and start fresh!"
+
+"You can leave _me_ whenever you want to," said Eva, her handsome
+face burning red with wrath, and she went out of the room, which was
+suffocating with the fumes of the burning wool, tossing her black
+head, all banged and coiled in the latest fashion.
+
+Of late years Fanny had sunk her personal vanity further and further
+in that for her child. She brushed her own hair back hard from her
+temples, and candidly revealed all her unyouthful lines, and dwelt
+fondly upon the arrangement of little Ellen's locks, which were of a
+fine, pale yellow, as clear as the color of amber.
+
+She never recut her skirts or her sleeves, but she studied anxiously
+all the slightest changes in children's fashions. After her sister
+had left the room with a loud bang of the door, she sat for a moment
+gazing straight ahead, her face working, then she burst into such a
+passion of hysterical wailing as the child had never heard. Ellen,
+watching her mother with eyes so frightened and full of horror that
+there was no room for childish love and pity in them, grew very
+pale. She had left the door by which she had entered open; she gazed
+one moment at her mother, then she turned and slipped out of the
+room, and, opening the outer door softly, though her mother would
+not have heard nor noticed, went out of the house.
+
+Then she ran as fast as she could down the frozen road, a little,
+dark figure, passing as rapidly as the shadow of a cloud between the
+earth and the full moon.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+
+The greatest complexity in the world attends the motive-power of any
+action. Infinite perspectives of mental mirrors reflect the whys of
+all doing. An adult with long practice in analytic introspection
+soon becomes bewildered when he strives to evolve the primary and
+fundamental reasons for his deeds; a child so striving would be lost
+in unexpected depths; but a child never strives. A child obeys
+unquestioningly and absolutely its own spiritual impellings without
+a backward glance at them.
+
+Little Ellen Brewster ran down the road that November night, and did
+not know then, and never knew afterwards, why she ran. Loving
+renunciation was surging high in her childish heart, giving an
+indication of tidal possibilities for the future, and there was also
+a bitter, angry hurt of slighted dependency and affection. Had she
+not heard them say, her own mother and father say, that they would
+be better off and happier with her out of the way, and she their
+dearest loved and most carefully cherished possession in the whole
+world? It is a cruel fall for an apple of the eye to the ground, for
+its law of gravitation is of the soul, and its fall shocks the
+infinite. Little Ellen felt herself sorely hurt by her fall from
+such fair heights; she was pierced by the sharp thorns of selfish
+interests which flourish below all the heavenward windows of life.
+
+Afterwards, when her mother and father tried to make her tell them
+why she ran away, she could not say; the answer was beyond her own
+power.
+
+There was no snow on the ground, but the earth was frozen in great
+ribs after a late thaw. Ellen ran painfully between the ridges which
+a long line of ice-wagons had made with their heavy wheels earlier
+in the day. When the spaces between the ridges were too narrow for
+her little feet, she ran along the crests, and that was precarious.
+She fell once and bruised one of her delicate knees, then she fell
+again, and struck the knee on the same place. It hurt her, and she
+caught her breath with a gasp of pain. She pulled up her little
+frock and touched her hand to her knee, and felt it wet, then she
+whimpered on the lonely road, and, curiously enough, there was pity
+for her mother as well as for herself in her solitary grieving.
+"Mother would feel pretty bad if she knew how I was hurt, enough to
+make it bleed," she murmured, between her soft sobs. Ellen did not
+dare cry loudly, from a certain unvoiced fear which she had of
+shocking the stillness of the night, and also from a delicate sense
+of personal dignity, and a dislike of violent manifestations of
+feeling which had strengthened with her growth in the midst of the
+turbulent atmosphere of her home. Ellen had the softest childish
+voice, and she never screamed or shouted when excited. Instead of
+catching the motion of the wind, she still lay before it, like some
+slender-stemmed flower. If Ellen had made much outcry with the hurt
+in her heart and the smart of her knee, she might have been heard,
+for the locality was thickly settled, though not in the business
+portion of the little city. The houses, set prosperously in the
+midst of shaven lawns--for this was a thrifty and emulative place,
+and democracy held up its head confidently--were built closely along
+the road, though that was lonely and deserted at that hour. It was
+the hour between half-past six and half-past seven, when people were
+lingering at their supper-tables, and had not yet started upon their
+evening pursuits. The lights shone for the most part from the rear
+windows of the houses, and there was a vague compound odor of tea
+and bread and beefsteak in the air. Poor Ellen had not had her
+supper; the wrangle at home had dismissed it from everybody's mind.
+She felt more pitiful towards her mother and herself when she smelt
+the food and reflected upon that. To think of her going away without
+any supper, all alone in the dark night! There was no moon, and the
+solemn brilliancy of the stars made her think with a shiver of awe
+of the Old Testament and the possibility of the Day of Judgment.
+Suppose it should come, and she all alone out in the night, in the
+midst of all those worlds and the great White Throne, without her
+mother? Ellen's grandmother, who was of a stanch orthodox breed, and
+was, moreover, anxious to counteract any possible detriment as to
+religious training from contact with the degenerate Louds of
+Loudville, had established a strict course of Bible study for her
+granddaughter at a very early age. All celestial phenomena were in
+consequence transposed into a Biblical key for the child, and she
+regarded the heavens swarming with golden stars as a Hebrew child of
+a thousand years ago might have done.
+
+She was glad when she came within the radius of a street light from
+time to time; they were stationed at wide intervals in that
+neighborhood. Soon, however, she reached the factories, when all
+mystery and awe, and vague terrors of what beside herself might be
+near unrevealed beneath the mighty brooding of the night, were over.
+She was, as it were, in the mid-current of the conditions of her own
+life and times, and the material force of it swept away all
+symbolisms and unstable drift, and left only the bare rocks and
+shores of existence. Always when the child had been taken by one of
+her elders past the factories, humming like gigantic hives, with
+their windows alert with eager eyes of toil, glancing out at her
+over bench and machine, Ellen had seen her secretly cherished
+imaginings recede into a night of distance like stars, and she had
+felt her little footing upon the earth with a shock, and had clung
+more closely to the leading hand of love. "That's where your poor
+father works," her grandmother would say. "Maybe you'll have to work
+there some day," her aunt Eva had said once; and her mother, who had
+been with her also, had cried out sharply as if she had been stung,
+"I guess that little delicate thing ain't never goin' to work in a
+shoe-shop, Eva Loud."  And her aunt Eva had laughed, and declared
+with emphasis that she guessed there was no need to worry yet
+awhile.
+
+"She never shall, while I live," her mother had cried; and then Eva,
+coming to her sister's aid against her own suggestion, had declared,
+with a vehemence which frightened Ellen, that she would burn the
+shop down herself first.
+
+As for Ellen's father, he never at that time dwelt upon the child's
+future as much as his wife did, having a masculine sense of the
+instability of houses of air which prevented him from entering them
+without a shivering of walls and roof into naught but star-mediums
+by his downrightness of vision. "Oh, let the child be, can't you,
+Fanny?" he said, when his wife speculated whether Ellen would be or
+do this or that when she should be a woman. He resented the
+conception of the woman which would swallow up, like some
+metaphysical sorceress, his fair little child. So when he now and
+then led Ellen past the factories it was never with the slightest
+surmise as to any connection which she might have with them beyond
+the present one. "There's the shop where father works," he would
+tell Ellen, with a tender sense of his own importance in his child's
+eyes, and he was as proud as Punch when Ellen was able to point with
+her tiny pink finger at the window where father worked. "That's
+where father works and earns money to buy nice things for little
+Ellen," Andrew would repeat, beaming at her with divine foolishness,
+and Ellen looked at the roaring, vibrating building as she might
+have looked at the wheels of progress. She realized that her father
+was very great and smart to work in a place like that, and earn
+money--so much of it. Ellen often heard her mother remark with pride
+how much money Andrew earned.
+
+To-night, when Ellen passed in her strange flight, the factories
+were still, though they were yet blazing with light. The gigantic
+buildings, after a style of architecture as simple as a child's
+block house, and adapted to as primitive an end, loomed up beside
+the road like windowed shells enclosing massive concretenesses of
+golden light. They looked entirely vacant except for light, for the
+workmen had all gone home, and there were only the keepers in the
+buildings. There were three of them, representing three different
+firms, rival firms, grouped curiously close together, but Lloyd's
+was much the largest. Andrew and Eva worked in Lloyd's.
+
+She was near the last factory when she met a man hastening along
+with bent shoulders, of intent, middle-aged progress. After he had
+passed her with a careless glance at the small, swift figure, she
+smelt coffee. He was carrying home a pound for his breakfast supply.
+That suddenly made her cry, though she did not know why. That
+familiar odor of home and the wontedness of life made her isolation
+on her little atom of the unusual more pitiful. The man turned round
+sharply when she sobbed. "Hullo! what's the matter, sis?" he called
+back, in a pleasant, hoarse voice. Ellen did not answer; she fled as
+if she had wings on her feet. The man had many children of his own,
+and was accustomed to their turbulence over trifles. He kept on,
+thinking that there was a sulky child who had been sent on an errand
+against her will, that it was not late, and she was safe enough on
+that road. He resumed his calculation as to whether his income would
+admit of a new coal-stove that winter. He was a workman in a
+factory, with one accumulative interest in life--coal-stoves. He
+bought and traded and swapped coal-stoves every winter with keenest
+enthusiasm. Now he had one in his mind which he had just viewed in a
+window with the rapture of an artist. It had a little nickel
+statuette on the top, and that quite crowded Ellen out of his mind,
+which had but narrow accommodations.
+
+So Ellen kept on unmolested, though her heart was beating loud with
+fright. When she came into the brilliantly lighted stretch of Main
+Street, which was the business centre of the city, her childish mind
+was partly diverted from herself. Ellen had not been down town many
+times of an evening, and always in hand of her hurrying father or
+mother. Now she had run away and cut loose from all restrictions of
+time; there was an eternity for observation before her, with no call
+in-doors in prospect. She stopped at the first bright shop window,
+and suddenly the exultation of freedom was over the child. She
+tasted the sweets of rebellion and disobedience. She had stood
+before that window once before of an evening, and her aunt Eva had
+been with her, and one of her young men friends had come up behind,
+and they had gone on, the child dragging backward at her aunt's
+hand. Now she could stand as long as she wished, and stare and
+stare, and drink in everything which her childish imagination
+craved, and that was much. The imagination of a child is often like
+a voracious maw, seizing upon all that comes within reach, and
+producing spiritual indigestions and assimilations almost endless in
+their effects upon the growth. This window before which Ellen stood
+was that of a market: a great expanse of plate-glass framing a crude
+study in the clearest color tones. It takes a child or an artist to
+see a picture without the intrusion of its second dimension of
+sordid use and the gross reflection of humanity.
+
+Ellen looked at the great shelf laid upon with flesh and vegetables
+and fruits with the careless precision of a kaleidoscope, and did
+not for one instant connect anything thereon with the ends of
+physical appetite, though she had not had her supper. What had a
+meal of beefsteak and potatoes and squash served on the little
+white-laid table at home to do with those great golden globes which
+made one end of the window like the remove from a mine, those
+satin-smooth spheres, those cuts as of red and white marble? She had
+eaten apples, but these were as the apples of the gods, lying in a
+heap of opulence, with a precious light-spot like a ruby on every
+outward side. The turnips affected her imagination like ivory
+carvings: she did not recognize them for turnips at all. She never
+afterwards believed them to be turnips; and as for cabbages, they
+were green inflorescences of majestic bloom. There is one position
+from which all common things can be seen with reflections of
+preciousness, and Ellen had insensibly taken it. The window and the
+shop behind were illuminated with the yellow glare of gas, but the
+glass was filmed here and there with frost, which tempered it as
+with a veil. In the background rosy-faced men in white frocks were
+moving to and fro, customers were passing in and out, but they were
+all glorified to the child. She did not see them as butchers, and as
+men and women selling and buying dinners.
+
+However, all at once everything was spoiled, for her fairy castle of
+illusion or a higher reality was demolished, and that not by any
+blow of practicality, but by pity and sentiment. Ellen was a
+woman-child, and suddenly she struck the rock upon which women so
+often wreck or effect harbor, whichever it may be. All at once she
+looked up from the dazzling mosaic of the window and saw the dead
+partridges and grouse hanging in their rumpled brown mottle of
+plumage, and the dead rabbits, long and stark, with their fur
+pointed with frost, hanging in a piteous headlong company, and all
+her delight and wonder vanished, and she came down to the hard
+actualities of things. "Oh, the poor birds!" she cried out in her
+heart. "Oh, the poor birds, and the poor bunnies!"
+
+Just at that moment, when the sudden rush of compassion and
+indignation had swollen her heart to the size of a woman's, and
+given it the aches of one, when her eyes were so dilated with the
+sight of helpless injury and death that they reflected the mystery
+of it and lost the outlook of childhood, when her pretty baby mouth
+was curved like an inverted bow of love with the impulse of tears,
+Cynthia Lennox came up the street and stopped short when she reached
+her.
+
+Suddenly Ellen felt some one pressing close to her, and, looking up,
+saw a woman, only middle-aged, but whom she thought very old,
+because her hair was white, standing looking at her very keenly with
+clear, light-blue eyes under a high, pale forehead, from which the
+gray hair was combed uncompromisingly back. The woman had been a
+beauty once, of a delicate, nervous type, and had a certain beauty
+now, a something which had endured like the fineness of texture of a
+web when its glow of color has faded. Her black garments draped her
+with sober richness, and there was a gleam of dark fur when the wind
+caught her cloak. A small tuft of ostrich plumes nodded from her
+bonnet. Ellen smelt flowers vaguely, and looked at the lady's hand,
+but she did not carry any.
+
+"Whose little girl are you?" Cynthia Lennox asked, softly, and Ellen
+did not answer. "Can't you tell me whose little girl you are?"
+Cynthia Lennox asked again. Ellen did not speak, but there was the
+swift flicker of a thought over her face which told her name as
+plainly as language if the woman had possessed the skill to
+interpret it.
+
+"Ellen Brewster--Ellen Brewster is my name," Ellen said to herself
+very hard, and that was how she endured the reproach of her own
+silence.
+
+The woman looked at her with surprise and admiration that were
+fairly passionate. Ellen was a beautiful child, with a face like a
+white flower. People had always turned to look after her, she was so
+charming, and had caused her mothers heart to swell with pride. "The
+way everybody we met has stared after that child to-day!" she would
+whisper her husband when she brought Ellen home from some little
+expedition; then the two would look at the little one's face with
+the one holy vanity of the world. Ellen wore to-night the little
+white shawl which her father had caught up when he carried her over
+to her grandmother's. She held it tightly together under her chin
+with one tiny hand, and her face looked out from between the soft
+folds with the absolute purity of curve and color of a pearl.
+
+"Oh, you darling!" said the woman, suddenly; "you darling!" and
+Ellen shrank away from her. "Don't be afraid, dear," said Cynthia
+Lennox. "Don't be afraid, only tell me who you are. What is your
+name, dear?"  But Ellen remained silent; only, as she shrank aloof,
+her eyes grew wild and bright with startled tears, and her sweet
+baby mouth quivered piteously. She wanted to run, but the habit of
+obedience was so strong upon her little mind that she feared to do
+so. This strange woman seemed to have gotten her in some invisible
+leash.
+
+"Tell me what your name is, darling," said the woman, but she might
+as well have importuned a flower. Ellen was proof against all
+commands in that direction. She suddenly felt the furry sweep of the
+lady's cloak against her cheek, and a nervous, tender arm drawing
+her close, though she strove feebly to resist. "You are cold, you
+have nothing on but this little white shawl, and perhaps you are
+hungry. What were you looking in this window for? Tell me, dear,
+where is your mother? She did not send you on an errand, such a
+little girl as you are, so late on such a cold night, with no more
+on than this?"
+
+A tone of indignation crept into the lady's voice.
+
+"No, mother didn't send me," Ellen said, speaking for the first
+time.
+
+"Then did you run away, dear?"  Ellen was silent. "Oh, if you did,
+darling, you must tell me where you live, what your father's name
+is, and I will take you home. Tell me, dear. If it is far, I will
+get a carriage, and you shall ride home. Tell me, dear."
+
+There was an utmost sweetness of maternal persuasion in Cynthia
+Lennox's voice; Ellen was swayed by it as a child might have been
+swayed by the magic pipe of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. She half
+yielded to her leading motion, then she remembered. "No," she cried
+out, with a sob of utter desolation. "No, no."
+
+"Why not, dear?"
+
+"They don't want; they don't want. No, no!"
+
+"They don't want you? Your own father and mother don't want you?
+Darling, what is the matter?"  But Ellen was dumb again. She stood
+sobbing, with a painful restraint, and pulling futilely from the
+lady's persuasive hand. But it ended in the mastery of the child.
+Suddenly Cynthia Lennox gathered her up in her arms under her great
+fur-lined cloak, and carried her a little farther down the street,
+then across it to a dwelling-house, one of the very few which had
+withstood the march of business blocks on this crowded main street
+of the provincial city. A few people looked curiously at the lady
+carrying such a heavy, weeping child, but she met no one whom she
+knew, and the others looked indifferently away after a second
+backward stare. Cynthia Lennox was one to bear herself with such
+dignity over all jolts of circumstances that she might almost
+convince others of her own exemption from them. Her mental bearing
+disproved the evidence of the senses, and she could have committed a
+crime with such consummate self-poise and grace as to have held a
+crowd in abeyance with utter distrust of their own eyes before such
+unquestioning confidence in the sovereignty of the situation.
+Cynthia Lennox had always had her own way except in one respect, and
+that experience had come to her lately.
+
+Though she was such a slender woman, she seemed to have great
+strength in her arms, and she bore Ellen easily and as if she had
+been used to such a burden. She wrapped her cloak closely around the
+child.
+
+"Don't be afraid, darling," she kept whispering. Ellen panted in
+bewilderment, and a terror which was half assuaged by something like
+fascination.
+
+She was conscious of a soft smother of camphor, in which the
+fur-lined cloak had lain through the summer, and of that flower
+odor, which was violets, though she did not know it. Only the wild
+American scentless ones had come in little Ellen's way so far.
+
+She felt herself carried up steps, then a door was thrown open, and
+a warm breath of air came in her face, and the cloak was tossed
+back, and she was set softly on the floor. The hall in which she
+stood seemed very bright; she blinked and rubbed her eyes.
+
+The lady stood over her, laughing gently, and when the child looked
+up at her, seemed much younger than she had at first, very young in
+spite of her white hair. There was a soft red on her cheek; her lips
+looked full and triumphant with smiles; her eyes were like stars. An
+emotion of her youth which had never become dulled by satisfaction
+had suddenly blossomed out on her face, and transformed it. An
+unassuaged longing may serve to preserve youth as well as an
+undestroyed illusion; indeed, the two are one. Cynthia Lennox looked
+at the child as if she had been a young mother, and she her
+first-born; triumph over the future, and daring for all odds, and
+perfect faith in the kingdom of joy were in her look. Had she nursed
+one child like Ellen to womanhood, and tasted the bitter in the cup,
+she would not have been capable of that look, and would have been as
+old as her years. She threw off her cloak and took off her bonnet,
+and the light struck her hair and made it look like silver. A brooch
+in the laces at her throat shone with a thousand hues, and as Ellen
+gazed at it she felt curiously dull and dizzy. She did not resist at
+all when the lady removed her little white shawl, but stared at her
+with the look of some small and helpless thing in too large a grasp
+of destiny to admit of a struggle. "Oh, you darling!" Cynthia Lennox
+said, and stooped and kissed her, and half carried her into a great,
+warm, dazzling room, with light reflected in long lines of gold from
+picture-frames on the wall, and now and then startling patches of
+lurid color blazing forth unmeaningly from the dark incline of their
+canvases, with gleams of crystal and shadows of bronze in settings
+of fretted ebony, with long swayings of rich draperies at doors and
+windows, a red light of fire in a grate, and two white lights, one
+of piano keys, the other of a flying marble figure in a corner,
+outlined clearly against dusky red. The light in this room was very
+dim. It was all beyond Ellen's imagination. The White North where
+the Norway spruces lived would not have seemed as strange to her as
+this. Neither would Bluebeard's Castle, nor the House that Jack
+Built, nor the Palace of King Solomon, nor the tent in which lived
+little Joseph in his coat of many colors, nor even the Garden of
+Eden, nor Noah's Ark. Her imagination had not prepared her for a
+room like this. She had formed her ideas of rooms upon her
+grandmother's and her mother's and the neighbors' best parlors, with
+their glories of crushed plush and gilt and onyx and cheap lace and
+picture-throws and lambrequins. This room was such a heterodoxy
+against her creed of civilization that it did not look beautiful to
+her as much as strange and bewildering, and when she was bidden to
+sit down in a little inlaid precious chair she put down her tiny
+hand and reflected, with a sense of strengthening of her household
+faith, that her grandmother had beautiful, smooth, shiny hair-cloth.
+
+Cynthia Lennox pulled the chair close to the fire, and bade her hold
+out her little feet to the blaze to warm them well. "I am afraid you
+are chilled, darling," she said, and looked at her sitting there in
+her dainty little red cashmere frock, with her spread of baby-yellow
+hair over her shoulders. Then Ellen thought that the lady was
+younger than her mother; but her mother had borne her and nursed
+her, and suffered and eaten of the tree of knowledge, and tasted the
+bitter after the sweet; and this other woman was but as a child in
+the garden, though she was fairly old. But along with Ellen's
+conviction of the lady's youth had come a conviction of her power,
+and she yielded to her unquestioningly. Whenever she came near her
+she gazed with dilating eyes upon the blazing circle of diamonds at
+her throat.
+
+When she was bidden, she followed the lady into the dining-room,
+where the glitter of glass and silver and the soft gleam of precious
+china made her think for a little while that she must be in a store.
+She had never seen anything like this except in a store, when she
+had been with her mother to buy a lamp-chimney. So she decided this
+to be a store, but she said nothing. She did not speak at all, but
+she ate her biscuits, and slice of breast of chicken, and
+sponge-cake, and drank her milk.
+
+She had her milk in a little silver cup which seemed as if it might
+have belonged to another child; she also sat in a small high-chair,
+which made it seem as if another child had lived or visited in the
+house. Ellen became singularly possessed with this sense of the
+presence of a child, and when the door opened she would look around
+for her to enter, but it was always an old black woman with a face
+of imperturbable bronze, which caused her to huddle closer into her
+chair when she drew near.
+
+There were not many colored people in the city, and Ellen had never
+seen any except at Long Beach, where she had sometimes gone to have
+a shore dinner with her mother and Aunt Eva. Then she always used to
+shrink when the black waiter drew near, and her mother and aunt
+would be convulsed with furtive mirth. "See the little gump," her
+mother would say in the tenderest tone, and look about to see if
+others at the other tables saw how cunning she was--what a charming
+little goose to be afraid of a colored waiter.
+
+Ellen saw nobody except the lady and the black woman, but she was
+still sure that there was a child in the house, and after supper,
+when she was taken up-stairs to bed, she peeped through every open
+door with the expectation of seeing her.
+
+But she was so weary and sleepy that her curiosity and capacity for
+any other emotion was blunted. She had become simply a little,
+tired, sleepy animal. She let herself be undressed; she was not even
+moved to much self-pity when the lady discovered the cruel bruise on
+her delicate knee, and kissed it, and dressed it with a healing
+salve. She was put into a little night-gown which she knew dreamily
+belonged to that other child, and was laid in a little bedstead
+which she noted to be made of gold, with floating lace over the
+head.
+
+She sleepily noted, too, that there were flowers on the walls, and
+more floating lace over the bureau. This room did not look so
+strange to her as the others; she had somehow from the treasures of
+her fancy provided the family of big bears and little bears with a
+similar one. Then, too, one of the neighbors, Mrs. George Crocker,
+had read many articles in women's papers relative to the beautifying
+of homes, and had furnished a wonderful chamber with old soap-boxes
+and rolls of Japanese paper which was a sort of a cousin many times
+removed of this. When she was in bed the lady kissed her, and called
+her darling, and bade her sleep well, and not be afraid, she was in
+the next room, and could hear if she spoke. Then she stood looking
+at her, and Ellen thought that she must be younger than Minnie
+Swensen, who lived on her street, and wore a yellow pigtail, and
+went to the high-school. Then she closed her heavy eyes, and forgot
+to cry about her poor father and mother; still, there was, after
+all, a hurt about them down in her childish heart, though a great
+wave of new circumstances had rolled on her shore and submerged for
+the time her memory and her love, even, she was so feeble and young.
+
+She slept very soundly, and awoke only once, about two o'clock in
+the morning. Then a passing lantern flashed into the chamber into
+her eyes, and woke her up, but she only sighed and stretched
+drowsily, then turned her little body over with a luxurious roll and
+went to sleep again.
+
+It was poor Andrew Brewster's lantern which flashed in her eyes, for
+he was out with a posse of police and sympathizing neighbors and
+friends searching for his lost little girl. He was frantic, and when
+he came under the gas-lights from time to time the men that saw him
+shuddered; they would not have known him, for almost the farthest
+agony of which he was capable had changed his face.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+
+By the next morning all the city was in a commotion over little
+Ellen's disappearance. Woods on the outskirts were being searched,
+ponds were being dragged, posters with a stare of dreadful meaning
+in large characters of black and white were being pasted all over
+the fences and available barns, and already three of the local
+editors had been to the Brewster house to obtain particulars and
+photographs of the missing child for reproduction in the city
+papers.
+
+The first train from Boston brought two reporters representing great
+dailies.
+
+Fanny Brewster, white-cheeked, with the rasped redness of tears
+around her eyes and mouth, clad in her blue calico wrapper, received
+them in her best parlor. Eva had made a fire in the best parlor
+stove early that morning. "Folks will be comin' in all day, I
+expect," said she, speaking with nervous catches of her breath. Ever
+since the child had been missed, Eva's anxiety had driven her from
+point to point of unrest as with a stinging lash. She had pelted
+bareheaded down the road and up the road; she had invaded all the
+neighbors' houses, insisting upon looking through their farthest and
+most unlikely closets; she had even penetrated to the woods, and
+joined wild-eyed the groups of peering workers on the shore of the
+nearest pond. That she could not endure long, so she had rushed home
+to her sister, who was either pacing her sitting-room with
+inarticulate murmurs and wails of distress in the sympathizing ears
+of several of the neighboring women, or else was staring with
+haggard eyes of fearful hope from a window. When she looked from the
+eastern window she could see her mother-in-law, Mrs. Zelotes
+Brewster, at an opposite one, sitting immovable, with her Bible in
+her lap, prayer in her heart, and an eye of grim holding to faith
+upon the road for the fulfilment of promise. She felt all her
+muscles stiffen with anger when she saw the wild eyes of the child's
+mother at the other window. "It is all her fault," she said to
+herself--"all her fault--hers and that bold trollop of a sister of
+hers."  When she saw Eva run down the road, with her black hair
+rising like a mane to the morning wind, she was an embodiment of an
+imprecatory psalm. When, later on, she saw the three editors
+coming--Mr. Walsey, of _The Spy_, and Mr. Jones, of _The Observer_,
+and young Joe Bemis, of _The Star_, on his bicycle--she watched
+jealously to see if they were admitted. When Fanny's head
+disappeared from the eastern window she knew that Eva had let them
+in and Fanny was receiving them in the parlor. "She will tell them
+all about the words they had last night, that made the dear child
+run away," she thought. "All the town will know what doings there
+are in our family."  Mrs. Zelotes made up her mind to a course of
+action. Each editor was granted a long audience with Fanny and Eva,
+who entertained them with hysterical solemnity and displayed Ellen's
+photographs in the red plush album, from the last, taken in her best
+white frock, to one when she was three weeks old, and seeming weakly
+and not likely to live. This had been taken by a photographer
+summoned to the house at great expense. "Her father has never spared
+expense for Ellen," said Fanny, with an outburst of grief. "That's
+so," said Eva. "I'll testify to that. Andrew Brewster never thought
+anything was too good for that young one."  Then she burst out with
+a sob louder than her sister's. Eva had usually a coarsely
+well-kempt appearance, her heavy black hair being securely twisted,
+and her neck ribbons tied with smart jerks of neatness; but to-day
+her hair was still in the fringy braids of yesterday, and her cotton
+blouse humped untidily in the back. Her face was red and her lips
+swollen; she looked like a very bacchante of sorrow, and as if she
+had been on some mad orgy of grief.
+
+Mr. Walsey, of _The Spy_, who had formerly conducted a paper in a
+college town and was not accustomed to the feminine possibilities of
+manufacturing localities, felt almost afraid of her. He had never
+seen a woman of that sort, and thought vaguely of the French
+Revolution and fish-wives when she gave vent to her distress over
+the loss of the child. He fairly jumped when she cut short a
+question of his with a volley of self-recriminatory truths,
+accompanied with fierce gesturing. He stood back involuntarily out
+of reach of those powerful, waving arms. "Do I know of any reason
+for the child to run away?" shrieked Eva, in a voice shrilly hideous
+with emotion, now and then breaking into hoarseness with the strain
+of tears. "I guess I know why, I guess I do, and I wish I had been
+six foot under ground before I did what I did. It was all my fault,
+every bit of it. When I got home, and found that Fan had been making
+that precious young one a dress out of my old blue one, I pitched
+into her for it, and she gave it back to me, and then we jawed, and
+kept it up, till Andrew, he grabbed the dress and flung it into the
+fire, and did just right, too, and took Ellen and run over to old
+lady Brewster's with her; then Ellen, she see him cryin', and it
+scared her 'most to death, poor little thing, and she heard him say
+that if it wasn't for her he'd quit, and then she come runnin' home
+to her mother and me, and her mother said the same thing, and then
+that poor young one, she thought she wa'n't wanted nowheres, and she
+run. She always was as easy to hurt as a baby robin; it didn't take
+nothing to set her all of a flutter and a twitter; and now she's
+just flown out of the nest. Oh my God, I wish my tongue had been
+torn out by the roots before I'd said a word about her blessed
+little dress; I wish Fan had cut up every old rag I've got; I'd go
+dressed in fig-leaves before I'd had it happen. Oh! oh! oh!"
+
+Young Joe Bemis, of _The Star_, was the first to leave, whirling
+madly and precariously down the street on his wheel, which was
+dizzily tall in those days. Mrs. Zelotes, hailing him from her open
+window, might as well have hailed the wind. Her family dissensions
+were well aired in _The Star_ next morning, and she always kept the
+cutting at the bottom of a little rosewood work-box where she stored
+away divers small treasures, and never looked at the box without a
+swift dart of pain as from a hidden sting and the consciousness as
+of the presence of some noxious insect caged therein.
+
+Mrs. Zelotes was more successful in arresting the progress of the
+other editors, and (standing at the window, her Bible on the little
+table at her side) flatly contradicted all that had been told them
+by her daughter-in-law and her sister. "The Louds always give way,
+no matter what comes up. You can always tell what kind of a family
+anybody comes from by the way they take things when anything comes
+across them. You can't depend on anything she says this morning. My
+son did not marry just as I wished; everybody knows that; the Louds
+weren't equal to our family, and everybody knows it, and I have
+never made any secret as to how I felt, but we have always got along
+well enough. The Brewsters are not quarrelsome; they never have
+been. There were no words whatever last night to make my
+granddaughter run away. Eva and Fanny are all wrong about it. Ellen
+has been stolen; I know it as well as if I had seen it. A
+strange-looking woman came to the door yesterday afternoon; she was
+the tallest woman I ever saw, and she took the widest steps; she
+measured her dress skirt every step she took, and she spoke gruff. I
+said then I knew she was a man dressed up. Ellen was playing out in
+the yard, and she saw the child as she went out, and I see her stoop
+and look at her real sharp, and my blood run kind of cold then, and
+I called Ellen away as quick as I could; and the woman, she turned
+round and gave me a look that I won't ever forget as long as I live.
+My belief is that that woman was laying in wait when Ellen was going
+across the yard home from here last night, and she has got her safe
+somewhere till a reward is offered. Or maybe she wants to keep her,
+Ellen is such a beautiful child. You needn't put in your papers that
+my grandchild run away because of quarrelling in our family, because
+she didn't. Eva and Fanny don't know what they are talking about,
+they are so wrought up; and, coming from the family they do, they
+don't know how to control themselves and show any sense. I feel it
+as much as they do, but I have been sitting here all the morning; I
+know I can't do anything to help, and I am working a good deal
+harder, waiting, than they are, rushing from pillar to post and
+taking on, and I'm doing more good. I shall be the only one fit to
+do anything when they find the poor child. I've got blankets warming
+by the fire, and my tea-kettle on, and I'm going to be the one to
+depend on when she's brought home."  Mrs. Zelotes gave a glance of
+defiant faith from the window down the road as she spoke. Then she
+settled back in her chair and resumed her Bible, and dismissed the
+tall and forbidding woman whom she had summoned to save the honor of
+her family resolutely from her conscience. The editors of _The Spy_
+and _The Observer_ had a row of ingratiating photographs of little
+Ellen from three weeks to seven years of age; and their opinions as
+to the cause of her disappearance, while fully agreeing in all
+points of sensationalism with those of young Bemis, of _The Star_,
+differed in detail.
+
+Young Bemis read about the mysterious kidnapper, and wondered, and
+the demand for _The Star_ was chiefly among the immediate neighbors
+of the Brewsters. Both _The Observer_ and _The Spy_ doubled their
+circulation in one day, and every face on the night cars was hidden
+behind poor little Ellen's baby countenances and the fairy-story of
+the witch-woman who had lured her away. Mothers kept their children
+carefully in-doors that evening, and pulled down curtains, fearful
+lest She look in the windows and be tempted. Mrs. Zelotes also
+waylaid both of the Boston reporters, but with results upon which
+she had not counted. One presented her story and Fanny's and Eva's
+with impartial justice; the other kept wholly to the latter version,
+with the addition of a shrewd theory of his own, deduced from the
+circumstances which had a parallel in actual history, and boldly
+stated that the child had probably committed suicide on account of
+family troubles. Poor Fanny and Eva both saw that, when night was
+falling and Ellen had not been found. Eva rushed out and secured the
+paper from the newsboy, and the two sisters gasped over the
+startling column together.
+
+"It's a lie! oh, Fanny, it's a lie!" cried Eva. "She never would;
+oh, she never would! That little thing, just because she heard you
+and me scoldin', and you said that to her, that if it wasn't for her
+you'd go away. She never would."
+
+"Go away?" sobbed Fanny--"go away? I wouldn't go away from hell if
+she was there. I would burn; I would hear the clankin' of chains,
+and groans, and screeches, and devils whisperin' in my ears what I
+had done wrong, for all eternity, before I'd go where they were
+playin' harps in heaven, if she was there. I'd like it better, I
+would. And I'd stay here if I had twenty sisters I didn't get along
+with, and be happier than I would be anywhere else on earth, if she
+was here. But she couldn't have done it. She didn't know how. It's
+awful to put such things into papers."
+
+Eva jumped up with a fierce gesture, ran to the stove, and crammed
+the paper in. "There!" said she; "I wish I could serve all the
+papers in the country the same way. I do, and I'd like to put all
+the editors in after 'em. I'd like to put 'em in the stove with
+their own papers for kindlin's."  Suddenly Eva turned with a swish
+of skirts, and was out of the room and pounding up-stairs, shaking
+the little house with every step. When she returned she bore over
+her arm her best dress--a cherished blue silk, ornate with ribbons
+and cheap lace. "Where's that pattern?" she asked her sister.
+
+"She wouldn't ever do such a thing," moaned Fanny.
+
+"Where's that pattern?"
+
+"What pattern?" Fanny said, faintly.
+
+"That little dress pattern. Her little dress pattern, the one you
+cut over my dress for her by."
+
+"In the bureau drawer in my room. Oh, she wouldn't."
+
+Eva went into the bedroom, returned with the pattern, got the
+scissors from Fanny's work-basket, and threw her best silk dress in
+a rustling heap upon the table.
+
+Fanny stopped moaning and looked at her with wretched wonder. "What
+be you goin' to do?"
+
+"Do?" cried Eva, fiercely--"do? I'm goin' to cut this dress over for
+her."
+
+"You ain't."
+
+"Yes, I be. If I drove her away from home, scoldin' because you cut
+over that other old thing of mine for her, I'm goin' to make up for
+it now. I'm goin' to give her my best blue silk, that I paid a
+dollar and a half a yard for, and 'ain't worn three times. Yes, I
+be. She's goin' to have a dress cut out of it, an' she's comin' back
+to wear it, too. You'll see she is comin' home to wear it."
+
+Eva cut wildly into the silk with mad slashes of her gleaming
+shears, while two neighboring women, who had just come into the
+room, stared aghast, and even Fanny was partly diverted from her
+sorrow.
+
+"She's crazy," whispered one of the women, backing away as she
+spoke.
+
+"Oh, Eva, don't; don't do so," pleaded Fanny, tremulously.
+
+"I be," said Eva, and she cut recklessly up the front breadth.
+
+"You ain't cutting it right," said the other neighbor, who was
+skilful in such matters, and never fully moved from her own
+household grooves by any excitement. "If you are a-goin' to cut it
+at all, you had better cut it right."
+
+"I don't care how I cut it," returned Eva, thrusting the woman away.
+"Oh, I don't care how I cut it; I want to waste it. I will waste
+it."
+
+The other neighbor backed entirely out of the room, then turned and
+fled across the yard, her calico wrapper blowing wildly and lashing
+about her slender legs, to her own house, the doors of which she
+locked. Presently the other woman followed her, stepping with the
+ponderous leisure which results from vastness of body and philosophy
+of mind. The autumn wind, swirling in impetuous gusts, had little
+effect upon her broadside of woollen shawl. She had not come out on
+that raw evening with nothing upon her head. She shook the kitchen
+door of her friend, and smiled with calm reassurance when it was
+cautiously set ajar to disclose a wide-eyed and open-mouthed face of
+terror. "Who is it?"
+
+"It's me. What have you got your door locked for?"
+
+"I think that Eva Loud is raving crazy. I'm afraid of her."
+
+"Lord! you 'ain't no reason to be 'fraid of her. She ain't crazy.
+She's only lettin' the birds that fly over your an' my heads settle
+down to roost. You and me, both of us, if we was situated jest as
+she is, might think of doin' jest what she's a-doin', but we won't
+neither of us do it. We'd let our best dresses hang in the closet,
+safe and sound, while we cut them up in our souls; but Eva, she's
+different."
+
+"Well, I don't care. I believe she's crazy, and I'm going to keep my
+doors locked. How do you know she hasn't killed Ellen and put her in
+the well?"
+
+"Stuff! Now you're lettin' your birds roost, Hattie Monroe."
+
+"I read something that wasn't any worse than that in the paper the
+other day. I should think they would look in the well. Have Mrs.
+Jones and Miss Cross gone home?"
+
+"No; they are over there. There's poor Andrew coming now; I wonder
+if he has heard anything?"
+
+Both women eyed hesitatingly poor Andrew Brewster's dejected figure
+creeping up the road in the dark.
+
+"You holler and ask him," said the woman in the door.
+
+"I hate to, for I know by his looks he 'ain't heard anything of her.
+I know he's jest comin' home to rest a minute, so he can start
+again. I know he 'ain't eat a thing since last night. Well, Maria
+has got some coffee all made, and a nice little piece of steak ready
+to cook."
+
+"You holler and ask him."
+
+"What is the use? Just see the way he walks; I know without askin'."
+
+However, as Andrew neared his house he involuntarily quickened his
+pace, and his head and shoulders became suddenly alert. It had
+occurred to him that possibly Fanny and Eva might have had some news
+of Ellen during his absence. Possibly she might have come home even.
+
+Then he was hailed by the stout woman standing at the door of the
+next house. "Heard anything yet, Andrew?"
+
+Andrew shook his head, and looked with despairing eyes at the
+windows where he used to see Ellen's little face. She had not come,
+then, for these women would have known it. He entered the house, and
+Fanny greeted him with a tremulous cry. "Have you heard anything;
+oh, have you heard anything, Andrew?"
+
+Eva sprang forward and clutched him by the arm.
+
+"Have you?"
+
+[Illustration: Eva sprang forward and clutched him by the arm]
+
+Andrew shook his head, and moved her hand from his arm, and pushed
+past her roughly.
+
+Fanny stood in his way, and threw her arms around him with a wild,
+sobbing cry, but he pushed her away also with sternness, and went to
+the kitchen sink to wash his hands. The four women--his wife, her
+sister, and the two neighbors--stood staring at him; his face was
+terrible as he dipped the water from the pail on the sink corner,
+and the terribleness of it was accentuated by the homely and
+every-day nature of his action.
+
+They all stared, then Fanny burst out with a loud and desperate
+wail. "He won't speak to me, he pushes me away, when it is our child
+that's lost--his as well as mine. He hasn't any feelings for me that
+bore her. He only thinks of himself. Oh, oh, my own husband pushes
+me away."
+
+Andrew went on washing his hands and his ghastly face, and made no
+reply. He had actually at that moment not the slightest sympathy
+with his wife. All his other outlets of affection were choked by his
+concern for his lost child; and as for pity, he kept reflecting,
+with a cold cruelty, that it served her right--it served both her
+and her sister right. Had not they driven the child away between
+them?
+
+He would not eat the supper which the neighbors had prepared for
+him; finally he went across the yard to his mother's. It seemed to
+him at that time that his mother could enter into his state of mind
+better than any one else.
+
+When he went out, Fanny called after him, frantically, "Oh, Andrew,
+you ain't going to leave me?"
+
+When he made no response, she gazed for a second at his retreating
+back, then her temper came to her aid. She caught her sister's arm,
+and pulled her away out of the kitchen. "Come with me," she said,
+hoarsely. "I've got nobody but you. My own husband leaves me when he
+is in such awful trouble, and goes to that old woman, that has
+always hated me, for comfort."
+
+The sisters went into Fanny's bedroom, and sat down on the edge of
+the bed, with their arms round each other. "Oh, Fanny!" sobbed Eva;
+"poor, poor Fanny! if Andrew turns against you, I will stand by you
+as long as I live. I will work my fingers to the bone to support you
+and Ellen. I will never get married. I will stay and work for you
+and her. And I will never get mad with you again as long as I live,
+Fanny. Oh, it was all my fault, every bit my fault, but, but--"
+Eva's voice broke; suddenly she clasped her sister tighter, and then
+she went down on her knees beside the bed, and hid her tangled head
+in her lap. "Oh, Fanny," she sobbed out miserably, "there ain't much
+excuse for me, but there's a little. When Jim Tenny stopped goin'
+with me last summer, my heart 'most broke. I don't care if you do
+know it. That's what made me so much worse than I used to be. Oh, my
+heart 'most broke, Fanny! He's treated me awful, but I can't get
+over it; and now little Ellen's gone, and I drove her away!"
+
+Fanny bent over her sister, and pressed her head close to her bosom.
+"Don't you feel so bad, Eva," said she. "You wasn't any more to
+blame than I was, and we'll stand by each other as long as we live."
+
+"I'll work my fingers to the bone for you and Ellen, and I'll never
+get married," said Eva again.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+
+Ellen Brewster was two nights and a day at Cynthia Lennox's, and no
+one discovered it. All day the searching-parties passed the house.
+Once Ellen was at the window, and one of the men looked up and saw
+her, and since his solicitude for the lost child filled his heart
+with responsiveness towards all childhood, he waved his hand and
+nodded, and bade another man look at that handsome little kid in the
+window.
+
+"Guess she's about Ellen's size," said the other.
+
+"Shouldn't wonder if she looked something like her," said the first.
+
+"Answers the description well enough," said the other, "same light
+hair."
+
+Both of the men waved their hands to Ellen as they passed on, but
+she shrank back afraid. That was about ten o'clock of the morning of
+the day after Miss Lennox had taken her into her house. She had
+waked at dawn with a full realization of the situation. She
+remembered perfectly all that had happened. She was a child for whom
+there were very few half-lights of life, and no spiritual twilights
+connected her sleeping and waking hours. She opened her eyes and
+looked around the room, and remembered how she had run away and how
+her mother was not there, and she remembered the strange lady with
+that same odd combination of terror and attraction and docility with
+which she had regarded her the night before. It was a very cold
+morning, and there was a delicate film of frost on the windows
+between the sweeps of the muslin curtains, and the morning sun gave
+it a rosy glow and a crusting sparkle as of diamonds. The sight of
+the frost had broken poor Andrew Brewster's heart when he saw it,
+and reflected how it might have meant death to his little tender
+child out under the blighting fall of it, like a little
+house-flower.
+
+Ellen lay winking at it when Cynthia Lennox came into the room and
+leaned over her. The child cast a timid glance up at the tall,
+slender figure clad in a dressing-gown of quilted crimson silk which
+dazzled her eyes, accustomed as she was to morning wrappers of
+dark-blue cotton at ninety-eight cents apiece; and she was filled
+with undefined apprehensions of splendor and opulence which might
+overwhelm her simple grasp of life and cause her to lose all her old
+standards of value.
+
+She had always thought her mother's wrappers very beautiful, but now
+look at this! Cynthia's face, too, in the dim, rosy light, looked
+very fair to the child, who had no discernment for those ravages of
+time of which adults either acquit themselves or by which they
+measure their own. She did not see the faded color of the woman's
+face at all; she did not see the spreading marks around mouth and
+eyes, or the faint parallels of care on the temples; she saw only
+that which her unbiased childish vision had ever sought in a human
+face, love and kindness, and tender admiration of herself; and her
+conviction of its beauty was complete. But at the same time a bitter
+and piteous jealousy for her mother and home, and all that she had
+ever loved and believed in, came over her. What right had this
+strange woman, dressed in a silk dress like that, to be leaning over
+her in the morning, and looking at her like that--to be leaning over
+her in the morning instead of her own mother, and looking at her in
+that way, when she was not her mother? She shrank away towards the
+other side of the bed with that nestling motion which is the natural
+one of all young and gentle children even towards vacancy, but
+suddenly Cynthia was leaning close over her, and she was conscious
+again of that soft smother of violets, and Cynthia's arms were
+embracing all her delicate little body with tenderest violence,
+folding her against the soft red silk over her bosom, and kissing
+her little, blushing cheeks with the lightest and carefulest kisses,
+as though she were a butterfly which she feared to harm with her
+adoring touch.
+
+"Oh, you darling, you precious darling!" whispered Cynthia. "Don't
+be afraid, darling; don't be afraid, precious; you are very safe;
+don't be afraid. You shall have such a little, white, new-laid egg
+for your breakfast, and some slices of toast, such a beautiful
+brown, and some honey. Do you love honey, sweet? And some chocolate,
+all in a little pink-and-gold cup which you shall have for your very
+own."
+
+"I want my mother!" Ellen cried out suddenly, with an exceedingly
+bitter and terrified and indignant cry.
+
+"There, there, darling!" Cynthia whispered; "there is a beautiful
+red-and-green parrot down-stairs in a great cage that shines like
+gold, and you shall have him for your own, and he can talk. You
+shall have him for your very own, sweetheart. Oh, you darling! you
+darling!"
+
+Ellen felt herself overborne and conquered by this tide of love,
+which compelled like her mother's, though this woman was not her
+mother, and her revolt of loyalty was subdued for the time. After
+all, whether we like it or not, love is somewhat of an impersonal
+quality to all children, and perhaps to their elders, and it may be
+in such wise that the goddess is evident.
+
+She did not shrink from Cynthia any more then, but suffered her to
+lift her out of bed as if she were a baby and set her on a white fur
+rug, into which her feet sank, to her astonishment. Her mother had
+only drawn-in rugs, which Ellen had watched her make. She was a
+little afraid of the fur rug.
+
+Ellen was very small, and seemed much younger than she was by reason
+of her baby silence and her little clinging ways. Then, too, she had
+always been so petted at home, and through never going to school had
+not been in contact with other children. Often the bloom of
+childhood is soonest rubbed off by friction with its own kind.
+Diamond cut diamond holds good in many cases.
+
+Cynthia did not think she was more than six years old, and never
+dreamed of allowing her to dress herself, and indeed the child had
+always been largely assisted in so doing. Cynthia washed her and
+dressed her, and curled her hair, and led her down-stairs into the
+dining-room of the night before, which Ellen still regarded with
+wise eyes as the store. Then she sat in the tall chair which must
+have been vacated by that mysterious other child, and had her
+breakfast, eating her new-laid egg, which the black woman broke for
+her, while she leaned delicately away as far as she could with a
+timid shrug of her little shoulder, and sipping her chocolate out of
+the beautiful pink-and-gold cup. That, however, Ellen decided within
+herself was not nearly as pretty as one with "A Gift of Friendship"
+on it in gilt letters which her grandmother kept on the whatnot in
+her best parlor. This had been given to her aunt Ellen, who died
+when she was a young girl, and was to be hers when she grew up. She
+did not care as much for the egg and toast either as for the
+griddle-cakes and maple syrup at home. All through breakfast Cynthia
+talked to her, and in such manner as the child had never heard. That
+fine voice, full of sweetest modulations and cadences, which used
+the language with the precision of a musician, was as different from
+the voices at home with their guttural slurs and maimed terminals as
+the song of a spring robin from the scream of the parrot which Ellen
+could hear in some distant room. And what Cynthia said was as
+different from ordinary conversation to the child as a fairy tale,
+being interspersed with terms of endearment which her mother and
+grandmother would have considered high-flown, and have been
+shamefaced in employing, and full of a whimsical playfulness which
+had an undertone of pathos in it. Cynthia was not still for a
+minute, and seemed to feel that much of her power lay in her speech
+and voice, like some enchantress who cast her spell by means of her
+silver tongue. Nobody knew how she dreaded that outcry of Ellen's,
+"I want my mother!"  It gave her the sensations of a murderess, even
+while she persisted in her crime. So she talked, diverting the
+child's mind from its natural channel by sheer force of eloquence.
+She told a story about the parrot, which caused Ellen's eyes to
+widen with thoughtful wonder; she promised her treasures and
+pleasures which made her mouth twitch into smiles in spite of
+herself; but with all her efforts, when after breakfast they went
+into another room, Ellen broke out again, "I want my mother!"
+
+Cynthia turned white and struggled with herself for a moment, then
+she spoke. That which she was doing of the nature of a crime was in
+reality more foreign to her nature than virtue, and her instinct was
+to return to her narrow and straight way in spite of its cramping of
+love and natural longings. "Who is your mother, darling?" she asked.
+"And what is your name?"
+
+But Ellen was silent, except for that one cry, "I want my mother!"
+The persistency of the child, in spite of her youth and her
+distress, was almost invulnerable. She came of a stiff-necked family
+on one side at least, and sometimes stiff-neckedness is more
+pronounced in a child than in an adult, in whom it may be tempered
+by experience and policy. "I want my mother! I want my mother!"
+Ellen repeated in her gentle wail as plaintively inconsequent as the
+note of a bird, and would say no more.
+
+Then Cynthia displayed the parrot, but a parrot was too fine and
+fierce a bird for Ellen. She would have preferred him as a subject
+for her imagination, which could not be harmed by his beak and
+claws, and she liked Cynthia's story about him better than the
+gorgeous actuality of the bird himself. She shrank back from that
+shrieking splendor, clinging with strong talons to his cage wires,
+against which he pressed cruelly his red breast and beat his
+gold-green wings, and through which he thrust his hooked beak, and
+glared with his yellow eyes.
+
+Ellen fairly sobbed at last when the parrot thrust out a wicked and
+deceiving claw towards her, and said something in his unearthly
+shriek which seemed to have a distinct reference to her, and fired
+at her a volley of harsh "How do's" and "Good-mornings," and
+"Good-nights," and "Polly want a cracker's," then finished with a
+wild shriek of laughter, her note of human grief making a curious
+chord with the bird's of inhuman mirth. "I want my mother!" she
+panted out, and wept, and would not be comforted. Then Cynthia took
+her away from the parrot and produced the doll. Then truly did the
+sentiment of emulative motherhood in her childish breast console her
+for the time for her need of her own mother. Such a doll as that she
+had never seen, not even in the store-windows at Christmas-time.
+Still, she had very fine dolls for a little girl whose relatives
+were not wealthy, but this doll was like a princess, and nearly as
+large as Ellen.
+
+Ellen held out her arms for this ravishing creature in a French
+gown, looked into its countenance of unflinching infantile grace and
+amiability and innocence, and her fickle heart betrayed her, and she
+laughed with delight, and the tension of anxiety relaxed in her
+face.
+
+"Where is her mother?" she asked of Cynthia, having a very firm
+belief in the little girl-motherhood of dolls. She could not imagine
+a doll without her little mother, and even in the cases of the
+store-dolls, she wondered how their mothers could let them be sold,
+and mothered by other little girls, however poor they might be. But
+she never doubted that her own dolls were her very own children even
+if they had been bought in a store. So now she asked Cynthia with an
+indescribably pitying innocence, "Where is her mother?"
+
+Cynthia laughed and looked adoringly at the child with the doll in
+her arms. "She has no mother but you," said she. "She is yours, but
+once she belonged to a dear little boy, who used to live with me."
+
+Ellen stared thoughtfully: she had never seen a little boy with a
+doll. The lady seemed to read her thought, for she laughed again.
+
+"This little boy had curls, and he wore dresses like a little girl,
+and he was just as pretty as a little girl, and he loved to play
+with dolls like a little girl," said she.
+
+"Where is he?" asked Ellen, in a small, gentle voice. "Don't he want
+her now?"
+
+"No, darling," said Cynthia; "he is not here; he has been gone away
+two years, and he had left off his baby curls and his dresses, and
+stopped playing with her for a year before that."  Cynthia sighed
+and drew down her mouth, and Ellen looked at her lovingly and
+wonderingly.
+
+"Be you his mother?" she asked, piteously; then, before Cynthia
+could answer, her own lip quivered and she sobbed out again, even
+while she hugged her doll-child to her bosom, "I want my mother! I
+want my mother!"
+
+All that day the struggle went on. Cynthia Lennox, leading her
+little guest, who always bore the doll, traversed the fine old house
+in search of distraction, for the heart of the child was sore for
+its mother, and success was always intermittent. The music-box
+played, the pictures were explained, and even old trunks of
+laid-away treasures ransacked. Cynthia took her through the
+hot-houses and gave her all the flowers she liked to pick, to still
+that longing cry of hers. Cynthia Lennox had fine hot-houses kept by
+an old colored man, the husband of her black cook. Her establishment
+was very small; her one other maid she had sent away early that
+morning to make a visit with a sick sister in another town. The old
+colored couple had lived in her family since she was born, and would
+have been silent had she stolen a whole family of children. Ellen
+caught a glimpse of a bent, dark figure at one end of the pink-house
+as they entered; he glanced up at her with no appearance of
+surprise, only a broad, welcoming expansion of his whole face, which
+caused her to shrink; then he shuffled out in response to an order
+of his mistress.
+
+Ellen stared at the pinks, swarming as airily as butterflies in
+motley tints of palest rose to deepest carmine over the blue-green
+jungle of their stems; she sniffed the warm, moist, perfumed
+atmosphere; she followed Cynthia down the long perspective of bloom,
+then she said again that she wanted her mother; and Cynthia led her
+into the rose-house, then into one where the grapes hung low
+overhead and the air was as sweet and strong as wine, but even there
+Ellen wanted her mother.
+
+But it was not until the next morning when she was eating her
+breakfast that the climax came. Then the door-bell rang, and
+presently Cynthia was summoned into another room. She kissed Ellen,
+and bade her go on with her breakfast and she would return shortly;
+but before she had quite left the room a man stood unexpectedly in
+the door-way, a man who looked younger than Cynthia. He had a fair
+mustache, a high forehead scowling over near-sighted blue eyes, and
+stood with a careless slouch of shoulders in a gray coat.
+
+"Good-morning," he began. Then he stopped short when he saw Ellen in
+her tall chair staring shyly around at him through her soft golden
+mist of hair. "What child is that?" he demanded; but Cynthia with a
+sharp cry sprang to him, and fairly pulled him out of the room, and
+closed the door.
+
+Then Ellen heard voices rising higher and higher, and Cynthia say,
+in a voice of shrill passion: "I cannot, Lyman. I cannot give her
+up. You don't know what I have suffered since George married and
+took little Robert away. I can't let this child go."
+
+Then came the man's voice, hoarse with excitement: "But, Cynthia,
+you must; you are mad. Think what this means. Why, if people know
+what you have done, kept this child, while all this search has been
+going on, and made no effort to find out who she was--"
+
+"I did ask her, and she would not tell me," Cynthia said, miserably.
+
+"Good Lord! what of that? That is nothing but a subterfuge. You must
+have seen in the papers--"
+
+"I have not looked at a paper since she came."
+
+"Of course you have not. You were afraid to. Why, good God! Cynthia
+Lennox, I don't know but you will stand in danger of lynching if
+people ever find this out, that you have taken in this child and
+kept her in this way--I don't know what people will do."
+
+Ellen waited for no more; she rose softly, she gathered up her great
+doll which sat in a little chair near by, she gathered up her
+pink-and-gold cup which had been given her, and the pinks which had
+been brought from the hot-house the day before, which Cynthia had
+arranged in a vase beside her plate, then she stole very softly out
+of the side door, and out of the house, and ran down the street as
+fast as her little feet could carry her.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+
+That morning, after the street in front of Lloyd's factory had been
+cleared of the flocking employes with their little dinner-boxes, and
+the great broadside of the front windows had been set with faces of
+the workers, a distracted figure came past. A young fellow at a
+window of the cutting-room noticed her first. "Look at that, Jim
+Tenny," said he, with a shove of an elbow towards his next neighbor.
+
+"Get out, will ye?" growled Jim Tenny, but he looked.
+
+Then three girls from the stitching-room came crowding up behind
+with furtively tender pressings of round arms against the shoulders
+of the young men. "We come in here to see if that was Eva Loud,"
+said one, a sharp-faced, alert girl, not pretty, but a favorite
+among the male employes, to the constant wonder of the other girls.
+
+"Yes, it's her fast enough," rejoined another, a sweet-faced blonde
+with an exaggeratedly fashionable coiffure and a noticeable
+smartness in the tie of her neck-ribbon and the set of her cotton
+waist. "Just look at the poor thing's hair. Only see how frowsly it
+is, and she has come out without her hat."
+
+"Well, I don't wonder," said the third girl, who was elderly and
+whose complexion was tanned and weather-beaten almost to the color
+of the leather upon which she worked. Yet through this seamed and
+discolored face, with thin grayish hair drawn back tightly from the
+temples, one could discern, as through a transparent mask, a past
+prettiness and an exceeding gentleness and faithfulness. "If my
+sister's little Helen was to be lost I shouldn't know whether my hat
+was on or not," said she. "I believe I should go raving mad."
+
+"You wouldn't have to slave as you have done supportin' it ever
+since your sister's husband died," said the pretty girl. "Only look
+how Eva's waist bags in the back and she 'ain't got any belt on. I
+wouldn't come out lookin' so."
+
+"I should die if I didn't have something to work for. That's the
+difference between being a worker and a slave," said the other girl,
+simply. "Poor Eva!"
+
+"Well, it was a pretty young one," said the first girl.
+
+"Looks to me as if Eva Loud's skirt was comin' off," said the pretty
+girl. She pressed close to Jim Tenny with a familiar air of
+proprietorship as she spoke, but the young man did not seem to heed
+her. He was looking over his bench at the figure on the street
+below, and his heavy black eyebrows were scowling, and his mouth
+set.
+
+Jim Tenny was handsome after a swarthy and grimy fashion, for the
+tint of the leather seemed to have become absorbed into his skin.
+His black mustache bristled roughly, but his face was freer than
+usual from his black beard-stubble, because the day before had been
+Sunday and he had shaved. His black right hand with its squat
+discolored nails grasped his cutting-knife with a hard clutch, his
+left held the piece of leather firmly in place, while he stared out
+with that angry and anxious scowl at Eva, who had paused on the
+street below, and was staring up at the windows, as if she meditated
+a wild search in the factory for the lost child. There was a curious
+likeness between the two faces; people had been accustomed to say
+that Eva Loud and her gentleman looked more like brother and sister
+than a courting couple, and there was, moreover, a curious spirit of
+comradeship between the two. It asserted itself now with the young
+man, in opposition to the more purely sexual attraction of the
+pretty girl who was leaning against him, and for whom he had
+deserted Eva.
+
+After all, friendship and good comradeship are a steadier force than
+love, if not as overwhelming, and it may be that tortoise of the
+emotions which outruns the hare.
+
+"Well, for my part, I think a good deal more of Eva Loud than if she
+had come out all frizzed and ruffled--shows her heart is in the
+right place," said the man who had spoken first. He spoke with a
+guttural drawl, and kept on with his work, but there was a meaning
+in his words for the pretty girl, who had coquetted with him before
+taking up with Jim Tenny.
+
+"That is so," said another man at Jim Tenny's right. "She is right
+to come out as she has done when she is so anxious for the child."
+This man was a fair-haired Swede, and he spoke English with a
+curious and careful precision, very different from the hurried,
+slurring intonations of the other men. He had been taught the
+language by a philanthropic young lady, a college graduate, in whose
+father's family he had lived when he first came to America, and in
+consequence he spoke like a gentleman and had some considerable
+difficulty in understanding his companions.
+
+"Eva Loud has had a damned hard time, take it all together," spoke
+out another man, looking over is bench at the girl on the street. He
+was small and thin and wiry, a mass of brown-coated muscles under
+his loose-hanging gingham shirt. He plied feverishly his
+cutting-knife with his lean, hairy hands as he spoke. He was
+accounted one of the best and swiftest cutters in Lloyd's, and he
+worked unceasingly, for he had an invalid wife and four children to
+support. Now and then he had to stop to cough, then he worked
+faster.
+
+"That's so," said the first man.
+
+"Yes, that is so," said the Swede, with a nod of his fair head.
+
+"And now to lose this young one that she set her life by," said the
+first girl, with an evident point of malice in her tone, and a
+covert look at the pretty girl at Jim Tenny's side. Jim Tenny paled
+under his grime; the hand which held the knife clinched.
+
+"What do you s'pose has become of the young one?" said the first
+girl. "There's a good many out from the shop huntin' this mornin',
+ain't there?"
+
+"Fifty," said the first man, laconically.
+
+"You three were out all day yesterday, wa'n't you?"
+
+"Yes, Jim and Carl and me were out till after midnight."
+
+"Well, I wonder whether the poor little young one is alive? Don't
+seem as if she could be--but--"
+
+"Look there! look there!" screamed the elderly girl suddenly. "Look
+at _there!_"  She began to dance, she laughed, she sobbed, she waved
+her lean hands frantically out of the window, leaning far over the
+bench. "Look at there!" she kept crying. Then she turned and ran out
+of the room, with the other girls and half the cutting-room after
+her.
+
+"Damn it, she's got the child!" said the thin man. He kept on
+working, his dark, sinewy hands flying over the sheets of leather,
+but the tears ran down his cheeks. Lloyd's emptied itself into the
+street, and surrounded Eva Loud and Ellen, who, running aimlessly,
+had come straight to her aunt. Jim Tenny was first.
+
+Eva stood clasping the child, who was too frightened to cry, and was
+breathing in hushed gasps, her face hidden on her aunt's broad
+bosom. Eva had caught her up at the first sight of her, and now she
+stood clasping her fiercely, and looking at them all as if she
+thought they wanted to rob her of the child. Even when a great cheer
+went up from the crowd, and was echoed by another from the factory,
+with an accompaniment of waving bare, leather-stained arms and
+hands, that expression of desperate defiance instead of the joy of
+recovery did not leave her face, not until she saw Jim Tenny's face
+working with repressed emotion and met his eyes full of the memory
+of old comradeship. Then her bold heart and her pride all melted and
+she burst out in a great wail before them all.
+
+"Oh, Jim!" she cried out. "Oh, Jim, I lost you, and then I thought
+I'd lost her! Oh, Jim!"
+
+Then there was a chorus of feminine sobs, for Eva's wild weeping had
+precipitated the ready sympathy of half the girls present. The men
+started a cheer to cover a certain chivalrous shamefacedness which
+was upon them at the sight of the girl's grief, and another cheer
+from the factory echoed it. Then came another sound, the great
+steam-whistle of Lloyd's; then the whistles of the other neighboring
+factories responded, and people began to swarm out of them, and the
+windows to fill with eager faces. Jim Tenny grasped Eva's arm with a
+grasp like a vise. "Come this way," said he, sharply. "Come this
+way, Eva."
+
+"Oh, Jim! oh, Jim!" Eva sobbed again; but she followed him, little
+Ellen's golden fleece tossing over her shoulder.
+
+"She's got her; she's got her!" shouted the people.
+
+[Illustration: 'She's got her!' Shouted the people]
+
+Then the leather-stained hands gyrated, the cheers went up, and
+again the whistles blew.
+
+Jim Tenny, with his hand on Eva's arm, pushed his way through the
+crowd.
+
+"Where you goin', Jim?" asked the pretty girl at his elbow, but he
+pushed past her roughly, and did not seem to hear. Eva's face was
+all inflamed and convulsed with sobs, but she did not dream of
+covering it--she was full of the holy shamelessness of grief and
+joy. "Let me see her! let me see her! Oh, the dear little thing,
+only look at her! Where have you been, precious? Are you hungry? Oh,
+Nellie, she is hungry, I know! She looks thin. Run over to the
+bakery and buy her some cookies, quick! Are you cold? Give her this
+sacque. Only look at her! Kate, only look at her! Are you hurt,
+darling? Has anybody hurt you? If anybody has, he shall be hung! Oh,
+you darling! Only see her, 'Liza."
+
+But Jim Tenny, his mouth set, his black brows scowling, his hard
+grasp on Eva's arm, pushed straight through the gathering crowd
+until they came to Clarkson's stables at the rear of Lloyd's, where
+he kept his horse and buggy--for he lived at a distance from his
+work, and drove over every morning. He pointed to a chair which a
+hostler had occupied, tilted against the wall, for a morning smoke,
+after the horses were fed and watered, and which he had vacated to
+join the jubilant crowd. "Sit down there," he said to Eva. Then he
+hailed a staring man coming out of the office. "Here, help me in
+with my horse, quick!" said he.
+
+The man stared still, with slowly rising indignation. He was portly
+and middle-aged, the senior partner of the firm, who seldom touched
+his own horses of late years, and had a son at Harvard. "What's to
+pay? What do you mean? Anybody sick?" he asked.
+
+"Help me into the buggy with my horse!" shouted Jim Tenny. "I tell
+you the child is found, and I've got to take it home to its folks."
+
+"Don't they know yet? Is that it?"
+
+"Yes, I tell you."  Jim was backing out his horse as he spoke.
+
+Mr. Clarkson seized a harness and threw the collar over the horse's
+head, while Jim ran out the buggy. When Mr. Clarkson lifted Eva and
+Ellen into the buggy he gave the child's head a pat. "God bless it!"
+he said, and his voice broke.
+
+The horse was restive. Jim took a leap into the buggy at Eva's side,
+and they were out with a dash and a swift rattle. The crowd parted
+before them, and cheer after cheer went up. The whistles sounded
+again. Then all the city bells rang out. They were signalling the
+other searchers that the child was found. Jim and Eva and Ellen made
+a progress of triumph down the street. The crowd pursued them with
+cheers of rejoicing; doors and windows flew open; the house-yards
+were full of people. Jim drove as fast as he could, scowling hard to
+hide his tenderness and pity. Eva sat by his side, weeping in her
+terrible candor of grief and joy, and Ellen's golden locks tossed on
+her shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+
+As Jim Tenny, with Eva Loud and the child, drove down the road
+towards the Brewster house, his horse and buggy became the nucleus
+of a gathering procession, shouting and exclaiming, with voices all
+tuned to one key of passionate sympathy. There were even many women
+of the poorer class who had no sense of indecency in following the
+utmost lead of their tender emotions. Some of them bore children of
+their own in their arms, and were telling them with passionate
+croonings to look at the other little girl in the carriage who had
+been lost, and gone away a whole day and two nights from her mother.
+They often called out fondly to Ellen and Eva, and ordered Jim to
+wait a moment that they might look at the poor darling. But Jim
+drove on as fast as he was able, though he had sometimes to rein his
+horse sharply to avoid riding down some lean racing boys, who would
+now and then shoot ahead of him with loud whoops of triumph. Once as
+he drove he laid one hand caressingly over Eva's. "Poor girl!" he
+said, hoarsely and shamefacedly, and Eva sobbed loudly. When Jim
+reached Mrs. Zelotes Brewster's house there was a swift displacement
+of lights and shadows in a window, a door flew open, and the gaunt
+old woman was at the wheel.
+
+"Stop!" she cried. "Stop! Bring her in here to me! Let me have her!
+Give her to me; I have got everything ready! Come, Ellen--come to
+grandmother!"
+
+Then there was a mad rush from the opposite direction, and the
+child's mother was there, reaching into the buggy with fierce arms
+of love and longing. "Give her to me!" she shrieked out. "Give me my
+baby, Eva Loud! Oh, Ellen, where have you been?"
+
+Fanny Brewster dragged her child from her sister's arms so forcibly
+that she seemed fairly to fly over the wheel. Then she strained her
+to her hungry bosom, covering her with kisses, wetting her soft face
+and yellow hair with tears.
+
+"My baby, mother's darling, mother's baby!" she gasped out with
+great pants of satisfied love; but another pair of lean, wiry old
+arms stole around the child's slender body.
+
+"Give her to me!" demanded Mrs. Zelotes Brewster. "She is my son's
+child, and I have a right to her! You will kill her, goin' on so
+over her. Give her to me! I have everything all ready in my house to
+take care of her. Give her to me, Fanny Loud!"
+
+"Keep your hands off her!" cried Fanny. "She's my own baby, and
+nobody's goin' to take her away from me, I guess."
+
+"Give her to me this minute!" said Mrs. Zelotes Brewster. "You'll
+kill her, goin' on so. You're frightenin' her to death. Give her to
+me this minute!"
+
+Ellen, meanwhile, that little tender blossom tossed helplessly by
+contending waves of love, was weeping and trembling with joy at the
+feel of her mother's arms and with awe and terror at this tempest of
+passion which she had evoked.
+
+"Give her to me!" demanded Mrs. Zelotes Brewster.
+
+The crowd who had followed stood gaping with working faces. The
+mothers wept over their own children. Eva stood at her sister's
+elbow, with a hand on one of the child's, which was laid over
+Fanny's shoulder. Jim Tenny had his face hidden on his horse's neck.
+
+"Give her to me!" said Mrs. Zelotes again. "Give her to me, I say! I
+am her own grandmother!"
+
+"And I am her own mother!" called out Fanny, with a great
+master-note of love and triumph and defiance. "I'm her own mother,
+and I've got her, and nobody but God shall take her from me again."
+The tears streamed down her cheeks; she kissed the child with pale,
+parted lips. She was at once pathetic and terrible. She was human
+love and selfishness incarnate.
+
+Mrs. Zelotes Brewster stared at her, and her face changed suddenly
+and softened. She turned and went back into her own house. Her gray
+head appeared a second beside her window, then sank out of sight.
+She was kneeling there with her Bible at her side, a sudden sweet
+humility of thankfulness rising from her whole spirit like a
+perfume, when Fanny, with Eva following, still clinging to the
+child's little hand over her sister's shoulder, went across the yard
+to her own house to tell her husband. The others followed, and stood
+about outside, listening with curiosity sanctified by intensest
+sympathy. One nervous-faced boy leaped on the slant of the bulkhead
+to peer in a window of the sitting-room, and when his mother pulled
+him back forcibly, rubbed his grimy little knuckles across his eyes,
+and a dark smooch appeared on his nose and cheeks. He was a young
+boy, very small and thin for his age. He whispered to his mother and
+she nodded, and he darted off in the direction of his own home.
+
+Andrew Brewster had just come home after an all-night's search, and
+he was in his bedroom in the bitter sleep of utter exhaustion and
+despair. Suddenly his heart had failed him and his brain had reeled.
+He had begun to feel dazed, to forget for a minute what he was
+looking for. He had made incoherent replies to the men with him, and
+finally one, after a whispered consultation with the others, had
+said: "Look at here, Andrew, old fellow; you'd better go home and
+rest a bit. We'll look all the harder while you're gone, and maybe
+she'll be found when you wake up."
+
+"Who will be found?" Andrew asked, with a dazed look. He reeled as
+if he were drunk.
+
+"Ain't had anything, has he?" one of the men whispered.
+
+"Not a drop to my knowledge."
+
+Andrew's lips trembled perceptibly; his forehead was knitted with
+vacuous perplexity; his eyes reflected blanks of unreason; his whole
+body had an effect of weak settling and subsidence. The man who
+worked next to him in the cutting-room at Lloyd's, and had searched
+at his side indefatigably from the first, stole a tender hand under
+his shoulder. "Come along with me, old man," he said, and Andrew
+obeyed.
+
+When Fanny and Eva came in with the child, he lay prostrate on the
+bed, and scarcely seemed to breathe. A great qualm of fear shot over
+Fanny for a second. His father had died of heart-disease.
+
+"Is he--dead?" she gasped to Eva.
+
+"No, of course he ain't," said Eva. "He's asleep; he's wore out.
+Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, wake up! She's found, Andrew; Ellen's
+found."  But Andrew did not stir.
+
+"He is!" gasped Fanny, again.
+
+"No, he ain't. Andrew, Andrew Brewster, wake up, wake up! Ellen's
+here! She's found!"
+
+Fanny put Ellen down, and bent over Andrew and listened. "No, I can
+hear him breathe," she cried. Then she kissed him, and leaned her
+mouth close to his ear. "Andrew!" she said, in a voice which Eva and
+Ellen had never heard before. "Andrew, poor old man, wake up; she's
+found! Our child is found!"
+
+When Andrew still did not wake, but only stirred, and moaned
+faintly, Fanny lifted Ellen onto the bed. "Kiss poor father, and
+wake him," she told her.
+
+Ellen, whose blue eyes were big with fright and wonder, whose lips
+were quivering, and whose little body was vibrating with the strain
+of her nerves, laid her soft cheek against her father's rough, pale
+one, and stole a little arm under his neck. "Father, wake up!" she
+called out in her little, trembling, sweet voice, and that reached
+Andrew Brewster in the depths of his own physical inertness. He
+opened his eyes and looked at the child, and the light came into
+them, and then the sound of his sobbing filled the house and reached
+the people out in the yard, and an echo arose from them. Gradually
+the crowd dispersed. Jim Tenny, before he drove away, went to the
+door and spoke to Eva.
+
+"Anything I can do?" he asked, with a curious, tender roughness. He
+did not look at her as he spoke.
+
+"No; thank you, Jim," replied Eva.
+
+Suddenly the young man reached out a hand and stroked her rough
+hair. "Well, take care of yourself, old girl," he said.
+
+Eva went to her sister as Jim went out of the yard. Ellen was in the
+sitting-room with her father, and Fanny had gone to the kitchen to
+heat some milk for the child, whom she firmly believed to have had
+nothing to eat during her absence.
+
+"Fanny," said Eva.
+
+"Well?" said Fanny. "I can't stop; I must get some milk for her; she
+must be 'most starved."
+
+Fanny turned and looked at Eva, who cast down her eyes before her in
+a very shamefacedness of happiness and contrition.
+
+"Why, what is it?" repeated Fanny, staring at her.
+
+"I've got Jim back, I guess, as well as Ellen," said Eva, "and I'm
+going to be a good woman."
+
+After all the crowd of people outside had gone, the little nervous
+boy raced into the Brewster yard with a tin cup of chestnuts in his
+hand. He knocked at the side door, and when Fanny opened it he
+thrust them upon her. "They're for her!" he blurted out, and was
+gone, racing like a deer.
+
+"Don't you want the cup back?" Fanny shouted after him.
+
+"No, ma'am," he called back, and that, although his mother had
+charged him to bring back the cup or he would get a scolding.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+
+Ellen had clung fast all the time to her doll, her bunch of pinks,
+and her cup and saucer; or, rather, she had guarded them jealously.
+"Where did you get all these things?" her aunt Eva had asked her,
+amazedly, when she first caught sight of her, and then had not
+waited for an answer in her wild excitement of joy at the recovery
+of the child. The great, smiling wax doll had ridden between Jim and
+Eva in the buggy, Eva had held the pink cup and saucer with a kind
+of mechanical carefulness, and Ellen herself clutched the pinks in
+one little hand, though she crushed them against her aunt's bosom as
+she sat in her lap. Ellen's grandmother and aunt had glanced at
+these treasures with momentary astonishment, and so had her mother,
+but curiosity was in abeyance for both of them for the time; rapture
+at the sight of the beloved child at whose loss they had suffered
+such agonies was the one emotion of their souls. But later
+investigation was to follow.
+
+When Ellen did not seem to care for her hot milk liberally sweetened
+in her own mug, and griddle-cakes with plenty of syrup, her mother
+looked at her, and her eyes of love sharpened with inquiry. "Ain't
+you hungry?" she said. Ellen shook her head. She was sitting at the
+table in the dining-room, and her father, mother, and aunt were all
+hovering about her, watching her. Some of the neighbor women were
+also in the room, staring with a sort of deprecating tenderness of
+curiosity.
+
+"Do you feel sick?" Ellen's father inquired, anxiously.
+
+"You don't feel sick, do you?" repeated her mother.
+
+Ellen shook her head.
+
+Just then Mrs. Zelotes Brewster came in with her
+black-and-white-checked shawl pinned around her gaunt old face,
+which had in it a strange softness and sweetness, which made Fanny
+look at her again, after the first glance, and not know why.
+
+"We've got our blessing back again, mother," said her son Andrew, in
+a broken voice.
+
+"But she won't eat her breakfast, now mother has gone and cooked it
+for her, so nice, too," said Fanny, in a tone of confidence which
+she had never before used towards Mrs. Zelotes.
+
+"You don't feel sick, do you, Ellen?" asked her grandmother.
+
+Ellen shook her head. "No, ma'am," said she.
+
+"She says she don't feel sick, and she ain't hungry," Andrew said,
+anxiously.
+
+"I wonder if she would eat one of my new doughnuts. I've got some
+real nice ones," said a neighbor--the stout woman from the next
+house, whose breadth of body seemed to symbolize a corresponding
+spiritual breadth of motherliness, as she stood there looking at the
+child who had been lost and was found.
+
+"Don't you want one of Aunty Wetherhed's nice doughnuts?" asked
+Fanny.
+
+"No; I thank you," replied Ellen. Eva started suddenly with an air
+of mysterious purpose, opened a door, ran down cellar, and returned
+with a tumbler of jelly, but Ellen shook her head even at that.
+
+"Have you had your breakfast?" said Fanny.
+
+Then Ellen was utterly quiet. She did not speak; she made no sign or
+motion. She sat still, looking straight before her.
+
+"Don't you hear, Ellen?" said Andrew. "Have you had your breakfast
+this morning?"
+
+"Tell Auntie Eva if you have had your breakfast," Eva said.
+
+Mrs. Zelotes Brewster spoke with more authority, and she went
+further.
+
+"Tell grandmother if you have had your breakfast, and where you had
+it," said she.
+
+But Ellen was dumb and motionless. They all looked at one another.
+"Tell Aunty Wetherhed: that's a good girl," said the stout woman.
+
+"Where are those things she had when I first saw her?" asked Mrs.
+Zelotes, suddenly. Eva went into the sitting-room, and fetched them
+out--the bunch of pinks, the cup and saucer, and the doll. Ellen's
+eyes gave a quick look of love and delight at the doll.
+
+"She had these, luggin' along in her little arms, when I first
+caught sight of her comin'," said Eva.
+
+"Where did you get them, Ellen?" asked Fanny. "Who gave them to
+you?"
+
+Ellen was silent, with all their inquiring eyes fixed upon her face
+like a compelling battery. "Where have you been, Ellen, all the time
+you have been gone?" asked Mrs. Zelotes. "Now you have got back
+safe, you must tell us where you have been."
+
+Andrew stooped his head down to the child's, and rubbed his rough
+cheek against her soft one, with his old facetious caress. "Tell
+father where you've been," he whispered. Ellen gave him a little
+piteous glance, and her lip quivered, but she did not speak.
+
+"Where do you s'pose she got them?" whispered one neighbor to
+another.
+
+"I can't imagine; that's a beautiful doll."
+
+"Ain't it? It must have cost a lot. I know, because my Hattie had
+one her aunt gave her last Christmas; that one cost a dollar and
+ninety-eight cents, and it didn't begin to compare with this. That's
+a handsome cup and saucer, too."
+
+"Yes, but you can get real handsome cups and saucers to Crosby's for
+twenty-five cents. I don't think so much of that."
+
+"Them pinks must have come from a greenhouse."
+
+"Yes, they must."
+
+"Well, there's lots of greenhouses in the city besides the florists.
+That don't help much."  Then the first woman inclined her lips
+closely to the other woman's ear and whispered, causing the other to
+start back. "No, I can't believe she would," said she.
+
+"She came from those Louds on her mother's side," whispered the
+first woman, guardedly, with dark emphasis.
+
+"Ellen," said Fanny, suddenly, and almost sharply, "you didn't take
+those things in any way you hadn't ought to, did you? Tell mother."
+
+"Fanny!" cried Andrew.
+
+"If she did, it's the first time a Brewster ever stole," said Mrs.
+Zelotes. Her face was no longer strange with unwonted sweetness as
+she looked at Fanny.
+
+Andrew put his face down to Ellen's again. "Father knows she didn't
+steal the things; never mind," he whispered.
+
+Suddenly the stout woman made a soft, ponderous rush out of the room
+and the house. She passed the window with oscillating swiftness.
+
+"Where's Miss Wetherhed gone?" said one woman to another.
+
+"She's thought of somethin'."
+
+"Maybe she left her bread in the oven."
+
+"No, she's thought of somethin'."
+
+A very old lady, who had been sitting in a rocking-chair on the
+other side of the room, rose trembling and came to Ellen and leaned
+over her, looking at her with small, black, bright eyes through
+gold-rimmed spectacles. The old woman was deaf, and her voice was
+shrill and high-pitched to reach her own consciousness. "What did
+such a good little girl as you be run away from father and mother
+for?" she piped, going back to first principles and the root of the
+whole matter, since she had heard nothing of the discussion which
+had been going on about her, and had supposed it to deal with them.
+
+Ellen gasped. Suddenly all her first woe returned upon her
+recollection. She turned innocent, accusing eyes upon her father's
+loving face, then her mother's and aunt's. "You said--you
+said--you--" she stammered out, but then her father and mother were
+both down upon their knees before her in her chair embracing her,
+and Eva, too, seized her little hands. "You mustn't ever think of
+what you heard father and mother say, Ellen," Andrew said, solemnly.
+"You must forget all about it. Father and mother were both very
+wrong and wicked--"
+
+"And Aunt Eva, too," sobbed Eva.
+
+"And they didn't mean what they said," continued Andrew. "You are
+the greatest blessing in this whole world to father and mother;
+you're all they have got. You don't know what father and mother have
+been through, thinking you were lost and they might never see their
+little girl again. Now you mustn't ever think of what they said
+again."
+
+"And you won't ever hear them say it again, Ellen," Fanny Brewster
+said, with a noble humbling of herself before her child.
+
+"No, you won't," said Eva.
+
+"Mother is goin' to try to do better, and have more patience, and
+not let you hear such talk any more," said Fanny, kissing Ellen
+passionately, and rising with Andrew's arm around her.
+
+"I'm going to try, too, Ellen," said Eva.
+
+The stout woman came padding softly and heavily into the room, and
+there was a bright-blue silken gleam in her hand. She waved a whole
+yard of silk of the most brilliant blue before Ellen's dazzled eyes.
+"There!" said she, triumphantly, "if you will tell Aunty Wetherhed
+where you've been, and all about it, she'll give you all this
+beautiful silk to make a new dress for your new dolly."
+
+Ellen looked in the woman's face, she looked at the blue silk, and
+she looked at the doll, but she was silent.
+
+"Only think what a beautiful dress it will make!" said a woman.
+
+"And see how pretty it goes with the dolly's light hair," said
+Fanny.
+
+"Ellen," whispered Andrew, "you tell father, and he'll buy you a
+whole pound of candy down to the store."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if I could find something to make your dolly a
+cloak," said a woman.
+
+"And I'll make her a beautiful little bonnet, if you'll tell," said
+another.
+
+"Only think, a whole pound of candy!" said Andrew.
+
+"I'll buy you a gold ring," Eva cried out--"a gold ring with a
+little blue stone in it."
+
+"And you shall go to ride with mother on the cars to-morrow," said
+Fanny.
+
+"Father will get you some oranges, too," said Andrew.
+
+But Ellen sat silent and unmoved by all that sweet bribery, a little
+martyr to something within herself; a sense of honor, love for the
+lady who had concealed her, and upon whom her confession might bring
+some dire penalty; or perhaps she was strengthened in her silence by
+something less worthy--possibly that stiff-neckedness which had
+descended to her from a long line of Puritans upon her father's
+side. At all events she was silent, and opposed successfully her one
+little new will to the onslaught of all those older and more
+experienced ones before her, though nobody knew at what cost of
+agony to herself. She had always been a singularly docile and
+obedient child; this was the first persistent disobedience of her
+whole life, and it reacted upon herself with a cruel spiritual hurt.
+She sat clasping the great doll, the pinks, and the pink cup and
+saucer before her on the table--a lone little weak child, opposing
+her single individuality against so many, and to her own hurt and
+horror and self-condemnation, and she did not weaken; but all at
+once her head drooped on one side, and her father caught her.
+
+"There! you can all stop tormentin' this blessed child!" he cried.
+"Ellen, Ellen, look at Father! Oh, mother, look here; she's fainted
+dead away!"
+
+"Fanny!"
+
+When Ellen came to herself she was on the bed in her mother's room,
+and her aunt Eva was putting some of her beautiful cologne on her
+head, and her mother was trying to make her drink water, and her
+grandmother had a glass of her currant wine, and they were calling
+to her with voices of far-off love, as if from another world.
+
+And after that she was questioned no more about her mysterious
+journey.
+
+"Wherever she has been, she has got no harm," said Mrs. Zelotes
+Brewster, "and there's no use in trying to drive a child, when it
+comes of our family. She's got some notion in her head, and you've
+got to leave her alone to get over it. She's got back safe and
+sound, and that's the main thing."
+
+"I wish I knew where she got those things," Fanny said. Looseness of
+principle as to property rights was not as strange to her
+imagination as to that of her mother-in-law.
+
+For a long time afterwards she passed consciously and uneasily by
+cups and saucers in stores, and would not look their way lest she
+should see the counterpart of Ellen's, which was Sevres, and worth
+more than the whole counterful, had she only known it, and she
+hurried past the florists who displayed pinks in their windows. The
+doll was evidently not new, and she had not the same anxiety with
+regard to that.
+
+No one was allowed to ask Ellen further questions that day, not even
+the reporters, who went away quite baffled by this infantile
+pertinacity in silence, and were forced to draw upon their
+imaginations, with results varying from realistic horrors to Alice
+in Wonderland. Ellen was kissed and cuddled by some women and young
+girls, but not many were allowed to see her. The doctor had been
+called in after her fainting-fit, and pronounced it as his opinion
+that she was a very nervous child, and had been under a severe
+strain, and he would not answer for the result if she were to be
+further excited.
+
+"Let her have her own way: if she wants to talk, let her, and if she
+wants to be silent, let her alone. She is as delicate as that cup,"
+said the doctor, looking at the shell-like thing which Ellen had
+brought home, with some curiosity.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+
+That evening Lyman Risley came to see Cynthia. He looked at her
+anxiously and scrutinizingly when he entered the room, and did not
+respond to her salutation.
+
+"Well, I have seen the child," he said, in a hushed voice, with a
+look towards the door as he seated himself before the fire and
+spread out his hands towards the blaze. He looked nervous and
+chilly.
+
+"How did she look?" asked Cynthia.
+
+"Why in the name of common-sense, Cynthia," he said, abruptly,
+without noticing her query, "if you had to give that child china for
+a souvenir, didn't you give her something besides Royal Sevres?"
+Lyman Risley undoubtedly looked younger than Cynthia, but his manner
+even more than his looks gave him the appearance of comparative
+youth. There was in it a vehemence and impetuosity almost like that
+of a boy. Cynthia, with her strained nervous intensity, seemed very
+much older.
+
+"Why not?" said she.
+
+"Why not? Well, it is fortunate for you that those people have a
+knowledge for the most part of the fundamental properties of the
+drama of life, such as bread-and-butter, and a table from which to
+eat it, and a knife with which to cut it, and a bed in which to
+sleep, and a stove and coal, and so on, and so on, and that the
+artistic accessories, such as Royal Sevres, which is no better than
+common crockery for the honest purpose of holding the tea for the
+solace of the thirsty mouth of labor, is beneath their attention."
+
+"How does the child look, Lyman?" asked Cynthia Lennox. She was
+leaning back in a great crimson-covered chair before the fire, a
+long, slender, graceful shape, in a clinging white silk gown which
+was a favorite of hers for house wear. The light in the room was
+subdued, coming mostly through crimson shades, and the faint, worn
+lines on Cynthia's face did not show; it looked, with her soft crown
+of gray hair, like a cameo against the crimson background of the
+chair. The man beside her looked at her with that impatience of his
+masculine estate and his superior youth, and yet with the adoration
+which nothing could conquer. He had passed two-thirds of his life,
+metaphorically, at this woman's feet, and had formed a habit of
+admiration and lovership which no facts nor developments could ever
+alter. He was frowning, he replied with a certain sharpness, and yet
+he leaned towards her as he spoke, and his eyes followed her long,
+graceful lines and noted the clear delicacy of her features against
+the crimson background. "How the child looked--how the child looked;
+Cynthia, you do not realize what you did. You have not the faintest
+realization of what it means for a woman to keep a lost child hidden
+away as you did, when its parents and half the city were hunting for
+it. I tell you I did not know what the consequences might be to you
+if it were found out. There is wild blood in a city like this, and
+even the staid old New England stream is capable of erratic
+currents. I tell you I have had a day of dreadful anxiety, and it
+was worse because I had to be guarded. I dared scarcely speak to any
+one about the matter. I have listened on street corners; I have made
+errands to newspaper offices. I meant to get you away if-- Well,
+never mind--I tell you, you do not realize what you did, Cynthia."
+
+Cynthia glanced at him without moving her head, then she looked
+away, her face quivering slightly, more as if from a reflection of
+his agitation than from her own. "You say you saw her," she said.
+
+"This afternoon," the man went on, "I got fairly desperate. I
+resolved to go to the fountain-head for information, and take my
+chances. So down I went to Maple Street, where the Brewsters live,
+and I rang the front-door bell, and the child's aunt, a handsome,
+breathless kind of creature, came and ushered me into the best
+parlor, and went into the next room--the sitting-room--to call the
+others. I caught sight of enough women for a woman's club in the
+sitting-room. Then Andrew Brewster came in, and I offered my legal
+services out of friendly interest in the case, and in that way I
+found out what I wanted to. Cynthia, that child has not told."
+
+Cynthia raised herself and sat straight, and her face flashed like a
+white flame. "Were they harsh to her?" she demanded. "Were they
+cruel? Did they question her, and were they harsh and cruel because
+she would not tell? Why did you not tell them yourself? Why did you
+not, Lyman Risley? Why did you not tell the whole story rather than
+have that child blamed? Well, I will go myself. I will go this
+minute. They shall not blame that darling. What do you think I care
+for myself? Let them lynch me if they want to. I will go this
+minute!"  Cynthia sprang to her feet, but Risley, with a hoarse
+shout under his breath, caught hold of her and forced her back.
+
+"For God's sake, sit down, Cynthia!" he said. "Didn't you hear the
+door-bell? Somebody is coming."
+
+The door-bell had in fact rung, and Cynthia had not noticed it. She
+lay back in her chair as the door opened, and Mrs. Norman Lloyd
+entered. "Good-evening, Cynthia," she said, beamingly. "I thought I
+would stop a few minutes on my way to meeting. I'm rather early. No,
+don't get up," as Cynthia rose. "Don't get up; I can only stay a
+minute. Never mind about giving me a chair, Mr. Risley--thank you.
+Yes, this is a real comfortable chair."  Mrs. Lloyd, seated where
+the firelight played over her wide sweep of rich skirts, and her
+velvet fur-trimmed cloak and plumed bonnet, beamed upon them with an
+expansive benevolence and kindliness. She was a large, handsome,
+florid woman. Her grayish-brown hair was carefully crimped, and
+looped back from her fat, pink cheeks, a fine shell-and-gold comb
+surmounted her smooth French twist, and held her bonnet in place.
+She unfastened her cloak, and a diamond brooch at her throat caught
+the light and blazed red like a ruby. She was the wife of Norman
+Lloyd, the largest shoe-manufacturer in the place. There was between
+her and Cynthia a sort of relationship by marriage. Norman Lloyd's
+brother George had married Cynthia's sister, who had died ten years
+before, and of whose little son, Robert, Cynthia had had the charge.
+Now George, who was a lawyer in St. Louis, had married again. Mrs.
+Norman had sympathized openly with Cynthia when the child was taken
+from Cynthia at his father's second marriage. "I call it a shame,"
+she had said, "giving that child to a perfect stranger to bring up,
+and I don't see any need of George's marrying again, anyway. I don't
+know what I should do if I thought Norman would marry again if I
+died. I think one husband and one wife is enough for any man or
+woman if they believe in the resurrection. It has always seemed to
+me that the answer to that awful question in the New Testament, as
+to whose wife that woman who had so many husbands would be in the
+other world, meant that people who had done so much marrying on
+earth would have to be old maids and old bachelors in heaven. George
+ought to be ashamed of himself, and Cynthia ought to keep that
+child."
+
+Ever since she had been very solicitously friendly towards Cynthia,
+who had always imperceptibly held herself aloof from her, owing to a
+difference in degree. Cynthia had no prejudices of mind, but many of
+nerves, and this woman was distinctly not of her sort, though she
+had a certain liking for her. Every time she was brought in contact
+with her she had a painful sense of a grating adjustment as of
+points of meeting which did not dovetail as they should. Norman
+Lloyd represented one of the old families of the city, distinguished
+by large possessions and college training, and he was the first of
+his race to engage in trade. His wife came from a vastly different
+stock, being the daughter of a shoe-manufacturer herself, and the
+granddaughter of a cobbler who had tapped his neighbor's shoes in
+his little shop in the L of his humble cottage house. Mrs. Norman
+Lloyd was innocently unconscious of any reason for concealing the
+fact, and was fond, when driving out to take the air in her fine
+carriage, of pointing out to any stranger who happened to be with
+her the house where her grandfather cobbled shoes and laid the
+foundation of the family fortune. "That all came from that little
+shop of my grandfather," she would say, pointing proudly at Lloyd's
+great factory, which was not far from the old cottage. "Mr. Lloyd
+didn't have much of anything when I married him, but I had
+considerable, and Mr. Lloyd went into the factory, and he has been
+blessed, and the property has increased until it has come to this."
+Mrs. Lloyd's chief pride was in the very facts which others
+deprecated. When she considered the many-windowed pile of Lloyd's,
+and that her husband was the recognized head and authority over all
+those throngs of grimy men, walking with the stoop of daily labor,
+carrying their little dinner-boxes with mechanical clutches of
+leather-tanned fingers, she used to send up a prayer for humility,
+lest evil and downfall of pride come to her. She was a pious woman,
+a member of the First Baptist Church, and active in charitable work.
+Mrs. Norman Lloyd adored her husband, and her estimate of him was
+almost ludicrously different from that of the grimy men who flocked
+to his factory, she seeing a most kindly spirited and amiable man,
+devoting himself to the best interests of his employes, and striving
+ever for their benefit rather than his own, and the others seeing an
+aristocrat by birth and training, who was in trade because of shrewd
+business instincts and a longing for wealth and power, but who
+despised, and felt himself wholly superior to, the means by which it
+was acquired.
+
+"We ain't anything but the rounds of the ladder for Norman Lloyd to
+climb by, and he only sees and feels us with the soles of his
+patent-leathers," one of the turbulent spirits in his factory said.
+Mrs. Norman Lloyd would not have believed her ears had she heard
+him.
+
+Mrs. Lloyd had not sat long before Cynthia's fire that evening
+before she opened on the subject of the lost child. "Oh, Cynthia,
+have you heard--" she began, but Risley cut her short.
+
+"About that little girl who ran away?" he said. "Yes, we have; we
+were just talking about her."
+
+"Did you ever hear anything like it?" said Mrs. Lloyd. "They say
+they can't find out where she's been. She won't tell. Don't you
+believe somebody has threatened her if she does?"
+
+Cynthia raised herself and began to speak, but a slight, almost
+imperceptible gesture from the man beside her stopped her.
+
+"What did you say, Cynthia?"
+
+"There is no accounting for children's freaks," said Risley, shortly
+and harshly. Mrs. Lloyd was not thin-skinned; such a current of
+exuberant cordiality emanated from her own nature that she was not
+very susceptible to any counter-force. Now, however, she felt
+vaguely and wonderingly, as a child might have done, that for some
+reason Lyman Risley was rude to her, and she had a sense of
+bewildered injury. Mrs. Lloyd was always, moreover, somewhat anxious
+as to the relations between Cynthia and Lyman Risley. She heard a
+deal of talk about it first and last; and while she had no word of
+unkind comment herself, yet she felt at times uneasy. "Folks do talk
+about Cynthia and Lyman Risley keeping company so long," she told
+her husband; "it's as much as twenty years. It does seem as if they
+ought to get married, don't you think so, Norman? Do you suppose it
+is because the property was left that way--for you know Lyman hasn't
+got anything besides what he earns--or do you suppose it is because
+Cynthia doesn't want to marry him? I guess it is that. Cynthia never
+seemed to me as if she would ever care enough about any man to marry
+him. I guess that's it; but I do think she ought to stop his coming
+there quite so much, especially when people know that about her
+property."
+
+Cynthia's property was hers on condition that her husband took her
+name if she married, otherwise it was forfeited to her sister's
+child. "Catch a Risley ever taking his wife's name!" said Mrs.
+Lloyd. "Of course Cynthia would be willing to give up the money if
+she loved him, but I don't believe she does. It seems as if Lyman
+Risley ought to see it would be better for him not to go there so
+much if they weren't going to be married."
+
+So it happened when Risley caught up her question to Cynthia in that
+peremptory fashion, Mrs. Lloyd felt in addition to the present cause
+some which had gone before for her grievance. She addressed herself
+thereafter entirely and pointedly to Cynthia. "Did you ever see that
+little girl, Cynthia?" said she.
+
+"Yes," replied Cynthia, in a voice so strange that the other woman
+stared wonderingly at her.
+
+"Ain't you feeling well, Cynthia?" she asked.
+
+"Very well, thank you," said Cynthia.
+
+"When did you see her?" asked Mrs. Lloyd. Cynthia opened her mouth
+as if to speak, then she glanced at Risley, whose eyes held her, and
+laughed instead--a strange, nervous laugh. Happily, Mrs. Lloyd did
+not wait for her answer. She had her own important information to
+impart. She had in reality stopped for that purpose. "Well, I have
+seen her," she said. "I met her in front of Crosby's one day last
+summer. And she was so sweet-looking I stopped and spoke to her--I
+couldn't help it. She had beautiful eyes, and the softest light
+curls, and she was dressed so pretty, and the flowers on her hat
+were nice. The embroidery on her dress was very fine, too. Usually,
+you know, those people don't care about the fineness, as long as it
+is wide, and showy, and bright-colored. I asked her what her name
+was, and she answered just as pretty, and her mother told me how old
+she was. Her mother was a handsome woman, though she had an
+up-and-coming kind of way with her. But she seemed real pleased to
+have me notice the child. Where do you suppose she was all that
+time, Cynthia?"
+
+"She was in some safe place, undoubtedly," said Risley, and again
+Mrs. Lloyd felt that she was snubbed, though not seeing how nor why,
+and again she rebelled with that soft and gentle persistency in her
+own course which was the only rebellion of which she was capable.
+
+"Where do you suppose she was, Cynthia?" said she.
+
+"I think some woman must have seen her, and coaxed her in and kept
+her, she was such a pretty child," said Cynthia, defiantly and
+desperately. But the other woman looked at her in wonder.
+
+"Oh, Cynthia, I can't believe that," said she. "It don't seem as if
+any woman could be so bad as that when the child's mother was in
+such agony over her."  And then she added, "I can't believe it,
+because it seems to me that if any woman was bad enough to do that,
+she couldn't have given her up at all, she was such a beautiful
+child."  Mrs. Norman Lloyd had no children of her own, and was given
+to gazing with eyes of gentle envy at pretty, rosy little girls,
+frilled with white embroidery like white pinks, dancing along in
+leading hands of maternal love. "It don't seem to me I could ever
+have given her up, if I had once been bad enough to steal her," she
+said. "What put such an idea into your head, Cynthia?"
+
+When the church-bell clanged out just then Lyman Risley had never
+been so thankful in his life. Mrs. Lloyd rose promptly, for she had
+to lead the meeting, that being the custom among the sisters in her
+church. "Well," said she, "I am thankful she is found, anyway; I
+couldn't have slept a wink that night if I had known she was lost,
+the dear little thing. Good-night, Cynthia; don't come to the door.
+Good-night, Mr. Risley. Come and see me, Cynthia--do, dear."
+
+When Mrs. Norman Lloyd was gone, Risley looked at Cynthia with a
+long breath of relief, but she turned to him with seemingly no
+appreciation of it, and repeated her declaration which Mrs. Lloyd's
+coming had interrupted: "Lyman, I am going there to-night--this
+minute. Will you go with me? No, you must not go with me. I am
+going!"  She sprang to her feet.
+
+"Sit down, Cynthia," said Risley. "I tell you they were not harsh to
+her. You don't seem to consider that they love the child--possibly
+better than you can--and would not in the nature of things be harsh
+to her under such circumstances. Sit down and hear the rest of it."
+
+"But they will be harsh by-and-by, after the first joy of finding
+her is over," said Cynthia. "I will go and tell them the first thing
+in the morning, Lyman."
+
+"You will do nothing so foolish. They are not only not insisting
+upon her telling her secret, but announced to me their determination
+not to do so in the future. I wish you could have seen that man's
+face when he told me what a delicate, nervous little thing his child
+was, and the doctor said she must not be fretted if she had taken a
+notion not to tell; and I wish you could have seen the mother and
+the aunt, and the grandmother, Mrs. Zelotes Brewster. They would all
+give each other and themselves up to be torn of wild beasts first.
+It is easy to see where the child got her extraordinary strength of
+will. They took me out in the sitting-room, and there was a wild
+flurry of feminine skirts before me. I had previously overheard
+myself announced as Lawyer Risley by the aunt, and the response from
+various voices that they were 'goin' if he was comin' out in the
+sittin'-room.'  It always made them nervous to see lawyers. Well, I
+followed the parents and the grandmother and the aunt out. I dared
+not refuse when they suggested it, and I hoped desperately that the
+child would not remember me from that one scared glance she gave at
+me this morning. But there she sat in her little chair, holding the
+doll you gave her, and she looked up at me when I entered, and I
+have never in the whole course of my existence seen such an
+expression upon the face of a child. Remember me? Indeed she did,
+and she promised me with the faithfulest, stanchest eyes of a woman
+set in a child's head that she would not tell; that I need not fear
+for one minute; that the lady who had given her the doll was quite
+safe. She knew, and she must have heard what I said to you this
+morning. She is the most wonderful child I have ever seen."
+
+Cynthia had sank back in her chair. Lyman Risley put his cigar back
+between his lips; Cynthia was quite still, her delicate profile
+towards him.
+
+"I assure you there is not the slightest danger of their troubling
+the child because of her silence, and you would do an exceedingly
+foolish thing, and its consequences would react not upon yourself
+only, but--upon others, were you to confess the truth to them," he
+said after a little. "You must think of others--of your friends, and
+of your sister's boy, whose loss led you into this. This
+would--well, it would get into the papers, Cynthia."
+
+"Do you think that the doll continued to please her?" asked Cynthia.
+
+"Cynthia, I want you to promise," said her friend, persistently.
+
+"Very well, I will promise, if you will promise to let me know the
+minute you hear that they are treating her harshly because of her
+silence."
+
+Suddenly Cynthia turned her face upon him. "Lyman," said she, "do
+you think that I could do anything for her--"
+
+"Do anything for her?" he repeated, vaguely.
+
+"Yes; they cannot have money. They must be poor: the father works in
+the factory. Would they allow me--"
+
+The lawyer laughed. "Cynthia," he said, "you do not realize that
+pride finds its native element in all strata of society, and riches
+are comparative. Let me inform you that these Brewsters, of whom
+this child sprung, claim as high places in the synagogue as any of
+your Lennoxes and Risleys, and, what is more, they believe
+themselves there. They have seen the tops of their neighbors' heads
+as often as you or I. The mere fact of familiarity with shoe-knives
+and leather, and hand-skill instead of brain-skill, makes no
+difference with such inherent confidence of importance as theirs.
+The Louds, on the other side--the handsome aunt is a Loud--are
+rather below caste, but they make up for it with defiance. And as
+for riches, I would have you know that the Brewsters are as rich in
+their own estimation as you in yours; that they have possessions
+which entirely meet their needs and their aesthetic longings; that
+not only does Andrew Brewster earn exceedingly good wages in the
+shop, and is able to provide plenty of nourishing food and good
+clothes, but even by-and-by, if he prospers and is prudent,
+something rather extra in the way of education--perhaps a piano. I
+would have you know that there is a Rogers group on a little
+marble-topped table in the front window, and a table in the side
+window with a worked spread, on which reposes a red plush photograph
+album; that there is also a set of fine parlor furniture, with
+various devices in the way of silken and lace scarfs over the
+corners and backs of the chairs and sofa, and that there is a
+tapestry carpet; that in the sitting-room is a fine crushed-plush
+couch, and a multiplicity of rocking-chairs; that there is a
+complete dining-set in the next room, the door of which stood open,
+and even a side-board with red napkins, and a fine display of glass,
+every whit as elegant in their estimation as your cut glass in
+yours. The child's father owns his house and land free of
+encumbrance. He told me so in the course of his artless boasting as
+to what he might some day be able to do for the precious little
+creature of his own flesh and blood; and the grandmother owns her
+comfortable place next door, and she herself was dressed in black
+silk, and I will swear the lace on her cap was real, and she wore a
+great brooch containing hair of the departed, and it was set in
+pearl. What are you going to do in the face of opulence like this,
+Cynthia?"
+
+Cynthia did not speak; her face looked as still as if it were carved
+in ivory.
+
+"Cynthia," said the man, in a harsh voice, "I did not dream you were
+so broken up over losing that little boy of your sister's, poor
+girl."
+
+Cynthia still said nothing, but a tear rolled down her cheek. Lyman
+Risley saw it, then he looked straight ahead, scowling over his
+cigar. He seemed suddenly to realize in this woman whom he loved
+something anomalous, yet lovely--a beauty, as it were, of deformity,
+an over-development in one direction, though a direction of utter
+grace and sweetness, like the lip of an orchid.
+
+Why should she break her heart over a child whom she had never seen
+before, and have no love and pity for the man who had laid his best
+at her feet so long?
+
+He saw at a flash the sweet yet monstrous imperfection of her, and
+he loved her better for it.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+
+After Ellen's experience in running away, she dreamed her dreams
+with a difference. The breath of human passion had stained the pure
+crystal of her childish imagination; she peopled all her
+air-castles, and sounds of wailing farewells floated from the White
+North of her fancy after the procession of the evergreen trees in
+the west yard, and the cherry-trees on the east had found out that
+they were not in the Garden of Eden. In those days Ellen grew taller
+and thinner, and the cherubic roundness of her face lengthened into
+a sweet wistfulness of wonder and pleading, as of one who would look
+farther, since she heard sounds and saw signs in her sky which
+indicated more beyond. Andrew and Fanny watched her more anxiously
+than ever, and decided not to send her to school before spring,
+though all the neighbors exclaimed at their tardiness in so doing.
+"She'll be two years back of my Hattie gettin' into the
+high-school," said one woman, bluntly, to Fanny, who retorted,
+angrily,
+
+"I don't care if she's ten years behind, if she don't lose her
+health."
+
+"You wait and see if she's two years behind!" exclaimed Eva, who had
+just returned from the shop, and had entered the room bringing a
+fresh breath of December air, her cheeks glowing, her black eyes
+shining.
+
+Eva was so handsome in those days that she fairly forced admiration,
+even from those of her own sex whose delicacy of taste she offended.
+She had a parcel in her hand, which she had bought at a store on her
+way home, for she was getting ready to be married to Jim Tenny. "I
+tell you there don't nobody know what that young one can do,"
+continued Eva, with a radiant nod of triumph. "There ain't many
+grown-up folks round here that can read like her, and she's studied
+geography, and she knows her multiplication-table, and she can spell
+better than some that's been through the high-school. You jest wait
+till Ellen gets started on her schoolin'--she won't stay in the
+grammar-school long, I can tell you that. She'll go ahead of some
+that's got a start now and think they're 'most there."  Eva pulled
+off her hat, and the coarse black curls on her forehead sprang up
+like released wire. She nodded emphatically with a good-humored
+combativeness at the visiting woman and at her sister.
+
+"I hope your cheeks are red enough," said Fanny, looking at her with
+grateful admiration.
+
+The visiting woman sniffed covertly, and a retort which seemed to
+her exceedingly witty was loud in her own consciousness. "Them that
+likes beets and pinies is welcome to them," she thought, but she did
+not speak. "Well," said she, "folks must do as they think best about
+their own children. I have always thought a good deal of an
+education myself. I was brought up that way."  She looked with eyes
+that were fairly cruel at Eva Loud and Fanny, who had been a Loud,
+who had both stopped going to school at a very early age.
+
+Then the rich red flamed over Eva's forehead and neck as well as her
+cheeks. There was nothing covert about her, she would drag an
+ambushed enemy forth into the open field even at the risk of
+damaging disclosures regarding herself.
+
+"Why don't you say jest what you mean, right out, Jennie Stebbins?"
+she demanded. "You are hintin' that Fanny and me never had no
+education, and twittin' us with it."
+
+"It wa'n't our fault," said Fanny, no less angrily.
+
+"No, it wa'n't our fault," assented Eva. "We had to quit school.
+Folks can live with empty heads, but they can't with empty stomachs.
+It had to be one or the other. If you want to twit us with bein'
+poor, you can, Jennie Stebbins."
+
+"I haven't said anything," said Mrs. Stebbins, with a scared and
+injured air. "I'd like to know what you're making all this fuss
+about? I don't know. What did I say?"
+
+"If I'd said anything mean, I wouldn't turn tail an' run, I'd stick
+to it about one minute and a half, if it killed me," said Eva,
+scornfully.
+
+"You know what you was hintin' at, jest as well as we do," said
+Fanny; "but it ain't so true as you and some other folks may think,
+I can tell you that. If Eva and me didn't go to school as long as
+some, we have always read every chance we could get."
+
+"That's so," said Eva, emphatically. "I guess we've read enough
+sight more than some folks that has had a good deal more chance to
+read. Fanny and me have taken books out of the library full as much
+as any of the neighbors, I rather guess."
+
+"We've read every single thing that Mrs. Southworth has ever
+written," said Fanny, "and that's sayin' considerable."
+
+"And all Pansy's and Rider Haggard's," declared Eva, with triumph.
+
+"And every one of The Duchess and Marie Corelli, and Sir Walter
+Scott, and George Macdonald, and Laura Jean Libbey, and Charles
+Reade, and more, besides, than I can think of."
+
+"Fanny has read 'most all Tennyson," said Eva, with loyal
+admiration; "she likes poetry, but I don't very well. She has read
+most all Tennyson and Longfellow, and we've both read _Queechee_,
+and _St. Elmo_, and _Jane Eyre_."
+
+"And we've read the Bible through," said Fanny, "because we read in
+a paper once that that was a complete education. We made up our
+minds we'd read it through, and we did, though it took us quite a
+while."
+
+"And we take _Zion's Herald_, and _The Rowe Gazette_, and _The
+Youth's Companion_," said Eva.
+
+"And we've both of us learned Ellen geography and spellin' and
+'rithmetic, till we know most as much as she does," said Fanny.
+
+"That's so," said Fanny. "I snum, I believe I could get into the
+high-school myself, if I wasn't goin' to git married," said Eva,
+with a gay laugh. She was so happy in those days that her power of
+continued resentment was small. The tide of her own bliss returned
+upon her full consciousness and overflowed, and crested, as with
+glory, all petty annoyances.
+
+The visiting woman took up her work, and rose to go with a slightly
+abashed air, though her small brown eyes were still blanks of
+impregnable defence. "Well, I dunno what I've said to stir you both
+so," she remarked again. "If I've said anythin' that riled you, I'm
+sorry, I'm sure. As I said before, folks must do as they are a mind
+to with their own children. If they see fit to keep 'em home from
+school until they're women grown, and if they think it's best not to
+punish 'em when they run away, why they must. I 'ain't got no right
+to say anythin', and I 'ain't."
+
+"You--" began Fanny, and then she stopped short, and Eva began
+arranging her hair before the glass. "The wind blew so comin' home,"
+she said, "that my hair is all out."  The visiting woman stared with
+a motion of adjustive bewilderment, as one might before a sudden
+change of wind, then she looked, as a shadowy motion disturbed the
+even light of the room and little Ellen passed the window. She knew
+at once, for she had heard the gossip, that the ready tongues of
+recrimination were hushed because of the child, and then Ellen
+entered.
+
+The winter afternoon was waning and the light was low; the child's
+face, with its clear fairness, seemed to gleam out in the room like
+a lamp with a pale luminosity of its own.
+
+The three women, the mother, and aunt, and the visiting neighbor,
+all looked at her, and Ellen smiled up at them as innocently sweet
+as a flower. There was that in Ellen's smile and regard at that time
+which no woman could resist. Suddenly the visiting neighbor laid a
+finger softly under her chin and tilted up her little face towards
+the light. Then she said with that unconscious poetry of bereavement
+which sees a likeness in all fair things of earth to the face of the
+lost treasure, "I do believe she looks like my first little girl
+that died."
+
+After the visiting woman had gone, Fanny and Eva calling after her
+to come again, they looked at each other, then at Ellen. "That
+little girl that died favored the Stebbinses, and was dark as an
+Injun," said Fanny, "no more like Ellen--"
+
+"That's so," acquiesced Eva; "I remember that young one. Lookin'
+like Ellen--I'd like to see the child that did look like her; there
+ain't none round these parts. I wish you could have seen folks stare
+at her when I took her down street yesterday. One woman said, 'Ain't
+she pretty as a picture,' so loud I heard it, but Ellen didn't seem
+to."
+
+"Sometimes I wonder if we'll make her proud," Fanny said, in a
+hushed voice, with a look of admiration that savored of worship
+at Ellen.
+
+"She don't ever seem to notice," said Eva, with a hushed response.
+Indeed, Ellen had seemed to pay no attention whatever to
+their remarks, whether from an innate humility and lack of
+self-consciousness, or because she was so accustomed to adulation
+that it had become as the breath of her nostrils, to be taken no
+more account of. She had seated herself in her favorite place in a
+rocking-chair at a west window, with her chin resting on the sill,
+and her eyes staring into the great out-of-doors, full of winds and
+skies and trees and her own imaginings.
+
+She would sit so, motionless, for hours at a time, and sometimes her
+mother would rouse her almost roughly. "What be you thinkin' about,
+settin' there so still?" she would ask, with eyes of vague anxiety
+fixed upon her, but Ellen could never answer.
+
+Though it was getting late, it did not seem dark as early as usual,
+since there was a full moon and there was snow on the ground which
+gave forth a pale light in a wide surface of reflection. However,
+the moon was behind clouds, for it was beginning to snow again quite
+heavily, and the white flakes drove in whirlwinds past the
+street-lamp on the corner of the street. Now and then a tramping and
+muffled figure came into the radius of light, then passed into the
+white gloom beyond.
+
+Fanny was preparing supper, and the light from the dining-room shone
+in where Ellen sat, but the sitting-room was not lighted. Ellen
+began to smell the fragrance of tea and toast, and there was a
+reflection of the dining-room table and lamp outside pictured
+vividly against the white sheet of storm.
+
+Ellen knew better, but it amused her to think that her home was
+out-of-doors as well as under her father's and mother's roof. Eva
+passed her with her hands full of kindlings. She was going to make a
+fire in the parlor-stove, for Jim Tenny was coming that evening. She
+laid a tender hand on Ellen's head as she passed, and smoothed her
+hair. Ellen had a sort of acquiescent wonder over her aunt Eva in
+those days. She heard people say Eva was getting ready to be
+married, and speculated. "What is getting ready to be married?" she
+asked Eva.
+
+"Why, getting your clothes made, you little ninny," Eva answered.
+
+The next day Ellen had watched her mother at work upon a new little
+frock for herself for some time before she spoke.
+
+"Mother," she said.
+
+"Yes, child."
+
+"Mother, you are making that new dress for me, ain't you?"
+
+"Of course I am; why?"
+
+"And you made me a new coat last week?"
+
+"Why, you know I did, Ellen; what do you mean?"
+
+"And you are going to make me a petticoat and put that pretty lace
+on it?"
+
+"You know I am, Ellen Brewster, what be you drivin' at?"
+
+"Be I a-gettin' ready to be married, mother?" asked Ellen, with the
+strangest look of wonder and awe and anticipation.
+
+Fanny had told this saying of the child's to everybody, and that
+evening when Jim Tenny came he caught up Ellen and gave her a toss
+to the ceiling, a trick of his which filled Ellen with a sort of
+fearful delight, the delight of helplessness in the hands of
+strength, and the titillation of evanescent risk.
+
+"So you are gettin' ready to be married, are you?" Jim Tenny said,
+with a great laugh, looking at her soberly, with big black eyes. Jim
+Tenny was a handsome fellow, and much larger and stronger than her
+father. Ellen liked him; he often brought candies in his pocket for
+her, and they were great friends, but she could never understand why
+he stayed in the parlor all alone with her aunt Eva, instead of in
+the sitting-room with the others.
+
+Ellen had looked back at him as soberly. "Mother says I 'ain't," she
+replied, "but--"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"I am getting most as many new clothes as Aunt Eva, and she is."
+
+"And you think maybe you are gettin' ready to be married, after all,
+hey?"
+
+"I think maybe mother wants to surprise me," Ellen said.
+
+Jim Tenny had all of a sudden shaken convulsively as if with mirth,
+but his face remained perfectly sober.
+
+That evening after the parlor door was closed upon Jim and Eva,
+Ellen wondered what they were laughing at.
+
+To-night when she saw Eva enter the room, a lighted lamp
+illuminating her face fairly reckless with happiness, to light the
+fire in the courting-stove as her sister facetiously called it, she
+thought to herself that Jim Tenny was coming, that they would be
+shut up in there all alone as usual, and then she looked out at the
+storm and the night again, and the little home picture thrown
+against it. Then she saw her father coming into the yard with his
+arms full of parcels, and she was out of her chair and at the
+kitchen door to meet him.
+
+Andrew had brought as usual some dainties for his darling. He
+watched Ellen unwrap the various parcels, not smiling as usual, but
+with a curious knitting of his forehead and pitiful compression of
+mouth. When she had finished and ran into the other room to show a
+great orange to her aunt, he drew a heavy sigh that was almost a
+groan. His wife coming in from the kitchen with a dish heard him,
+and looked at him with quick anxiety, though she spoke in a merry,
+rallying way.
+
+"For the land sake, Andrew Brewster, what be you groanin' that way
+for?" she cried out.
+
+Andrew's tense face did not relax; he strove to push past her
+without a word, but Fanny stood before him. "Now, look at here,
+Andrew," said she, "you 'ain't goin' to walk off with a face like
+that, unless I know what the matter is. Are you sick?"
+
+"No, I ain't sick, Fanny," Andrew said; then in a low voice, "Let me
+go, I will tell you by-and-by."
+
+"No, Andrew, you have got to tell me now. I'm goin' to know whatever
+has happened."
+
+"Wait till after supper, Fanny."
+
+"No, I can't wait. Look here, Andrew, you are my husband, and there
+ain't no trouble that can come to you in this world that I can't
+bear, except not knowin'. You've got to tell me what the matter is."
+
+"Well, keep quiet till after supper, then," said Andrew. Then
+suddenly he leaned his face close to her and whispered with a hiss
+of tragedy, "Lloyd's shut down."
+
+Fanny recoiled and looked at him.
+
+"When?"
+
+"The foreman gave notice to-night."
+
+"For how long? Did he say?"
+
+"Oh, till business got better--same old story. Unless I'm mistaken,
+Lloyd's will be shut down all winter."
+
+"Well, it ain't so bad for us as for some," said Fanny. Both pride
+and a wish to cheer her husband induced her to say that. She did not
+like to think that, after the fine marriage she had made, she needed
+to be as distressed at a temporary loss of employment as others.
+Then, too, that look of overhanging melancholy in Andrew's face
+alarmed her; she felt that she must drive it away at any cost.
+
+"Seems to me it's bad enough for anybody," said Andrew, morosely.
+
+"Now, Andrew, you know it ain't. Here we own the house clear, and
+we've got that money in the savings-bank, and all that's your
+mother's is yours in the end. Of course we ain't always thinkin' of
+that, and I'm sure I hope she'll outlive me, but it's so. You know
+we sha'n't starve if you don't have work."
+
+"We shall starve in the end, and you know I've been--"  Andrew
+stopped suddenly as he heard Ellen and his sister-in-law coming. He
+shook his head at his wife with a warning motion that she should
+keep silence.
+
+"Don't Eva know?" she whispered.
+
+"No, she came out early. Do for Heaven's sake keep quiet till after
+supper."
+
+Eva was sharp-eyed, and all through supper she watched Andrew, and
+the lines of melancholy on his face, which did not disappear even
+when he forced conversation.
+
+"What in creation ails you, Andrew?" she burst out, finally. "You
+look like a walking funeral."
+
+Andrew made no reply, and Fanny volunteered an answer. "He's all
+tired out," she said; "he's got a little cold. Eat some more of the
+stew, Andrew; it'll do you good, it's nice and hot."
+
+"You can't cheat me," said Eva. "There's something to pay."  She
+took a mouthful, then she stared at Andrew, with a sudden pallor.
+"It ain't anythin' about Jim, is it?" she gasped out. "Because if it
+is, there's no use in your waitin' to tell me, you might as well
+have it over at once. You won't make it any easier for me, I can
+tell you that."
+
+"No, it ain't anything about Jim, in the way you mean, Eva," her
+sister said, soothingly. "Eat your supper and don't worry."
+
+"What do you mean by that? Jim ain't sick?"
+
+"No, I tell you; don't be a goose, Eva."
+
+"He ain't been anywhere with--"
+
+"Do keep still, Eva!" Fanny cried, impatiently. "If I didn't have
+any more faith than that in a man, I'd give him up. I don't think
+you're fair to Jim. Of course he ain't been with that girl, when
+he's goin' to marry you next month."
+
+"I'm just as fair to Jim as he deserves," Eva said, simply. "I think
+just as much of him, but what a man's done once he may do again, and
+I can't help it if I think of it, and he shouldn't be surprised.
+He's brought it on himself. I've got as much faith in him as anybody
+can have, seein' as he's a man. Well, if it ain't that, Andrew
+Brewster, what is it?"
+
+"Now, you let him alone till after supper, Eva," Fanny said. "Do let
+him have a little peace."
+
+"Well, I'll get it out of him afterwards," Eva said.
+
+As soon as she got up from the table she pushed him into the
+sitting-room. "Now, out with it," said she. Ellen, who had followed
+them, stood looking at them both, her lips parted, her eyes full of
+half-alarmed curiosity.
+
+"Lloyd's has shut down, if you want to know," Andrew said, shortly.
+
+"Oh my God!" cried Eva. Andrew shrank from her impatiently. She made
+that ejaculation because she was a Loud, and had an off-streak in
+her blood. Not one of Andrew's pure New England stock would have so
+expressed herself. He sat down beside the lamp and took up the
+evening paper. Eva stood looking at him a minute. She was quite
+pale, she was weighing consequences. Then she went out to her
+sister. "Well, you know what's happened, Fan, I s'pose," she said.
+
+"Yes, I'm awful sorry, but I tell Andrew it ain't so bad for us as
+for some; we sha'n't starve."
+
+"I don't know as I care much whether I starve or not," said Eva.
+"It's goin' to make me put off my weddin'; and if I do put it off,
+Jim and me will never get married at all; I feel it in my bones."
+
+"Why, what should you have to put it off for?" asked Fanny.
+
+"Why? I should think you'd know why without askin'. Ain't I spent
+every dollar I have saved up on my weddin' fixin's, and Jim, he's
+got his mother on his hands, and she's been sick, and he ain't saved
+up anything. If you s'pose I'm goin' to marry him and make him any
+worse off than he is now you're mistaken."
+
+"Well, mebbe Jim can work somewhere else, and mebbe Lloyd's won't be
+shut up long," Fanny said, consolingly. "I wouldn't give up so, if I
+was you."
+
+"I might jest as well," Eva returned. "It's no use, Jim and me will
+never get married."  Eva's face was curiously set; she was not in
+the least loud nor violent as was usually the case when she was in
+trouble, her voice was quite low, and she spoke slowly.
+
+Fanny looked anxiously at her. "It ain't as though you hadn't a roof
+to cover you," she said, "for you've got mine and Andrew's as long
+as we have one ourselves."
+
+"Do you think I'd live on Andrew long?" demanded Eva.
+
+"You won't have to. Jim will get work in a week or two, and you'll
+get married. Don't act so. I declare, I'm ashamed of you, Eva Loud.
+I thought you had more sense, to give up discouraged at no more than
+this. I don't see why you jump way ahead into trouble before you get
+to it."
+
+"I've got to it, and I can feel the steam of it in my face," Eva
+said, with unconscious imagery. Then she lit a lamp, and went
+up-stairs to change her dress before Jim Tenny arrived.
+
+It was snowing hard. Ellen sat in her place by the window and
+watched the flakes drive past the radiance of the street-lamp on the
+corner, and past the reflection of the warm, bright room. Now she
+could see, since the light was in the room where she sat, her father
+beside the table reading his paper, and shadowy images of all the
+familiar things projecting themselves like a mirage of home into the
+night and storm. Ellen could see, even without turning round, that
+her father looked very sober, and did not seem to be much interested
+in his paper, and a vague sense of calamity oppressed her. She did
+not know just what might be involved in Lloyd's shutting down, but
+she saw that her father and aunt were disturbed, and her imaginings
+were half eclipsed by a shadow of material things. Ellen dearly
+loved this early evening hour when she could stare out into the
+mystery of the night, herself sheltered under the wing of home, and
+the fancies which her childish brain wove were as a garment of
+spirit for the future; but to-night she did not dream so much as she
+wondered and reflected. Pretty soon Ellen saw a man's figure
+plodding through the fast-gathering snow, and heard her aunt Eva
+make a soft, heavy rush down the front stairs, and she knew the man
+was Jim Tenny, and her aunt had been watching for him. Ellen
+wondered why she had watched up in her cold room, why she had not
+sat down-stairs where it was warm, and let Jim ring the door-bell.
+Ellen liked Jim Tenny, but there was often that in her aunt's eyes
+regarding him which made Ellen look past him and above him to see if
+there was another man there. Ellen heard the fire crackling in the
+parlor-stove, and saw the light shining under the parlor threshold,
+and heard the soft hum of voices. Her mother, having finished
+washing up the supper dishes, came in presently and seated herself
+beside the lamp with her needle-work.
+
+"You don't feel any wind comin' in the window?" she said, anxiously,
+to Ellen.
+
+"No, ma'am," replied Ellen.
+
+Andrew looked up quickly. "You're sure you don't?" he said.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+Ellen watched her mother sewing out in the snowy yard, then a dark
+shadow came between the reflection and the window, then another. Two
+men treading in the snow in even file, one in the other's
+foot-tracks, came into the yard.
+
+"Somebody's comin'," said Ellen, as a knock, came on the side door.
+
+"Did you see who 'twas?" Fanny asked, starting up.
+
+"Two men."
+
+"It's somebody to see you, Andrew," Fanny said, and Andrew tossed
+his paper on the table and went to the door.
+
+When the door was opened Ellen heard a man cough.
+
+"I should think anybody was crazy to come out such a night as this,
+coughin' that way," murmured Fanny. "I do believe it's Joe Atkins;
+sounds like his cough."  Then Andrew entered with the two men
+stamping and shaking themselves.
+
+"Here's Joseph Atkins and Nahum Beals," Andrew said, in his
+melancholy voice, all unstirred by the usual warmth of greeting. The
+two men bowed stiffly.
+
+"Good-evenin'," Fanny said, and rose and pushed forward the
+rocking-chair in which she had been seated to Joseph Atkins, who was
+a consumptive man with an invalid wife, and worked next Andrew in
+Lloyd's.
+
+"Keep your settin', keep your settin'," he returned in his quick,
+nervous way, as if his very words were money for dire need, and sat
+himself down in a straight chair far from the fire. The other man,
+Nahum Beals, was very young. He seated himself next to Joseph, and
+the two side by side looked with gloomy significance at Andrew and
+Fanny. Then Joseph Atkins burst out suddenly in a rattling volley of
+coughs.
+
+"You hadn't ought to come out such a night as this, I'm afraid, Mr.
+Atkins," said Fanny.
+
+"He's been out jest as bad weather as this all winter," said the
+young man, Nahum Beals, in an unexpectedly deep voice. "The workers
+of this world can't afford to take no account of weather. It's for
+the rich folks to look out betwixt their lace curtains and see if it
+looks lowery, so they sha'n't git their gold harnesses and their
+shiny carriages, an' their silks an' velvets an' ostrich feathers
+wet. The poor folks that it's life and death to have to go out
+whether or no, no matter if they've got an extra suit of clothes or
+not. They've got to go out through the drenchin' rain and the
+snow-drifts, to earn money so that the rich folks can have them
+gold-plated harnesses and them silks and velvets. Joe's been out all
+winter in weather as bad as this, after he's been standin' all day
+in a shop as hot as hell, drenched with sweat. One more time won't
+make much difference."
+
+"It would be 'nough sight better for me if it did," said Joseph
+Atkins, chokingly, and still with that same seeming of hurry.
+
+Fanny had gone out to the dining-room, and now she returned stirring
+some whiskey and molasses in a cup.
+
+"Here," said she, "you take this, Mr. Atkins; it's real good for a
+cough. Andrew cured a cold with it last month."
+
+"Mine ain't a cold, and it can't be cured in this world, but it's
+better for me, I guess," said Joe Atkins, chokingly, but he took the
+cup.
+
+"Now, you hadn't ought to talk so," Fanny said. "You had ought to
+think of your wife and children."
+
+"My life is insured," said Joseph Atkins.
+
+"We ain't got no money and no jewelry, and no silver to leave them
+we love--all we've got to leave 'em is the price of our own lives,"
+said Nahum Beals.
+
+"I wish I had got my life insured," Andrew said.
+
+"Don't talk so, Andrew," Fanny cried, with a shudder.
+
+"My life is insured for two thousand dollars," Joe Atkins said, with
+an odd sort of pride. "I had it done three years ago. My lungs was
+sound as anybody's then, but that very next summer I worked up under
+that tin roof, and came out as wet as if I'd been dipped in the
+river, into an east wind, and got a chill. It was the only time I
+ever struck luck--to get insured before that happened. Nobody'd look
+at me now, and I dunno what they'd do. I 'ain't laid up a cent, I've
+had so much sickness in my family."
+
+"If you hadn't worked that summer in the annex under that tin roof,
+you'd be as well as you ever was now," said Nahum Beals.
+
+"I worked there 'longside of you that summer," said Andrew to Joe,
+with bitter reminiscence. "We used to strip like a gang of convicts,
+and we stood in pools of sweat. It was that awful hot summer, and
+the room had only that one row of windows facing the east, and the
+wind never that way."
+
+"Not till I came out of the shop that night I took the chill," said
+Joe.
+
+Suddenly the young man, Nahum Beals, hit his knees a sounding slap,
+which made Ellen, furtively and timidly attentive at her window,
+jump. "It seems sometimes as if the Almighty himself was in league
+with 'em," he shouted out, "but I tell you it won't last, it won't
+last."
+
+"I don't see much sign of any change for the better," Andrew said,
+gloomily.
+
+"I tell you, sir, it won't last," repeated Nahum Beals. "I tell you,
+the Lord only raises 'em up higher and higher that He may dash 'em
+lower when the time comes. The same earth is beneath the high places
+of this life, and the lowly ones, and the law that governs 'em is
+the same, and--the higher the place the longer the fall, and the
+longer the fall the sorer the hurt."  Nahum Beals sprang to his feet
+with a strange abandon of self-consciousness and a fiery impetus for
+one of his New England blood. He had a delicate, nervous face, like
+a woman's, his blue eyes gleamed like blue flames under his overhang
+of white forehead, he shook his head as if it were maned like a
+lion, and, though he wore his thin, fair hair short, one could seem
+to see it flung back in glistening lines. He spread his hands as if
+he were addressing an audience, and as he did so the parlor door
+opened and Jim Tenny and Eva stood there, listening.
+
+"I tell you, sir," shouted Nahum Beals, "the time will come when you
+will all thank God that you belong to the poor and down-trodden of
+this earth, and not to the rich and great--the time will come.
+There's knives to sharpen to-day, and wood for scaffolds as plenty
+as in the days of the French Revolution, and the hand that marks the
+time of day on the clock of men's patience with wrong and oppression
+has near gone round to the same hour and minute."
+
+Andrew Brewster looked at him, with a curious expression half of
+disgust, half of sympathy. His sense of dignity in the face of
+adversity inherited from his New England race was shocked; he was
+not one to be blindly swayed by another's fervor even when his own
+wrongs were in question. He would not have made a good follower in a
+revolution, nor a leader. He would simply have found his own place
+of fixed principle and abided there. Then, too, he had a judicial
+mind which could combine the elements of counsels for and against
+his own cause.
+
+"Now, look at here," he said, slowly, "I ain't goin' to say I don't
+think we ain't in a hard place, and that there's somethin' wrong
+that's to blame for it, but I dunno but you go most too far, Nahum;
+or, rather, I dunno as you go far enough. I dunno but we've got to
+dig down past the poor and the rich, farther into the everlastin'
+foundations of things to get at what's the trouble."
+
+Jim Tenny, standing in the parlor doorway, with an arm around Eva's
+waist, broke in suddenly with a defiant laugh. "I don't care nothin'
+about the everlastin' foundations of things, and I don't care a darn
+about the rich and the poor," he proclaimed. "I'm willin' to leave
+that to lecturers and dynamiters, and let 'em settle it if they can.
+I don't grudge the rich nothin', and I ain't goin' to call the
+Almighty to account for givin' somebody else the biggest piece of
+pie; mebbe it would give me the stomach-ache. All I'm concerned
+about is Lloyd's shut-down."
+
+"That's so," said Eva.
+
+"I tell you, sir, it ain't the facts of the case, but the reason for
+the facts, which we must think of," maintained Nahum Beals.
+
+"I don't care a darn for the facts nor the reasons," said Jim Tenny;
+"all I care about is I'm out of work maybe till spring, with my
+mother dependent on me, and not a cent laid up, I've been so darned
+careless, and here's Eva says she won't marry me till I get work."
+
+"I won't," said Eva, who was very pale, except for burning spots on
+her cheeks.
+
+"She's afraid she won't get frostin' on her cake, and silk dresses,
+I expect," Jim Tenny said, and laughed, but his laugh was very
+bitter.
+
+"Jim Tenny, you know better than that," Eva cried, sharply. "I won't
+stand that."
+
+Jim Tenny, with a quick motion, unwound his arm from Eva's waist and
+stripped up his sleeve. "There, look at that, will you," he cried
+out, shaking his lean, muscular arm at them; "look at that muscle,
+and me tellin' her that I could earn a livin' for her, and she
+afraid. I can dig if I can't make shoes. I guess there's work in
+this world for them that's willin', and don't pick and choose."
+
+"There ain't," declared Nahum, shortly.
+
+"You can't dig when the ground's froze hard," Eva said, with literal
+meaning.
+
+"Then I'll take a pickaxe," cried Jim.
+
+"You can dig, but who's goin' to pay you for the diggin'?" demanded
+Nahum Beals.
+
+"The idea of a girl's bein' afraid I wa'n't enough of a man to
+support a wife with an arm like that," said Jim Tenny, "as if I
+couldn't dig for her, or fight for her."
+
+"The fightin' has got to come first in order to get the diggin', and
+the pay for it," said Nahum.
+
+"Now, look at here," Andrew Brewster broke in, "you know I'm in as
+bad a box as you, and I come home to-night feelin' as if I didn't
+care whether I lived or died; but if it's true what McGrath said
+to-night, we've got to use common-sense in lookin' at things even if
+it goes against us. If what McGrath said was true, that Lloyd's
+losing money keeping on, I dunno how we can expect him or any other
+man to do that."
+
+"Why not he lose money as well as we?" demanded Nahum, fiercely.
+
+"'Cause we 'ain't got none to lose," cried Jim Tenny, with a hard
+laugh, and Eva and Fanny echoed him hysterically.
+
+Nahum took no notice of the interruption. Tragedy, to his
+comprehension, never verged on comedy. One could imagine his face of
+intense melancholy and denunciation relaxed with laughter no more
+than that of the stern prophet of righteous retribution whose name
+he bore.
+
+"Why shouldn't Norman Lloyd lose money?" he demanded again. "Why
+shouldn't he lose his fine house as well as I my poor little home?
+Why shouldn't he lose his purple and fine linen as well as Jim his
+chances of happiness? Why shouldn't he lose his diamond shirt-studs,
+and his carriage and horses, as well as Joe his life?"
+
+"Well, he earned his money, I suppose," Andrew said, slowly, "and I
+suppose it's for him to say what he'll do with it."
+
+"Earned his money? He didn't earn his money," cried Nahum Beals. "We
+earned it, every dollar of it, by the sweat of our brows, and it's
+for us, not him, to say what shall be done with it. Well, the time
+will come, I tell ye, the time will come."
+
+"We sha'n't see it," said Joe Atkins.
+
+"It may come sooner than you think," said Nahum. Then Nahum Beals,
+with a sudden access of bitterness, broke in. "Look at Norman
+Lloyd," he cried, "havin' that great house, and horses and
+carriages, and dressin' like a dude, and his wife rustlin' in silks
+so you can hear her comin' a mile off, and shinin' like a jeweller's
+window--look at 'em all--all the factory bosses--livin' like princes
+on the money we've earned for 'em; and look at their relations, and
+look at the rich folks that ain't never earned a cent, that's had
+money left 'em. Go right up and down the Main Street, here in this
+city. See the Lloyds and the Maguires and the Marshalls and the
+Risleys and the Lennoxes--"
+
+"There ain't none of the Lennoxes left except that one woman," said
+Andrew.
+
+"Well, look at her. There she is without chick or child, rollin' in
+riches, and Norman Lloyd's her own brother-in-law. Why don't she
+give him a little money to run the factory this winter, so you and
+me won't have to lose everythin'?"
+
+"I suppose she's got a right to do as she pleases with her own,"
+said Andrew.
+
+"I tell you she ain't," shouted Nahum. "She ain't the one to say,
+'It's the Lord, and He's said it.'  Cynthia Lennox and all the women
+like her are the oppressors of the poor. They are accursed in the
+sight of the Lord, as were those women we read about in the Old
+Testament, with their mantles and crisping-pins. Their low voices
+and their silk sweeps and their shrinkin' from touchin' shoulders
+with their fellow-beings in a crowd don't alter matters a mite."
+
+"Now, Nahum," cried Jim Tenny, with one of his sudden turns of base
+when his sense of humor was touched, "you don't mean to say that you
+want Cynthia Lennox to give you her money?"
+
+"I'd die, and see her dead, before I'd touch a dollar of her money!"
+cried Nahum--"before I'd touch a dollar of her money or anything
+that was bought with her money, her money or any other rich
+person's. I want what I earn. I don't want a gift with a curse on
+it. Let her keep her fine things. She and her kind are responsible
+for all the misery of the poor on the face of the earth."
+
+"Seems to me you're reasonin' in a circle, Nahum," Andrew said,
+good-humoredly.
+
+"Look here, Andrew, if you're on the side of the rich, why don't you
+say so?" cried Eva.
+
+"He ain't," returned Fanny--"you know better, Eva Loud."
+
+"No, I ain't," declared Andrew. "You all of you know I'm with the
+class I belong to; I ain't a toady to no rich folks; I don't think
+no more of 'em than you do, and I don't want any favors of 'em--all
+I want is pay for my honest work, and that's an even swap, and I
+ain't beholden, but I want to look at things fair and square. I
+don't want to be carried away because I'm out of work, though, God
+knows, it's hard enough."
+
+"I don't know what's goin' to become of us," said Joseph
+Atkins--then he coughed.
+
+"I don't," Jim Tenny said, bitterly.
+
+"And God knows I don't," cried Eva, and she sat down in the nearest
+chair, flung up her hands before her face, and wept.
+
+Then Fanny spoke to Ellen, who had been sitting very still and
+attentive, her eyes growing larger, her cheeks redder with
+excitement. Fanny had often glanced uneasily at her, and wished to
+send her to bed, but she was in the habit of warming Ellen's little
+chamber at the head of the stairs by leaving open the sitting-room
+door for a while before she went to it, and she was afraid of
+cooling the room too much for Joseph Atkins, and had not ventured to
+interrupt the conversation. Now, seeing the child's fevered face,
+she made up her mind. "Come, Ellen, it's your bed-time," she said,
+and Ellen rose reluctantly, and, kissing her father, she went to her
+aunt Eva, who caught at her convulsively and kissed her, and sobbed
+against her cheek. "Oh, oh!" she wailed, "you precious little thing,
+you precious little thing, I don't know what's goin' to become of us
+all."
+
+"Don't, Eva," said Fanny, sharply; "can't you see she's all wrought
+up? She hadn't ought to have heard all this talk."
+
+Andrew looked anxiously at his wife, rose, and caught up Ellen in
+his arms with a hug of fervent and protective love. "Don't you
+worry, father's darlin'," he whispered. "Don't you worry about
+anythin' you have heard. Father will always have enough to take care
+of you with."
+
+Jim Tenny, when Andrew set the child down, caught her up again with
+a sounding kiss. "Don't you let your big ears ache, you little
+pitcher," said he, with a gay laugh. "Little doll-babies like you
+haven't anythin' to worry about if Lloyd's shut down every day in
+the year."
+
+"They're the very ones whom it concerns," said Nahum Beals, when
+Ellen and her mother had gone up-stairs.
+
+"Well, I wouldn't have had that little nervous thing hear all this,
+if I'd thought," Andrew said, anxiously.
+
+Joseph Atkins, whom Fanny had stationed in a sheltered corner near
+the stove when she opened the door, peered around at Andrew.
+
+"Seems as if she was too young to get much sense of it," he
+remarked. "My Maria, that's her age, wouldn't."
+
+"Ellen hears everything and makes her own sense of it," said Andrew,
+"and the Lord only knows what she's made of this. I hope she won't
+fret over it."
+
+"I wish my tongue had been cut off before I said anything before
+her," cried Eva. "I know just what that child is. She'll find out
+what a hard world she's in soon enough, anyway, and I don't want to
+be the one to open her eyes ahead of time."
+
+Ellen went to bed quietly, and her mother did not think she had paid
+much attention to what had been going on, and said so when she went
+down-stairs after Ellen had been kissed and tucked in bed and the
+lamp put out. "I guess she didn't mind much about it, after all,"
+she said to Andrew. "I guess the room was pretty warm, and that was
+what made her cheeks so red."
+
+But Ellen, after her mother left her, turned her little head towards
+the wall and wept softly, lest some one hear her, but none the less
+bitterly that she had no right conception of the cause of her grief.
+There was over her childish soul the awful shadow of the labor and
+poverty of the world. She knew naught of the substance behind the
+shadow, but the darkness terrified her all the more, and she cried
+and cried as if her heart would break. Then she, with a sudden
+resolution, born she could not have told of what strange
+understanding and misunderstanding of what she had heard that
+evening, slipped out of bed, groped about until she found her
+cherished doll, sitting in her little chair in the corner. She was
+accustomed to take the doll to bed with her, and had undressed her
+for that purpose early in the evening, but she had climbed into bed
+and left her sitting in the corner.
+
+"Don't you want your dolly?" her mother had asked.
+
+"No, ma'am; I guess I don't want her to-night," Ellen had replied,
+with a little break in her voice. Now, when she reached the doll,
+she gathered her up in her little arms, and groped her way with her
+into the closet. She hugged the doll, and kissed her wildly, then
+she shook her. "You have been naughty," she whispered--"yes, you
+have, dreadful naughty. No, don't you talk to me; you have been
+naughty. What right had you to be livin' with rich folks, and
+wearin' such fine things, when other children don't have anything.
+What right had that little boy that was your mother before I was,
+and that rich lady that gave you to me? They had ought to be put in
+the closet, too. God had ought to put them all in the closet, the
+way I'm goin' to put you. Don't you say a word; you needn't cry;
+you've been dreadful naughty."
+
+Ellen set the doll, face to the wall, in the corner of the closet,
+and left her there. Then she crept back into bed, and lay there
+crying over her precious baby shivering in her thin night-gown all
+alone in the dark closet. But she was firm in keeping her there,
+since, with that strange, involuntary grasp of symbolism which has
+always been maintained by the baby-fingers of humanity for the
+satisfying of needs beyond resources and the solving of problems
+outside knowledge, she had a conviction that she was, in such
+fashion, righting wrong and punishing evil. But she wept over the
+poor doll until she fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+
+When Ellen woke the next morning she had a curious feeling, as if
+she were blinded by the glare of many hitherto unsuspected windows
+opening into the greatness outside the little world, just large
+enough to contain them, in which she had dwelt all her life with her
+parents, her aunt, her grandmother, and her doll. She tried to
+adjust herself to her old point of view with her simple childish
+recognition of the most primitive facts as a basis for dreams, but
+she remembered what Mr. Atkins, who coughed so dreadfully, had said
+the night before; she remembered what the young man with the bulging
+forehead, who frightened her terribly, had said; she remembered the
+gloomy look in her father's face, the misery in her aunt Eva's; and
+she remembered her doll in the closet--and either everything was
+different or had a different light upon it. In reality Ellen's
+evening in the sound and sight of that current of rebellion against
+the odds of life which has taken the poor off their foot hold of
+understanding since the beginning of the world had aged her. She had
+lost something out of her childhood. She dreaded to go down-stairs;
+she had a feeling of shamefacedness struggling within her; she was
+afraid that her father and mother would look at her sharply, then
+look again, and ask her what the matter was, and she would not know
+what to say. When she went down, and backed about for her mother to
+fasten her little frock as was her wont, she was careful to keep her
+face turned away; but Fanny caught her up and kissed her in her
+usual way, and then her aunt Eva sung out to know if she wanted to
+go on a sleigh-ride, and had she seen the snow; and then her father
+came in and that look of last night had gone from his face, and
+Ellen was her old self again until she was alone by herself and
+remembered.
+
+Fanny and Andrew and Eva had agreed to say nothing before the child
+about the shutting-up of Lloyd's, and their troubles in consequence.
+"She heard too much last night," Andrew said; "there's no use in her
+botherin' her little head with it. I guess that baby won't suffer."
+
+"She's jest the child to fret herself most to pieces thinkin' we
+were awful poor, and she would starve or somethin'," Fanny said.
+
+"Well, she sha'n't be worried if I can help it, no matter what
+happens to me," Eva said.
+
+After breakfast that morning Eva went to work on a little dress of
+Ellen's. When Fanny told her not to spend her time over that, when
+she had so much sewing of her own to do, Eva replied with a gay,
+hard laugh, that she guessed she'd wait and finish her weddin'-fix
+when she was goin' to be married.
+
+"Eva Loud, you ain't goin' to be so silly as to put off your
+weddin'," Fanny cried out.
+
+"I dunno as I've put it off; I dunno as I want to get married,
+anyhow," Eva said, still laughing. "I dunno, but I'd rather be old
+maid aunt to Ellen."
+
+"Eva Loud," cried her sister; "do you know what you are doin'?"
+
+"Pretty well, I reckon," said Eva.
+
+"Do you know that if you put off Jim Tenny, and he not likin' it,
+ten chances to one Aggie Bemis will get hold of him again?"
+
+"Well," said Eva, "let her. I won't have been the one to drag him
+into misery, anyhow."
+
+"Well, if you can feel that way," Fanny returned, looking at her
+sister with a sort of mixed admiration and pity.
+
+"I can. I tell you what 'tis, Fanny. When I look at Jim, handsome
+and head up in the air, and think how he'd look all bowed down, hair
+turnin' gray, and not carin' whether he's shaved and has on a clean
+shirt or not, 'cause he's got loaded down with debt, and the
+grocery-man and the butcher after him, and no work, and me and the
+children draggin' him down, I can bear anything. If another girl
+wants to do it, she must, though I'd like to kill her when I think
+of it. I can't do it, because--I think too much of him."
+
+"He might lose his work after he was married, you know."
+
+"Well, I suppose we'd have to run the risk of that; but I'm goin' to
+start fair or not at all."
+
+"Well, maybe he'll get work," Fanny said.
+
+"He won't," said Eva. She began to sing "Nancy Lee" over Ellen's
+dress.
+
+After breakfast Ellen begged a piece of old brown calico of her
+mother. "Why, of course you can have it, child," said her mother;
+"but what on earth do you want it for? I was goin' to put it in the
+rag-bag."
+
+"I want to make my dolly a dress."
+
+"Why, that ain't fit for your dolly's dress. Only think how queer
+that beautiful doll would look in a dress made of that. Why, you
+'ain't thought anything but silk and satin was good enough for her."
+
+"I'll give you a piece of my new blue silk to make your doll a
+dress," said Eva.
+
+But Ellen persisted. When the doll came out of her closet of
+vicarious penance she was arrayed like a very scullion among dolls,
+in the remnant of the dress in which Fanny Brewster had done her
+house-work all summer.
+
+"There," Ellen told the doll, when her mother did not hear "you look
+more like the way you ought to, and you ought to be happy, and not
+ever think you wish you had your silk dress on. Think of all the
+poor children who never have any silk dresses, or any dresses at
+all--nothing except their cloth bodies in the coldest weather. You
+ought to be thankful to have this."  For all which good advice and
+philosophy the little mother of the doll would often look at the
+discarded beauty of the wardrobe, with tears in her eyes and fondest
+pity in her heart; but she never flinched. When the young man Nahum
+Beals came in, as he often did of an evening, and raised his voice
+in fierce denunciation against the luxury and extravagance of the
+rich, Ellen would listen and consider that he would undoubtedly
+approve of what she had done, did he know, and would allow that she
+had made her small effort towards righting things.
+
+"Only think what Mr. Beals would say if he saw you in your silk
+dress; why, I don't know but he would throw you out of the window,"
+she told her doll once.
+
+Ellen did not feel any difference in her way of living after her
+father was out of work. "She ain't goin' to be stented in one single
+thing; remember that," Andrew told Fanny, with angry emphasis. "That
+little, delicate thing is goin' to have everything she needs, if I
+spend every cent I've saved and mortgage the place."
+
+"Oh, you'll get work before it comes to that," Fanny said,
+consolingly.
+
+"Whether I do or not, it sha'n't make any difference," declared
+Andrew. "I'm goin' to hire a horse and sleigh and take her
+sleigh-ridin' this afternoon. It'll be good, and she's been talkin'
+about a sleigh-ride ever since snow flew."
+
+"She could do without that," Fanny said, doubtfully.
+
+"Well, she ain't goin' to."
+
+So it happened that the very day after Lloyd's had shut down, when
+every man out of employment felt poorer than he did later when he
+had grown accustomed to the sensation of no money coming in, Andrew
+Brewster hired a horse and double sleigh, and took Ellen, her
+mother, grandmother, and aunt out sleigh-riding. Ellen sat on the
+back seat of the sleigh, full of that radiant happiness felt by a
+child whose pleasures have not been repeated often enough for
+satiety. The sleigh slid over the blue levels of snow followed by
+long creaks like wakes of sound, when the livery-stable horse shook
+his head proudly and set his bells in a flurry. Ellen drew a long
+breath of rapture. These unaccustomed sounds held harmonies of
+happiness which would echo through her future, for no one can
+estimate the immortality of some little delight of a child. In all
+her life, Ellen never forgot that sleigh-ride. It was a very cold
+day, and the virgin snow did not melt at all; the wind blew a soft,
+steady pressure from the west, and its wings were evident from the
+glistening crystals which were lifted and borne along. The trees
+held their shining boughs against the blue of the sky, and burned
+and blazed here and there as with lamps of diamonds. The child
+looked at them, and they lit her soul. Her little face, between the
+swan's-down puffs of her hood, deepened in color like a rose; her
+blue eyes shone; she laughed and dimpled silently; she was in too
+much bliss to speak. The others kept looking at her, then at one
+another. Fanny nudged her mother-in-law, behind the child's back,
+and the two women exchanged glances of confidential pride. Andrew
+and Eva kept glancing around at her, and asking if she were having a
+good time. Eva was smartly dressed in her best hat, gay with bows
+and red wings bristling as sharply as the head-dress of an Indian
+chief in the old pictures. She had a red coat, and a long fur boa
+wound around her throat; the clear crimson of her cheeks, her great
+black eyes, and her heavy black braids were so striking that people
+whom they met looked long at her. Eva talked fast to Andrew, and
+laughed often and loudly.
+
+Whenever that strident laugh of hers rang out, Mrs. Zelotes
+Brewster, on the seat behind, moved her be-shawled shoulders with a
+shivering hunch of disgust. "Can't you tell that girl not to laugh
+so loud when we're out ridin'," she said to her son that evening; "I
+saw folks lookin'."
+
+"Oh, never mind, mother," Andrew said; "the poor girl's got a good
+deal on her mind."
+
+"I suppose you mean that Tinny feller," said Mrs. Zelotes, alluding
+to something which had happened that afternoon in the course of the
+sleigh-ride.
+
+The sleighing that day was excellent, for there had been an ice
+coating on the road before, and the last not very heavy snowfall had
+been just enough. The Brewsters passed and met many others: young
+men out with their sweethearts, whole families drawn by the sober
+old horse as old as the grown-up children; rakish young men driving
+stable teams, leaning forward with long circles of whip over the
+horses' backs, leaving the scent of cigars behind them; and often,
+too, two young ladies in dainty turnouts; and sometimes two girls or
+four girls from Lloyd's, who had clubbed together and hired a
+sleigh, taking reckless advantage of their enforced vacation.
+
+"There's Daisy and Hat Sears, and--and there's Nell White and Eaat
+Ryoce in the team behind," Eva said.
+
+"I should think they better be savin' their money if Lloyd's has
+shut up," said Mrs. Zelotes, severely.
+
+"We ain't savin' ours, or Andrew ain't," Eva retorted, with a laugh.
+
+"It's different with us," said Mrs. Zelotes, proudly, "though I
+shouldn't think it was right for Andrew to hire a team every day."
+
+"Sometimes I think folks might just as well have a little as they're
+goin' along, for half the time they never seem to get there," Eva
+said, with another hard laugh at her own wit; and just then she saw
+something which made her turn deathly white, and catch her breath
+with a gasp in spite of herself, though that was all. She held up
+her head like a queen and turned her handsome white face full
+towards Jim Tenny and the girl for whom he had jilted her before, as
+they drove past, and bowed and smiled in a fashion which made the
+red flame up over the young man's swarthy cheek, and the pretty girl
+at his side shrink a little and avert her tousled fair head with a
+nervous giggle.
+
+Mrs. Zelotes Brewster twisted herself about and looked after them.
+"There's John Tibbets and his wife in that sleigh; he's thrown out
+of work as well as you, Andrew," said Fanny, hastily. "See that
+feather in her bonnet blow; it's standin' up straight."  But Fanny's
+manoeuvre to turn the attention of her mother-in-law was of no
+avail, for nothing short of sudden death could interpose an
+effectual barrier between Mrs. Zelotes Brewster's tongue and mind
+set with the purpose of speech. "Was that the Tinny fellow?" she
+demanded.
+
+"Yes; I guess so. I didn't notice in particular," Fanny replied, in
+a low voice. Then she added, pointing to an advancing sleigh. "Good
+land, there's that Smith girl. They said she wasn't able to ride
+out. Seems to me she's taken a queer day for it."
+
+"Was that that Tinny fellow?" Mrs. Zelotes asked again. She leaned
+forward and gave Eva a hard nudge on her red-coated elbow.
+
+"Yes, it was," Eva answered, calmly.
+
+"Who was that girl with him?"
+
+"It was Aggie Bemis."
+
+Mrs. Zelotes gave a sniff, then she settled back, studying Eva's
+back with a sort of reflective curiosity. Presently she fumbled
+under the sleigh cushion for an extra shawl which she had brought,
+and handed it up to Eva. "Don't you want this extra shawl?" she
+asked, while Fanny stared at her wonderingly. Mrs. Zelotes's
+civilities towards her sister had been few and far between.
+
+"No, thank you," Eva replied, with a start.
+
+"Hadn't you better? It must be pretty cold sitting up there. You
+must take all the wind. You can wrap this shawl all around your face
+and ears, and I don't want it."
+
+"No, thank you; I'm plenty warm," Eva replied. She swallowed hard,
+and set her mouth hard. There was something about this kindness of
+her old disapprover which touched her deeply, and moved her to
+weakness more than had the sight of her recreant love with another
+girl. Fanny saw the little quiver pass over her sister's face, and
+leaned over and whispered.
+
+"I shouldn't be a mite surprised if that girl asked Jim to take her.
+It would be just like her."
+
+"It don't make any odds whether she did or not," returned Eva, with
+no affectation of secrecy. "I don't care which way 'twas."  She sat
+up straighter than ever, and some men in a passing sleigh turned to
+look after her.
+
+"I s'pose she don't think my shawl looks genteel enough to wear,"
+Mrs. Zelotes said to Fanny; "but she's dreadful silly."
+
+They drove through the main street of the city and passed Cynthia
+Lennox's house. Ellen looked at it with the guilt of secrecy. She
+thought she saw the lady's head at a front window, and the front
+door opened and Cynthia came down the walk with a rich sweep of
+black draperies, and the soft sable toss of plumes. "There's Cynthia
+Lennox," said Fanny. "She's a handsome-lookin' woman, ain't she?"
+
+"She's most as old as Andrew, but you'd never suspect it," said Mrs.
+Zelotes. She had used to have a fancy that Andrew and Cynthia might
+make a match. She had seen no reason to the contrary, and she always
+looked at Cynthia with a curious sense of injury and resentment when
+she thought of what might have been.
+
+As Cynthia Lennox swept down the walk to-day, the old lady said,
+sharply:
+
+"I don't see why she should walk any prouder than anybody else. I
+don't know why she should, if she's right-minded. The Lennoxes
+wasn't any grander than the Brewsters way back, if they have got a
+little more money of late years. Cynthia's grandfather, old Squire
+Lennox, used to keep the store, and live in one side of it, and her
+mother's father, Calvin Goodenough, kept the tavern. I dunno as she
+has so much to be proud of, though she's handsome enough, and shows
+her bringin' up, as folks can't that ain't had it."  Fanny winced a
+little; her bringing up was a sore subject with her.
+
+"Well, folks can't help their bringin' up," she retorted, sharply.
+
+"There's Lloyd's team," Andrew said, quickly, partly to avert the
+impending tongue-clash between his wife and mother.
+
+He reined his horse to one side at a respectful distance, and Norman
+H. Lloyd, with his wife at his side, swept by in his fine sleigh,
+streaming on the wind with black fur tails, his pair of bays
+stepping high to the music of their arches of bells. The Brewsters
+eyed Norman Lloyd's Russian coat with the wide sable collar turned
+up around his proud, clear-cut face, the fur-gauntleted hands which
+held the lines and the whip, for Mr. Lloyd preferred to drive his
+own blooded pair, both from a love of horseflesh and a greater
+confidence in his own guidance than in that of other people. Mr.
+Lloyd was no coward, but he would have confided to no man his
+sensations had he sat behind those furnaces of fiery motion with
+other hands than his own upon the lines.
+
+"I should think Mis' Lloyd would be afraid to ride with such
+horses," said Mrs. Zelotes, as they leaped aside in passing; then
+she bowed and smiled with eager pleasure, and yet with perfect
+self-respect. She felt herself every whit as good as Mrs. Norman
+Lloyd, and her handsome Paisley shawl and velvet bonnet as genteel
+as the other woman's sealskins and floating plumes. Mrs. Lloyd
+loomed up like a vast figure of richness enveloped in her bulky
+winter wraps; her face was superb with health and enjoyment and
+good-humor. Her cheeks were a deep crimson in the cold wind; she
+smiled radiantly all the time as if at life itself. She had no
+thought of fear behind those prancing bays which seemed so frightful
+to Mrs. Zelotes, used to the steadiest stable team a few times
+during the year, and driven with a wary eye to railroad crossings
+and a sense of one's mortality in the midst of life strong upon her.
+Mrs. Norman Lloyd had never any doubt when her husband held the
+lines. She would have smiled behind ostriches and zebras. To her
+mind Norman Lloyd was, as it were, impregnable to all combinations
+of alien strength or circumstances. When she bowed on passing the
+Brewsters, she did not move her fixed smile until she caught sight
+of Ellen. Then emotion broke through the even radiance of her face.
+She moved her head with a flurry of nods; she waved her hand; she
+even kissed it to her.
+
+"Bow to Mis' Lloyd, Ellen," said her grandmother; and Ellen ducked
+her head solemnly. She remembered what she had heard the night
+before, and the sleigh swept by, Mrs. Lloyd's rosy face smiling back
+over the black fringe of dancing tails. Eva had shot a swift glance
+of utmost rancor at the Lloyds, then sat stiff and upright until
+they passed.
+
+"I wouldn't ask Ellen to bow to that woman," said she, fiercely,
+between her teeth. "I hate the whole tribe."
+
+No one heard her except Andrew, and he shook the lines over the
+steady stable horse, and said, "G'lang!" hoarsely.
+
+Mrs. Norman Lloyd, in the other sleigh, had turned to her husband
+with somewhat timid and deprecating enthusiasm. "Ain't she a sweet
+little girl?" said she.
+
+"What little girl?" Lloyd asked, abstractedly. He had not looked at
+the Brewsters at all.
+
+"That little Ellen Brewster who ran away and was gone most three
+days a little while ago. She was in that sleigh we just passed. She
+is just the sweetest child I ever laid eyes on," and Norman Lloyd
+smiled vaguely and coldly, and cast a glance over his sable-clad
+shoulders to see how far behind the team whose approaching bells he
+heard might be.
+
+"I suppose her father and aunt are out of work on account of the
+closing of the factory," remarked Mrs. Lloyd, and a shadow of
+reflection came over her radiant face.
+
+"Yes, I believe they worked there," Lloyd replied, shaking loose the
+reins and speeding the horses, that he might not be overtaken. In a
+few minutes they reached the factory neighborhood. There were three
+factories: two of them on opposite sides of the road, humming with
+labor, and puffing with jets of steam at different points; Lloyd's,
+beyond, was as large as both those standing hushed with windows
+blank in the afternoon sunshine.
+
+"I suppose the poor men feel pretty badly at being thrown out of
+work," Mrs. Lloyd said, looking up at the windows as she slipped
+past in her nest of furs.
+
+"They feel so badly that I have seen a round dozen since we started
+out taking advantage of their liberty to have a sleigh-ride with
+livery teams at a good round price," Lloyd replied, with languid
+emphasis. He never spoke with any force of argument to his wife, nor
+indeed to any one else, in justification of his actions. His reasons
+for action were in most cases self-evolved and entirely
+self-regulated. He had said not a word to any one, not even to his
+foreman, of his purpose to close the factory until it was quite
+fixed; he had asked no advice, explained to no one the course of
+reasoning which led to his doing so. Rowe was a city of strikes, but
+there had never been a strike at Lloyd's because he had abandoned
+the situation in every case before the clouds of rebellion were near
+enough for the storm to break. When Briggs and McGuire, the rival
+manufacturers at his right and left, had resorted to cut prices when
+business was dull, as a refuge from closing up, Lloyd closed with no
+attempt at compromise.
+
+"I suppose they need a little recreation," Mrs. Lloyd observed,
+thinking of the little girl's face peeping out between her mother
+and grandmother in the sleigh they had just passed.
+
+"Their little recreation is on about the same scale for them as my
+hiring a special railroad train every day in the week to go to
+Boston would be for me," returned Lloyd, setting his handsome face
+ahead at the track.
+
+"It does seem dreadful foolish," said his wife, "when they are out
+of work, and maybe won't earn any more money to support their
+families all winter--"  Mrs. Lloyd hesitated a minute. "I wonder,"
+said she, "if they feel sort of desperate, and think they won't have
+enough for their families, anyway--that is, enough to feed them, and
+they might as well get a little good time out of it to remember
+by-and-by when there ain't enough bread-and-butter. I dunno but we
+might do something like that, if we were in their places--don't you,
+Norman?"
+
+"No, I do not," replied Lloyd; "and that is the reason why you and I
+are not in their places."
+
+Mrs. Lloyd put her sealskin muff before her face as they turned a
+windy corner, and reflected that her husband was much wiser than
+she, and that the world couldn't be regulated by women's hearts,
+pleasant as it would be for the world and the women, since the final
+outcome would doubtless be destruction.
+
+Mrs. Norman Lloyd was an eminent survival of the purest and
+oldest-fashioned femininity, a very woman of St. Paul, except that
+she did not keep silence in the sanctuary.
+
+Just after they had turned the corner they passed an outlying
+grocery store much frequented as a lounging-place by idle men. There
+was a row of them on the wooden platform (backed against the wall),
+cold as it was, watching the sleighs pass, and two or three knots
+gathered together for the purposes of confabulation. Nearly all of
+them were employes of Lloyd's, and they had met at that unseasonable
+hour on that bitter day, drifting together unconsciously as towards
+a common nucleus of trouble, to talk over the situation.
+
+When these men, huddled up in their shabby great-coats, with caps
+pulled over shaggy brows and sullenly flashing eyes, saw the Lloyds
+approaching, the rumble of conversation suddenly ceased. They all
+stood staring when their employer passed. Only one man, Nahum Beals,
+looked fairly at Lloyd's face with a denouncing flash of eyes.
+
+To this man Lloyd, recognizing him and some of the others as his
+employes, bowed. Nahum Beals stood glaring at him in accusing
+silence, and his head was as immovable as if carved in stone. The
+other men, with their averted eyes, made a curious, motionless
+tableau of futile and dumb resistance to power which might have been
+carved with truth on the face of the rock from the beginning of the
+earth.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+
+The closing of Lloyd's marked, in some inscrutable way, the close of
+the first period of Ellen Brewster's childhood. Looking back in
+later years, she always felt her retrospective thought strike a
+barrier there, beyond which her images of the past were confused.
+Yet it was difficult to tell why it was so, for after the first the
+child could, it seemed, have realized no difference in her life. Now
+and then she heard some of that conversation characterized at once
+by the confidence of wrong and injustice, and the logical doubt of
+it, by solid reasoning which, if followed far enough, refuted
+itself, by keen and unanswerable argument, and the wildest and most
+futile enthusiasm. But she had gained nothing except the conviction
+of the great wrongs of the poor of this earth and the awful tyranny
+of the rich, of the everlasting moaning of Lazarus at the gates and
+the cry for water later on from the depths of the rich man's hell.
+Somehow that last never comforted Ellen; she had no conception of
+the joy of the injured party over righteous retribution. She pitied
+the rich man and Lazarus impartially, yet all the time a spirit of
+fierce partisanship with these poor men was strengthening with her
+growth, their eloquence over their wrongs stirred her soul, and set
+her feet outside her childhood. Still, as before said, there was no
+tangible difference in her daily life. The little petted treasure of
+the Brewsters had all her small luxuries, sweets, and cushions of
+life, as well after as before the closing of Lloyd's. And the
+preparations for her aunt's wedding went on also. The sight of her
+lover sleigh-riding with her rival that afternoon had been too much
+for the resolution of Eva Loud's undisciplined nature. She had
+herself gone to Jim Tenny's house that evening, and called him to
+account, to learn that he had seriously taken her resolution not to
+marry at present to proceed from a fear that he would not provide
+properly for her, and that he had in this state of indignation been
+easily led by the sight of Aggie Bemis's pretty face in her front
+door, as he drove by, to stop. She had told Jim that she would marry
+him as she had agreed if he looked at matters in that way, and had
+passed Aggie Bemis's window leaning on Jim's arm with a side stare
+of triumph.
+
+"Be you goin' to get married next month after what you said this
+mornin'?" her sister asked, half joyfully, half anxiously.
+
+"Yes, I be," was all Eva replied, and Fanny stared at her; she was
+so purely normal in her inconsistency as to seem almost the other
+thing.
+
+The preparations for the wedding went on, but Eva never seemed as
+happy as she had done before the closing of Lloyd's. Jim Tenny could
+get no more work, and neither could Andrew.
+
+Fanny lamented that the shop had closed at that time of year, for
+she had planned a Christmas tree of unprecedented splendor for
+Ellen, but Mrs. Zelotes was to be depended upon as usual, and Andrew
+told his wife to make no difference. "That little thing ain't goin'
+to be cheated nohow," he said one night after Ellen had gone to bed
+and his visiting companions of the cutting-room had happened in.
+
+"I know my children won't get much," Joseph Atkins said, coughing as
+he spoke; "they wouldn't if Lloyd's hadn't shut down. I never see
+the time when I could afford to make any account of Christmas, much
+as ever I could manage a turkey Thanksgiving day."
+
+"The poor that the Lord died for can't afford to keep his birthday;
+it is the rich that he's going to cast into outer darkness, that
+keep it for their own ends, and it's a blasphemy and a mockery,"
+proclaimed Nahum Beals. He was very excited that night, and would
+often spring to his feet and stride across the room. There was
+another man there that night, a cousin of Joseph Atkins, John
+Sargent by name. He had recently moved to Rowe, since he had
+obtained work at McGuire's, "had accepted a position in the
+finishing-room of Mr. H. S. McGuire's factory in the city of Rowe,"
+as the item in the local paper put it. He was a young man, younger
+than his cousin, but he looked older. He had a handsome face, under
+the most complete control as to its muscles. When he laughed he gave
+the impression of the fixedness of merriment of a mask. He looked
+keenly at Nahum Beals with that immovable laugh on his face, and
+spoke with perfectly good-natured sarcasm. "All very well for the
+string-pieces of the bridge from oppression to freedom," he said,
+"but you need some common-sense for the ties, or you'll slump."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"We ain't in the Old Testament, but the nineteenth century, and
+those old prophets, if they were alive to-day, would have to step
+down out of their flaming chariots and hang their mantles on the
+bushes, and instead of standing on mountain-tops and tellin' their
+enemies what rats they were, and how they would get what they
+deserved later on, they would have to tell their enemies what they
+wanted them to do to better matters, and make them do it."
+
+"Instead of standing by your own strike in Greenboro, you quit and
+come here to work in McGuire's the minute you got a chance," said
+Nahum Beals, sullenly, and Sargent responded, with his unrelaxing
+laugh, "I left enough strikers for the situation in Greenboro; don't
+you worry about me."
+
+"I think he done quite right to quit the strike if he got a chance
+to work," Joseph Atkins interposed. "Folks have got to look out for
+themselves, labor reform or no labor reform."
+
+"That's the corner-stone of labor reform, seems to me," said Andrew.
+
+"Seems to me sometimes you talk like a damned scab," cried Nahum
+Beals, fiercely, red spots flickering in his thin cheeks. Andrew
+looked at him, and spoke with slow wrath. "Look here, Nahum Beals,"
+he said, "you're in my house, but I ain't goin' to stand no such
+talk as that, I can tell you."
+
+John Sargent laid a pacifically detaining hand on Nahum Beals's arm
+as he strode past him. "Oh, Lord, stop rampagin' up and down like a
+wildcat," he said. "What good do you think you're doin' tearin' and
+shoutin' and insultin' people? He ain't talkin' like a scab, he's
+only talkin' a tie to your string-piece."
+
+"That's so," said Joseph Atkins. Sargent boarded with him, and the
+board money was a godsend to him, now he was out of work. John
+Sargent had fixed his own price, and it was an unheard-of one for
+such simple fare as he had. His weekly dollars kept the whole poor
+family in food. But John Sargent was a bachelor, and earning
+remarkably good wages, and Joseph Atkins's ailing wife, whom illness
+and privation had made unnaturally grasping and ungrateful, told her
+cronies that it wasn't as if he couldn't afford it.
+
+Up-stairs little Ellen lay in her bed, her doll in her arms,
+listening to the low rumble of masculine voices in the room below.
+Her mother had gone out, and there were only the men there. They
+were smoking, and the odor of their pipes floated up into Ellen's
+chamber through the door-cracks. She thought how her grandmother
+Brewster would sniff when she came in next day. She could hear her
+saying, "Well, for my part, if those men couldn't smoke their old
+pipes somewhere else besides in my sittin'-room, I wouldn't have 'em
+in the house."  But that reflection did not trouble Ellen very long,
+and she had never been disturbed herself by the odor of the pipes.
+She thought of them insensibly as the usual atmosphere when men were
+gathered together in any place except the church. She knew that they
+were talking about that old trouble, and Nahum Beals's voice of high
+wrath made her shrink; but, after all, she was removed from it all
+that night into a little prospective paradise of her own, which, as
+is the case in childhood, seemed to overgild her own future and all
+the troubles of the world. Christmas was only a week distant, she
+was to have a tree, and the very next evening her mother had
+promised to take her down-town and show her the beautiful, lighted
+Christmas shops. She wondered, listening to that rumble of
+discontent below, why grown-up men and women ever fretted when they
+were at liberty to go down-town every evening when they chose and
+look at the lighted shops, for she could still picture pure delight
+for others without envy or bitterness.
+
+The next day the child was radiant; she danced rather than walked;
+she could not speak without a smile; she could eat nothing, for her
+happiness was so purely spiritual that desires of the flesh were in
+abeyance. Her heart beat fast; the constantly recurring memory of
+what was about to happen fairly overwhelmed her as with waves of
+delight.
+
+"If you don't eat your supper you can't go, and that's all there is
+about it," her mother told her when they were seated at the table,
+and Ellen sat dreaming before her toast and peach preserve.
+
+"You must eat your supper, Ellen," Andrew said, anxiously. Andrew
+had on his other coat, and he had shaved, and was going too, as was
+Mrs. Zelotes Brewster.
+
+"She 'ain't eat a thing all day, she's so excited about goin',"
+Fanny said. "Now, Ellen, you must eat your supper, or you can't
+go--you'll be sick."
+
+And Ellen ate her supper, though exceeding joy as well as exceeding
+woe can make food lose its savor, and toast and preserves were as
+ashes on her tongue when the very fragrance of coming happiness was
+in her soul.
+
+When, finally, in hand of her mother, while Andrew walked behind
+with her grandmother, she went towards the lights of the town, she
+had a feeling as of wings on her feet. However, she walked soberly
+enough with wide eyes of amazement and delight at everything--the
+long, silver track of the snowy road under the light of the full
+moon, the slants of the house roofs sparkling with crusts of
+crystals, the lighted windows set with house plants, for the
+dwellers in the outskirts of Rowe loved house plants, and their
+front windows bloomed with the emulative splendor of geraniums from
+fall to spring. She saw behind them glimpses of lives and some
+doings as real as her own, but mysterious under the locks of other
+personalities, and therefore as full of possibilities of
+preciousness as the sheet of morning dew over a neighbor's yard; she
+had often believed she saw diamonds sparkle in that, though never in
+her own. She had proved it otherwise too often. So Ellen, seeing
+through a window a little girl of her own age in a red frock,
+straightway believed it to be satin of the richest quality, and,
+seeing through another window a tea-table spread, had no doubt that
+the tin teapot was silver. A girl with a crown of yellow braids
+pulled down a curtain, and she thought her as beautiful as an angel;
+but of all this she said nothing at all, only walked soberly on,
+holding fast to her mother's hand.
+
+When they were half-way to the shops, a door of a white house close
+to the road flew open and shut again with a bang, there was a scurry
+and grating slide on the front walk, then the gate was thrown back,
+and a boy dashed through with a wild whoop, just escaping contact
+with Mrs. Zelotes Brewster. "You'd better be careful," said she,
+sharply. "It ain't the thing for boys to come tearin' out of yards
+in the evenin' without seein' where they are goin'."
+
+The boy cast an abashed glance at her. The street-lamp shone full on
+his face, which was round and reddened by the frosty winds, with an
+aimlessly grinning mouth of uncertain youth, and black eyes with a
+bold and cheerful outlook on the unknown. He was only ten, but he
+was large for his age. Ellen, when he looked from her grandmother
+back at her, thought him almost a man, and then she saw that he was
+the boy who had brought the chestnuts to her the night when she had
+returned from her runaway excursion. The boy recognized her at the
+same moment, and his mouth seemed to gape wider, and a moist red
+overspread his face down to his swathing woollen scarf. Then he gave
+another whoop significant of the extreme of nervous abashedness and
+the incipient defiance of his masculine estate, there was a flourish
+of heels, followed by a swift glimmering slide of steel, and he was
+off trailing his sled.
+
+"That's that Joy boy that brought Ellen the chestnuts that time,"
+Fanny said. "Do you remember him, Ellen?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am," replied Ellen. The look of the boy in her face had
+bewildered and confused her, without her knowing the why of it. It
+was as if she had spelled a word in her reading-book whose meaning
+she could not grasp.
+
+"I don't care who he is," said Mrs. Zelotes, "he 'ain't no business
+racin' out of gates that way, and his folks hadn't ought to let a
+boy no older than that out alone of nights."
+
+They kept on, and the boy apparently left them far behind in his
+career of youthful exuberance, until they came to the factories.
+Andrew looked up at the windows of Lloyd's, dark except for a faint
+glimmer in a basement window from the lamp of the solitary watchman,
+and drew a heavy sigh.
+
+"It ain't as bad for you as it is for some," his mother said,
+sharply, and then she jumped aside, catching her son's arm as the
+boy sprang out of a covering shadow under the wall of Lloyd's and
+dashed before them with another wild whoop and another glance of
+defiant bashfulness at Ellen.
+
+"My land! it's that boy again," cried Mrs. Zelotes. "Here, you
+boy!--boy! What's your name?"
+
+"His name is Granville Joy," Ellen replied, unexpectedly.
+
+"Why, how did you know, child?" her grandmother asked. "Seems to me
+he's got a highfalutin' name enough. Here you, Granville--if that's
+your name--don't you know any better than to--"  But the boy was
+gone, his sled creaking on the hard snow at his heels, and a faint
+whoop sounded from the distance.
+
+"I guess if I had the bringin' up of that boy there wouldn't be such
+doin's," said Mrs. Zelotes, severely. "His mother's a pretty woman,
+but I don't believe she's got much force. She wouldn't have given
+him such a name if she had."
+
+"She named him after the town she came from," said Fanny. "She told
+me once. She's a real smart woman, and she makes that boy stand
+around."
+
+"She must; it looks as if he was standin' round pretty lively jest
+now," said Mrs. Zelotes. "Namin' of a boy after a town! They'd
+better wait and name a town after the boy if he amounts to
+anything."
+
+"His mother told me he was goin' into the first grammar-school next
+year," said Fanny.
+
+"I pity the teacher," said Mrs. Zelotes, and then she recoiled, for
+the boy made another dart from behind a lamp-post, crossed their
+path, and was off again.
+
+"My land!" gasped Mrs. Zelotes, "you speak to him, Andrew."  But
+Andrew laughed. "Might as well speak to a whirlwind," said he. "He
+ain't doin' any harm, mother; it's only his boyish antics. For
+Heaven's sake, let him enjoy himself while he can, it won't be long
+before the grind-mill in there will get hold of him, and then he'll
+be sober enough to suit anybody," and Andrew pointed at Lloyd's as
+he spoke.
+
+"Boys can be boys," said Mrs. Zelotes, severely, "and they can have
+a good time, but they can behave themselves."
+
+None of them looking after that flying and whooping figure ahead had
+the slightest idea of the true situation. They did not know that the
+boy was confused by the fires, none the less ardent that they were
+so innocent, of a first love for Ellen; that, ever since he had seen
+her little, fair face on her aunt's shoulder the day when she was
+found, it had been even closer to his heart than his sled and his
+jackstones and his ball, and his hope of pudding for dinner. They
+did not know that he had toiled at the wood-pile of a Saturday, and
+run errands after school, to earn money to buy Christmas presents
+for his mother and Ellen; that he had at that very minute in his
+purse in the bottom of his pocket the sum of eighty-nine cents,
+mostly in coppers, since his wage was generally payable in that
+coin, and his pocket sagged arduously therefrom. They did not know
+that he was even then bound upon an errand to the grocery store for
+a bag of flour to be brought home on his sled, and would thereby
+swell his exchequer by another cent. They did not know what dawning
+chords of love, and knowledge of love, that wild whoop expressed;
+and the boy dodged and darted and hid, and appeared before them all
+the way to the busy main street of Rowe; and, after they had entered
+the great store where the finest Christmas display was held, he
+stood before the window staring at Ellen vanishing in a brilliant
+vista, and whooped now and then, regardless of public opinion.
+
+Ellen, when once she was inside the store, forgot everything else.
+She clung more tightly to her mother's hand, as one will cling to
+any wonted stay of love in the midst of strangeness, even of joy,
+and she saw everything with eyes which photographed it upon her very
+soul. At first she had an impression of a dazzling incoherence of
+splendor, of a blare as of thousands of musical instruments all
+sounding different notes of delight, of a weaving pattern of colors,
+too intricate to master, of a mingled odor of paint and varnish, and
+pine and hemlock boughs, and then she spelled out the letters of the
+details. She looked at those counters set with the miniature
+paraphernalia of household life which give the first sweet taste of
+domesticity and housekeeping joys to a little girl.
+
+There were the sets of dolls' furniture, and the dolls, dishes, and
+there was a counter with dolls' cooking-stoves and ranges bristling
+with the most delightful realism of pots and pans, at which she
+gazed so fixedly and breathlessly that she looked almost stupid. Her
+elders watched half in delight, half with pain, that they could not
+purchase everything at which she looked. Mrs. Zelotes bought some
+things surreptitiously, hiding the parcels under her shawl. Andrew,
+whispering to a salesman, asked the price of a great cooking-stove
+at which Ellen looked long. When he heard the amount he sighed.
+Fanny touched his arm comfortingly. "There would be no sense in your
+buying that, if you had all the money in creation," she said, in a
+hushed voice. "There's a twenty-five-cent one that's good enough.
+I'm going to buy that for her to-morrow. She'll never know the
+difference."  But Andrew Brewster, nevertheless, went through the
+great, dazzling shop with his heart full of bitterness. It seemed to
+him monstrous and incredible that he had a child as beautiful and
+altogether wonderful as that, and could not buy the whole stock for
+her if she wanted it. He had never in his whole life wanted anything
+for himself that he could not have, enough to give him pain, but he
+wanted for his child with a longing that was a passion. Her little
+desires seemed to him the most important and sacred needs in the
+whole world. He watched her with pity and admiration, and shame at
+his own impotence of love to give her all.
+
+But Ellen knew nothing of it. She was radiant. She never thought of
+wanting all those treasures further than she already had them. She
+gazed at the wonders in that department where the toy animals were
+kept, and which resembled a miniature menagerie, the silence broken
+by the mooing of cows, the braying of donkeys, the whistle of
+canaries, and the roars of mock-lions when their powers were invoked
+by the attendants, and her ears drank in that discordant bable of
+tiny mimicry like music. There was no spirit of criticism in her.
+She was utterly pleased with everything.
+
+When her grandmother held up a toy-horse and said the fore-legs were
+too long, Ellen wondered what she meant. To her mind it was more
+like a horse than any real one she had ever seen.
+
+As she gazed at the decorations, the wreaths, the gauze, the tinsel,
+and paper angels, suspended by invisible wires over the counters,
+and all glittering and shining and twinkling with light, a strong
+whiff of evergreen fragrance came to her, and the aroma of
+fir-balsam, and it was to her the very breath of all the mysterious
+joy and hitherto untasted festivity of this earth into which she had
+come. She felt deep in her childish soul the sense of a promise of
+happiness in the future, of which this was a foretaste. When she
+went into the department where the dolls dwelt, she fairly turned
+pale. They swung, and sat, and lay, and stood, as in angelic ranks,
+all smiling between shining fluffs of hair. It was a chorus of
+smiles, and made the child's heart fairly leap. She felt as if all
+the dolls were smiling at her. She clung fast to her mother's hand,
+and hid her face against her skirt.
+
+"Why, what is the matter, Ellen?" Fanny asked. Ellen looked up, and
+smiled timidly and confusedly, then at the dazzle of waxen faces and
+golden locks above skirts of delicate pink and blue and white, like
+flower petals.
+
+"You never saw so many dolls together before, did you, Ellen?" said
+Andrew; then he added, wistfully, "There ain't one of 'em any bigger
+and prettier than your own doll, be they, Ellen?"  And that,
+although he had never recovered from his uneasiness about that
+mysterious doll.
+
+Ellen had not seen Cynthia Lennox since that morning several weeks
+ago when she had run away from her, except one glimpse when she was
+sleigh-riding. Now all at once, when they had stopped to look at
+some wonderful doll-houses, she saw her face to face. Ellen had been
+gazing with rapture at a great doll-house completely furnished, and
+Andrew had made one of his miserable side inquiries as to its price,
+and Fanny had said, quite loud, "Lord, Andrew, you might just as
+well ask the price of the store! You know such a thing as that is
+out of the question for any child unless her father is rich as
+Norman Lloyd," and Ellen, who had not noticed what they were saying,
+looked up, when a faint breath of violets smote her sense with a
+quick memory, and there was the strange lady who had taken her into
+her house and kept her and given her the doll, the strange lady whom
+the gentleman said might be punished for keeping her if people were
+to know.
+
+Cynthia Lennox went pale when, without knowing what was going to
+happen, she looked down and saw suddenly the child's innocent face
+looking into hers. She stood wavering in her trailing, fur-lined,
+and softly whispering draperies, so marked and set aside by her
+grace and elegance and countenance of superiority and proud calm
+that people turned to look after her more than after many a young
+beauty, and did not, for a second, know what to say or do. She had
+no mind to shrink from a recognition of the child; she had no fear
+of the result, but there was a distinct shrinking at a scene with
+that flashing-eyed and heavy-browed mother of the child in such a
+place as that. She would undoubtedly speak very loud. She expected
+the volley of recrimination in a high treble which would follow the
+announcement in that sweet little flute which she remembered so
+well.
+
+"Mamma, that is the lady who kept me, and would not let me go home."
+
+But Ellen, after a second's innocent and startled regard, turned
+away with no more recognition than if she had been a stranger. She
+turned her little back to her, and looked at the doll-house. A great
+flush flamed over Cynthia Lennox's face, and a qualm of mortal
+shame. She took an impetuous glide forward, and was just about to
+speak and tell the truth, whatever the consequences, and not be
+outdone in magnanimity by that child, when a young girl with a
+sickly but impudent and pretty face jostled her rudely. The utter
+pertness of her ignorant youth knew no respect for even the rich
+Miss Cynthia Lennox. "Here's your parcel, lady," she said, in her
+rough young voice, its shrillness modified by hoarseness from too
+much shouting for cash boys during this busy season, and she thrust,
+with her absent eyes upon a gentleman coming towards her, a parcel
+into Cynthia's hands. Somehow the touch of that parcel seemed to
+bring Cynthia to her senses. It was a kodak which she had been
+purchasing for the little boy who had lived with her, and whom it
+had almost broken her heart to lose. She remembered what her friend
+Lyman Risley had said, that it might make trouble for others besides
+herself. She took her parcel with that involuntary meekness which
+the proudest learn before the matchless audacity of youthful
+ignorance when it fairly asserts itself, and passed out of the store
+to her waiting carriage. Ellen saw her.
+
+"That was Cynthia Lennox, wasn't it?" Fanny said, with something
+like awe. "Wasn't that an elegant cloak she had on? I guess it was
+Russian sable."
+
+"I don't care if it was, it ain't a mite handsomer than my cape
+lined with squirrel," said Mrs. Zelotes.
+
+Ellen looked intently at a game on the counter. It was ten o'clock
+when Ellen went home. She had been into all the principal stores
+which were decorated for Christmas. Her brain resembled a
+kaleidoscope as she hurried along at her mother's hand. Every
+thought seemed to whirl the disk, and new and more dazzling
+combinations appeared, but the principle which underlay the whole
+was that of the mystery of festivity and joy upon the face of the
+earth, of which this Christmas wealth was the key.
+
+The Brewsters had scarcely reached the factory neighborhood when
+there was a swift bound ahead of them and the familiar whoop.
+
+"There's that boy again," said Mrs. Zelotes.
+
+She made various remonstrances, and even Andrew, when the boy had
+passed his own home in his persistent dogging of them, called out to
+him, as did Fanny, but he was too far ahead to hear. The boy
+followed them quite to their gate, proceeding with wild spurts and
+dashes from shadow to shadow, and at last reappeared from behind one
+of the evergreen trees in the west yard, springing out of its long
+shadow with strange effect. He darted close to Ellen as she passed
+in the gate, crammed something into her hand, and was gone. Andrew
+could not catch him, though he ran after him. "He ran like a
+rabbit," he said, coming breathlessly into the house, where they
+were looking at the treasure the boy had thrust upon Ellen. It was a
+marvel of a patent top, which the boy had long desired to own. He
+had spent all his money on it, and his mother was cheated of her
+Christmas present, but he had given, and Ellen had received, her
+first token of love.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+
+The next spring Ellen went to school. When a child who has reigned
+in undisputed sovereignty at home is thrust among other children at
+school, one of two things happens: either she is scorned and
+rebelled against, and her little crown of superiority rolled in the
+dust of the common playground, or she extends the territories of her
+empire. Ellen extended hers, though involuntarily, for there was no
+conscious thirst for power in her.
+
+On her first morning at school, she seated herself at her desk and
+looked forth from the golden cloud of her curls, her eyes full of
+innocent contemplation, her mouth corners gravely drooping. She knew
+one little girl who sat not far from her. The little girl's name was
+Floretta Vining. Floretta was built on the scale of a fairy, with
+tiny, fine, waxen features, a little tossing mane of flaxen hair,
+eyes a most lovely and perfect blue, with no more depth in them than
+in the blue of china, and an expression of the sweetest and most
+innocent inanity and irresponsibility. Nobody ever expected anything
+of this little Floretta Vining. She was always a negative success.
+She smiled around from the foot of her curving class, and never had
+her lessons, but she never disobeyed the rules, except that of
+punctuality.
+
+Floretta was late at school. She came daintily up the aisle, two
+cheap bangles on one wrist slipping over a slim hand, and tinkling.
+Floretta's mother had a taste for the cheaply decorative. There was
+an abundance of coarse lace on Floretta's frock, and she wore a
+superfluous sash which was not too fresh. Floretta toed out
+excessively, her slender little feet pointing out sharply, almost at
+right angles with each other, and Ellen admired her for that. She
+watched her coming, planting each foot as carefully and precisely as
+a bird, her lace frills flouncing up and down, her bangles jingling,
+and thought how very pretty she was.
+
+Ellen felt herself very loving towards the teacher and Floretta
+Vining. Floretta leaned forward as soon as she was seated and gazed
+at her with astonishment, and that deepening of amiability and
+general sweetness which one can imagine in the face of a doll after
+persistent scrutiny. Ellen smiled decorously, for she was not sure
+how much smiling was permissible in school. When she smiled
+guardedly at Floretta, she was conscious of another face regarding
+her, twisted slightly over a shabby little shoulder covered with an
+ignominious blue stuff, spotted and faded. This little girl's wisp
+of brown braid was tied with a shoe-string, and she looked poorer
+than any other child in the school, but she had an honest light in
+her eyes, and Ellen considered her to be rather more beautiful than
+Floretta.
+
+She was Maria Atkins, Joseph Atkins's second child. Ellen sat with
+her book before her, and the strange, new atmosphere of the
+school-room stole over her senses. It was not altogether pleasant,
+although it was considered that the ventilation was after the most
+approved modern system. She perceived a strong odor of peppermints,
+and Floretta Vining was waving ostentatiously a coarse little
+pocket-handkerchief scented with New-mown Hay. There was also a
+strong effusion of stale dinners and storm-beaten woollen garments,
+but there was, after all, that savor of festivity which Ellen was
+apt to discover in the new. She looked over her book with utter
+content. In a line with her, on the boys' side, there appeared a
+covertly peeping face under a thatch of light hair, and Ellen,
+influenced insensibly by the boy's shyly worshipful eyes, looked and
+saw Granville Joy. She remembered the Christmas top, and blushed
+very pink without knowing why, and flirted all her curls towards the
+boys' side.
+
+Ellen, from having so little acquaintance with boys, had had no very
+well-defined sentiments towards them, but now, on being set apart
+with her feminine element, and separated so definitely by the middle
+aisle of the school-room, she began to experience sensations both of
+shyness and exclusiveness. She did not think the boys, in their
+coarse clothes, with their cropped heads, half as pretty as the
+girls.
+
+The teacher coming down the aisle laid a caressing hand on Ellen's
+curls, and the child looked up at her with that confidence which is
+exquisite flattery.
+
+After she had passed, Ellen heard a subtle whisper somewhere at her
+back; it was half audible, but its meaning was entirely plain. It
+signified utmost scorn and satirical contempt. It was fine-pointed
+and far-reaching. A number looked around. It was as expressive as a
+whole sentence, and, being as concentrated, was fairly explosive
+with meaning.
+
+"H'm, ain't you pretty? Ain't you dreadful pretty, little
+dolly-pinky-rosy. H'm, teacher's partial. Ain't you pretty? Ain't
+you stuck up? H'm."
+
+Ellen, not being used to the school vernacular, did not fairly
+apprehend all this, and least of all that it was directed towards
+herself. She cast a startled look around, then turned to her book.
+She leaned back in her seat and held her book before her face with
+both hands, and began to read, spelling out the words noiselessly.
+All at once, she felt a fine prick on her head, and threw back one
+hand and turned quickly. The little girl behind was engrossed in
+study, and all Ellen could see was the parting in her thick black
+hair, for her head was supported by her two hands, her elbows were
+resting on her desk, and she was whispering the boundaries of the
+State of Massachusetts.
+
+Ellen turned back to her reading-book, and recommenced studying with
+the painful faithfulness of the new student; then came again that
+small, fine, exasperating prick, and she thrust her face around
+quickly to see that same faithfully intent little girl.
+
+Ellen rubbed her head doubtfully, and tried to fix her attention
+again upon her book, but presently it came again; a prick so small
+and fine that it strained consciousness; an infinitesimal point of
+torture, and this time Ellen, turning with a swift flirt of her
+head, caught the culprit. It was that faithful little girl, who held
+a black-headed belt-pin in her hand; she had been carefully
+separating one hair at a time from Ellen's golden curls, and
+tweaking it out.
+
+Ellen looked at her with a singular expression compounded of
+bewilderment, of injury, of resentment, of alarm, and of a readiness
+to accept it all as a somewhat peculiar advance towards
+good-fellowship and a merry understanding. But the expression on
+that dark, somewhat grimy little face, looking out at her from a
+jungle of coarse, black locks, was fairly impish, almost malicious.
+There was not merriment in it so much as jibing; instead of that
+soft regard and worshipful admiration which Ellen was accustomed to
+find in new eyes, there was resentful envy.
+
+Then Ellen shrank, and bristled with defiance at the same time, for
+she had the spirit of both the Brewsters and the Louds in her, in
+spite of her delicacy of organization. She was a fine instrument,
+capable of chords of tragedy as well as angelic strains. She saw
+that the little girl who was treating her so was dressed very
+poorly, that her dress was not only shabby, but actually dirty; that
+she, as well as the other girl whom she noticed, had her braid tied
+with an old shoe-string, and that a curious smell of leather
+pervaded her. Ellen continued to regard the little girl, then
+suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder, and the teacher, Miss
+Rebecca Mitchell, was looking down at her. "What is the trouble?"
+asked Miss Mitchell. That look of half-wondering admiration to which
+Ellen was accustomed was in the teacher's eyes, and Ellen again
+thought her beautiful.
+
+One of the first, though a scarcely acknowledged principle of
+beauty, is that of reflection of the fairness of the observer. Ellen
+being as innocently self-seeking for love and admiration as any
+young thing for its natural sustenance, was quick to recognize it,
+though she did not understand that what she saw was herself in the
+teacher's eyes, and not the teacher. She gazed up in that roseate
+face with the wide mouth set in an inverted bow of smile, curtained,
+as it were, with smoothly crinkled auburn hair clearly outlined
+against the cheeks, at the palpitating curve of shiny black-silk
+bosom, adorned with a festoon of heavy gold watch-chain, and thought
+that here was love, and beauty, and richness, and elegance, and
+great wisdom, calling for reverence but no fear. She answered not
+one word to the teacher's question, but continued to gaze at her
+with that look of wide-eyed and contemplative regard.
+
+"What is the trouble, Ellen?" repeated Miss Mitchell. "Why were you
+looking around so?"  Ellen said nothing. The little girl behind had
+her head bent over her book so low that the sulky curves of her
+mouth did not show. The teacher turned to her--"Abby Atkins," said
+she, "what were you doing?"
+
+Abby Atkins did not raise her studious head. She did not seem to
+hear.
+
+"Abby Atkins," said the teacher, sharply, "answer me. What were you
+doing?"  Then the little girl answered, with a sulky note, half
+growl, half whimper, like some helpless but indomitable little
+trapped animal, "Nothin'."
+
+"Ellen," said the teacher, and her voice changed indescribably.
+"What was she doing?"  Ellen did not answer. She looked up in the
+teacher's face, then cast down her eyes and sat there, her little
+hands folded in tightly clinched fists in her lap, her mouth a pink
+line of resistance. "Ellen," repeated the teacher, and she tried to
+make her voice sharp, but in spite of herself it was caressing. Her
+heart had gone out to the child the moment she had seen her enter
+the school-room. She was as helpless before her as before a lover.
+She was wild to catch her up and caress her instead of pestering her
+with questions. "Ellen, you must answer me," she said, but Ellen sat
+still.
+
+Half the scholars were on their feet, reaching and craning their
+necks. The teacher turned on them, and there was no lack of
+sharpness in her tone. "Sit down this moment, every one of you," she
+called. "Abby Atkins, if there is any more disturbance, I shall know
+what is at the root of the matter. If I see you turning around
+again, Ellen, I shall insist upon knowing why."  Then the teacher
+placed a caressing hand upon Ellen's yellow head, and passed down
+the aisle to her desk.
+
+Ellen had no more trouble during the session. Abby Atkins was
+commendably quiet and studious, and when called out to recitation
+made the best one in her class. She was really brilliant in a
+defiant, reluctant fashion. However, though she did not again
+disturb Ellen's curls, she glowered at her with furtive but
+unrelaxed hostility over her book. Especially a blue ribbon which
+confined Ellen's curls in a beautiful bow fired her eyes of
+animosity. She looked hard at it, then she pulled her black braid
+over her shoulder and felt of the hard shoe-string knot, and frowned
+with an ugly frown of envy and bitterest injury, and asked herself
+the world-wide and world-old question as to the why of inequality,
+and, though it was based on such trivialities as blue ribbons and
+shoe-strings, it was none the less vital to her mind. She would have
+loved, have gloried, to pull off that blue ribbon, put it on her own
+black braid, and tie up those yellow curls with her own shoe-string
+with a vicious yank of security. But all the time it was not so much
+because she wanted the ribbon as because she did not wish to be
+slighted in the distribution of things. Abby Atkins cared no more
+for personal ornament than a wild cat, but she wanted her just
+allotment of the booty of the world. So at recess she watched her
+chance. Ellen was surrounded by an admiring circle of big girls,
+gushing with affection. "Oh, you dear little thing," they said.
+"Only look at her beautiful curls. Give me a kiss, won't you,
+darling?"  Little reverent fingers twined Ellen's golden curls, red
+apples were thrust forward for her to take bites, sticky morsels of
+candy were forced secretly into her hands. Abby Atkins stood aloof.
+"You mean little thing," one of the big girls said suddenly,
+catching hold of her thin shoulder and shaking her--"you mean little
+thing, I saw you."
+
+"So did I," said another big girl, "and I was a good mind to tell on
+you."
+
+"Yes, you had better look out, and not plague that dear little
+thing," said the other.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," chimed in still another big
+girl. "Only look how pretty she is, the little darling--the idea of
+your tormenting her. You deserve a good, hard whipping, Abby
+Atkins."
+
+This big girl was herself a beauty and wore a fine and precise
+blue-ribbon bow, and Abby Atkins looked at her with a scowl of
+hatred.
+
+"She's an ugly little thing," said the big girls among themselves as
+they went edging gently and imperceptibly away towards a knot of big
+boys, and then Abby Atkins's chance had come. She advanced with a
+spring upon Ellen Brewster, and she pulled that blue ribbon off her
+head so cruelly and fiercely that she pulled out some of the golden
+hairs with it and threw it on the ground, and stamped on it. Then
+she seized Ellen by the shoulders and proceeded to shake her for
+wearing a blue ribbon when she herself wore a shoe-string, but she
+reckoned without Ellen. One would as soon have expected to meet
+fight in a little child angel as in this Ellen Brewster, but she did
+not come of her ancestors for nothing.
+
+Although she was so daintily built that she looked smaller, she was
+in reality larger than the other girl, and as she straightened
+herself in her wrath she seemed a head taller and proportionately
+broad. She tossed her yellow head, and her face took on an
+expression of noble courage and indignation, but she never said a
+word. She simply took Abby Atkins by the arms and lifted her off her
+feet and seated her on the ground. Then she picked up her blue
+ribbon, and walked off, and Abby scrambled to her feet and looked
+after her with a vanquished but untamed air. Nobody had seen what
+happened except Abby's younger sister Maria and Granville Joy.
+Granville pressed stealthily close to Ellen as she marched away and
+whispered, his face blazing, his voice full of confidence and
+congratulation, "Say, if she'd been a boy, I'd licked her for you,
+and you wouldn't hev had to tech her yourself;" and Maria walked up
+and eyes her prostrate but defiantly glaring sister--"I ain't sorry
+one mite, Abby Atkins," she declared--"so there."
+
+"You go 'long," returned Abby, struggling to her feet, and shaking
+her small skirts energetically.
+
+"Your dress is jest as wet as if you'd set down in a puddle, and
+you'll catch it when you get home," Maria said, pitilessly.
+
+"I ain't afraid."
+
+"What made you touch her, anyhow; she hadn't done nothin'?"
+
+"If you want to wear shoe-strings when other folks wear ribbons, you
+can," said Abby Atkins. She walked away, switching, with unabated
+dignity in the midst of defeat, the draggled tail of her poor little
+dress. She had gone down like a cat; she was not in the least hurt
+except in her sense of justice; that was jarred to a still greater
+lack of equilibrium. She felt as if she had been floored by
+Providence in conjunction with a blue bow, and her very soul rose in
+futile rebellion. But, curiously enough, her personal ire against
+Ellen vanished.
+
+At the afternoon recess she gave Ellen the sound half of an old red
+Baldwin apple which she had brought for luncheon, and watched her
+bite into it, which Ellen did readily, for she was not a child to
+cherish enmity, with an odd triumph. "The other half ain't fit to
+eat, it's all wormy," said Abby Atkins, flinging it away as she
+spoke.
+
+"Then you ought to have kept this," Ellen cried out, holding towards
+her the half, minus one little bite. But Abby Atkins shook her head
+forcibly. "That was why I gave it to you," said she. "Say, didn't
+you never have to tie up your hair with a shoe-string?"  Ellen shook
+her head, looking at her wonderingly. Then with a sudden impulse she
+tore off the blue ribbon from her curls. "Say, you take it," she
+said, "my mother won't care. I'd just as lief wear the shoe-string,
+honest."
+
+"I don't want your blue ribbon," Abby returned, stoutly; "a
+shoe-string is a good deal better to tie the hair with. I don't want
+your blue ribbon; I don't want no blue ribbon unless it's mine."
+
+"It would be yours if I give it to you," Ellen declared, with blue
+eyes of astonishment and consternation upon this very strange little
+girl.
+
+"No, it wouldn't," maintained Abby Atkins.
+
+But it ended in the two girls, with that wonderful and inexplicable
+adjustment of childhood into one groove after harsh grating on
+different levels, walking off together with arms around each other's
+waist, and after school began Ellen often felt a soft, cat-like pat
+on her head, and turned round with a loving glance at Abby Atkins.
+
+Ellen talked more about Abby Atkins than any other of the children
+when she got home, and while her mother looked at it all easily, her
+grandmother was doubtful. "There's others that I should rather have
+Ellen thick with," said she. "I 'ain't nothin' against the Atkinses,
+but they can't have been as well brought up as some, they have had
+so little to do with, and their mother's been ailin' so long."
+
+"Ellen may as well begin as she can hold out, and be intimate with
+them that will be intimate with her," Eva said, rather bitterly. Eva
+was married by this time, and living with Jim and his mother. She
+wore in those days an expression of bitterly defiant triumph and
+happiness, as of one who has wrested his sweet from fate under the
+ban of the law, and is determined to get the flavor of it though the
+skies fall. "I suppose I did wrong marrying Jim," she often told her
+sister, "but I can't help it."
+
+"Maybe Jim will get work before long," her sister would say,
+consolingly.
+
+"I have about given up," Eva would reply. "I guess Jim will have to
+roost on a flour-barrel at Munsey's store the rest of his days; but
+as long as he belongs to me, it don't make so much difference."
+
+Eva had taken up an agency for a cosmetic which was manufactured by
+a woman in Rowe. She had one window of the north parlor in the Tenny
+cottage, which had been given up to her when she married Jim, filled
+with the little pink boxes containing the "Fairy Cream," and a great
+sign, but the trade languished. Both Eva and Jim had tried in vain
+to obtain employment in factories in other towns.
+
+Lloyd's had not reopened, although it was April, and Andrew was
+drawing on his savings. Fanny had surreptitiously answered an
+advertisement purporting to give instructions to women as to the
+earning of large sums of money at home, and was engaged with a stock
+of glass and paints which she hurriedly swept out of sight when any
+one's shadow passed the window, and later she found herself to be
+the victim of a small swindling conspiracy, and lost the dollar
+which she had invested. But Ellen knew nothing of all this. She
+lacked none of her accustomed necessaries nor luxuries, and with her
+school a new life full of keen, new savors or relish began for her.
+There were also new affections in it.
+
+Ellen was as yet too young, and too confident in love, to have new
+affections plunge her into anything but a delightful sort of
+anti-blossom tumult. There was no suspense, no doubt, no jealousy,
+only utter acquiescence of single-heartedness, admiration, and
+trust. She thought Abby Atkins and Floretta Vining lovely and
+dependable; she parted from them at night without a pang, and looked
+forward blissfully to the meeting next morning. She also had
+sentiments equally peaceful and pronounced, though instinctively
+more secret, towards Granville Joy. She used to glance over towards
+the boys' side and meet his side-long eyes without so much a
+quickening of her pulses as a quickening of her imagination.
+
+"I know who your beau is," Floretta Vining, who was in advance of
+her years, said to her once, and Ellen looked at her with
+half-stupid wonder.
+
+"His first name begins with a G and his last with a J," Floretta
+tittered, and Ellen continued to look at her with the faintest
+suspicion of a blush, because she had a feminine instinct that a
+blush was in order, not because she knew of any reason for it.
+
+"He is," said Floretta, with another exceedingly foolish giggle.
+"My, you are as red as a beet."
+
+"I ain't old enough to have a beau," Ellen said, her soft cheeks
+becoming redder, and her baby face all in a tremor.
+
+"Yes, you be," Floretta said, with authority, "because you are so
+pretty, and have got such pretty curls. Ben Simonds said the other
+day you were the prettiest girl in school."
+
+"Then do you think he is my beau, too?" asked Ellen, innocently. But
+Floretta frowned, and tittered, and hesitated.
+
+"He said except one," she faltered out, finally.
+
+"Well, who was that?" asked Ellen.
+
+"How do I know?" pouted Floretta. "Mebbe it was me, though I don't
+think I'm so very pretty."
+
+"Then Ben Simonds is your beau," said Ellen, reflectively.
+
+"Yes, I guess he is," admitted Floretta.
+
+That night, amid much wonder and tender ridicule, Ellen told her
+mother and Aunt Eva, and her father, that Ben Simonds was Floretta's
+beau, and Granville Joy was hers. But Andrew laughed doubtfully.
+
+"I don't want that little thing to get such ideas into her head yet
+a while," he told Fanny afterwards, but she only laughed at him,
+seeing nothing but the childish play of the thing; but he, being a
+man, saw deeper.
+
+However, Ellen's fondest new love was not for any of her little
+mates, but for her school-teacher. To her the child's heart went out
+in worship. All through the spring she offered her violets--violets
+gathered laboriously after school in the meadow back of her
+grandmother's house. She used to skip from hillock to hillock of
+marsh grass with wary steps, lest she might slip and wet her feet in
+the meadow ooze and incur her mother's displeasure, for Fanny, in
+spite of her worship of the child, could speak with no uncertain
+voice. She pulled up handfuls of the flowers, gleaming blue in the
+dark-green hollows. Later she carried roses from the choice bush in
+the yard, and, later, pears from her grandmother's tree. She used to
+watch for Miss Mitchell at her gate and run to meet her, and seize
+her hand and walk at her side, blushing with delight. Miss Mitchell
+lived not far from Ellen, in a tidy white house with a handsome
+smoke-tree on one side of the front walk and a willow with
+upside-down branches on the other. Miss Mitchell had been born and
+brought up in this house, but she had been teaching school in a
+distant town ever since Ellen's day, so they had never been
+acquainted before she went to school. Miss Mitchell lived alone with
+her mother, who was an old friend of Mrs. Zelotes. Ellen privately
+thought her rather better-looking than her own grandmother, though
+her admiration was based upon wholly sentimental reasons. Old Mrs.
+Mitchell might have earned more money in a museum of freaks than her
+daughter in a district school. She was a mountain of rotundity, a
+conjunction of palpitating spheres, but the soul that dwelt in this
+painfully ponderous body was as mellow with affection and kindliness
+as a ripe pear, and the voice that proceeded from her ever-smiling
+lips was a hoarse and dove-like coo of love. Ellen at first started
+a little aghast at this gigantic fleshliness, this general slough
+and slump of outline, this insistency of repellent curves, and then
+the old woman spoke and thrust out a great, soft hand, and the heart
+of the child overleaped her artistic sense and her reason, and she
+thought old Mrs. Mitchell beautiful. Mrs. Mitchell never failed to
+regale her with a superior sort of cooky, and often with a covert
+peppermint, and that although the Mitchells were not well off. The
+old place was mortgaged, and Miss Mitchell had hard work to pay the
+interest. Ellen had the vaguest ideas about the mortgage, and was
+half inclined to think it might be a disfiguring patch in the
+plastering of the sitting-room, which hung down in an unsightly
+fashion with a disclosure of hairy edges, and threatened danger to
+the heads underneath.
+
+Often of a Saturday afternoon Ellen went to visit Miss Mitchell and
+her mother, and really preferred them to friends of her own age.
+Miss Mitchell had a store of superannuated paper dolls which dated
+from her own childhood. Their quaint costumes, and old-fashioned
+coiffures, and simpers were of overwhelming interest to Ellen. Even
+at that early age she had a perception of the advantages of an
+atmosphere to art, and even to the affections. Without understanding
+it, she loved those obsolete paper-dolls and those women of former
+generations better because they gave her breathing-scope for her
+imagination. She could love Abby Atkins and Floretta Vining at one
+bite, as it were, and that was the end of it, but she could sit and
+ponder and dream over Miss Mitchell and her mother, and see whole
+vistas of them in receding mirrors of affection.
+
+As for the teacher and her mother, they simply adored the child--as
+indeed everybody did. She continued at her first school for a year,
+which was one of the hardest financially ever experienced in Rowe.
+Norman Lloyd during all that time did not reopen his factory, and in
+the autumn two others shut down. The streets were full of the
+discontented ranks of impotent labor, and all the public buildings
+were props for the weary shoulders of the unemployed. On pleasant
+days the sunny sides of the vacant factories, especially, furnished
+settings for lines of scowling faces of misery.
+
+This atmosphere affected Ellen more than any one realized, since the
+personal bearing of it was kept from her. She did not know that her
+father was drawing upon his precious savings for daily needs, she
+did not know how her aunt Eva and her uncle Jim were getting into
+greater difficulties every day, but she was too sensitive not to be
+aware of disturbances which were not in direct contact with herself.
+She never forgot what she had overheard that night Lloyd's had shut
+down; it was always like a blot upon the face of her happy
+consciousness of life. She often overheard, as then, those loud,
+dissenting voices of her father and his friends in the sitting-room,
+after she had gone to bed; and then, too, Abby Atkins, who was not
+spared any knowledge of hardship, told her a good deal. "It's awful
+the way them rich folks treat us," said Abby Atkins. "They own the
+shops and everything, and take all the money, and let our folks do
+all the work. It's awful. But then," continued Abby Atkins,
+comfortingly, "your father has got money saved in the bank, and he
+owns his house, so you can get along if he don't have work. My
+father 'ain't got any, and he's got the old-fashioned consumption,
+and he coughs, and it takes money for his medicine. Then mother's
+sick a good deal too, and has to have medicine. We have to have more
+medicine than most anything else, and we hardly ever have any pie or
+cake, and it's all the fault of them rich folks."  Abby Atkins wound
+up with a tragic climax and a fierce roll of her black eyes.
+
+That evening Ellen went in to see her grandmother, and was presented
+with some cookies, which she did not eat.
+
+"Why don't you eat them?" Mrs. Zelotes asked.
+
+"Can I have them to do just what I want to with?" asked Ellen.
+
+"What on earth do you want to do with a cooky except eat it?" Ellen
+blushed; she had a shamed-faced feeling before a contemplated
+generosity.
+
+"What do you want to do with them except eat them?" her grandmother
+asked, severely.
+
+"Abby Atkins don't have any cookies 'cause her father's out of
+work," said Ellen, abashedly.
+
+"Did that Atkins girl ask you to bring her cookies?"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"You can do jest what you are a mind to with 'em," Mrs. Zelotes
+said, abruptly.
+
+Ellen never knew why her grandmother insisted upon her drinking a
+little glass of very nice and very spicy cordial before she went
+home, but the truth was, that Mrs. Zelotes thought the child so
+angelic in this disposition to give up the cookies which she loved
+to her little friend that she was straightway alarmed and thought
+her too good to live.
+
+The next day she told Fanny, and said to her, with her old face
+stern with anxiety, that the child was lookin' real pindlin', and
+Ellen had to take bitters for a month afterwards because she gave
+the cookies to Abby Atkins.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+
+In all growth there is emulation and striving for precedence between
+the spiritual and the physical, and this very emulation may
+determine the rate of progression of the whole. Sometimes the one,
+sometimes the other, may be in advance, but all the time the
+tendency is towards the distant goal. Sometimes the two keep
+abreast, and then there is the greatest harmony in speed. In Ellen
+Brewster at twelve and fifteen the spiritual outstripped the
+physical, as is often the case. Her eyes grew intense and hollow
+with reflection under knitting brows, her thin shoulders stooped
+like those of a sage bent with study and contemplation. She was
+slender to emaciation; her clothes hung loosely over her form, which
+seemed as sexless as a lily-stem; indeed, her body seemed only made
+for the head, which was flower-like and charming, but almost painful
+in its delicacy, and with such weight of innocent pondering upon the
+unknown conditions of things in which she found herself. At times,
+of course, there were ebullitions of youthful spirit, and the child
+was as inconsequent as a kitten. At those times she was neither
+child nor woman; she was an anomalous thing made up not so much of
+actualities as of instincts. She romped with her mates as unseen and
+uncomprehended of herself as any young animal, but the flame of her
+striving spirit made everything full of unread meaning.
+
+Ellen was accounted a most remarkable scholar. She had left Miss
+Mitchell's school, and was in one of a higher grade. At fifteen she
+entered the high-school and had a master.
+
+Andrew was growing old fast in those days, though not so old as to
+years. Though he was far from old, his hair was gray, his back bent.
+He moved with a weary shuffle. The men in the shop began to eye him
+furtively. "Andrew Brewster will get fired next," they said. "The
+boss 'ain't no use for men with the first snap gone."  Indeed,
+Andrew was constantly given jobs of lower grades, which did not pay
+so well. Whenever the force was reduced on account of dulness in
+trade, Andrew was one of the first to be laid aside on waiting
+orders in the regular army of toil. On one of these occasions, in
+the spring after Ellen was fifteen, his first fit of recklessness
+seized him. One night, after loafing a week, he came home with fever
+spots in his cheeks and a curiously bright, strained look in his
+eyes. Fanny gazed sharply at him across the supper-table. Finally
+she laid down her knife and fork, rested her elbows on the table,
+and fixed her eyes commandingly upon him. "Andrew Brewster, what is
+the matter?" said she. Ellen turned her flower-like face towards her
+father, who took a swallow of tea without saying a word, though he
+shuffled his feet uneasily. "Andrew, you answer me," repeated Fanny.
+
+"There ain't anything the matter," answered Andrew, with a strange
+sullenness for him.
+
+"There is, too. Now, Andrew Brewster, I ain't goin' to be put off. I
+know you're on the shelf on account of hard times, so it ain't that.
+It's something new. Now I want to know what it is."
+
+"It ain't anything."
+
+"Yes, it is. Andrew, you ought to tell me. You know I ain't afraid
+to bear anything that you have to bear, and Ellen is getting old
+enough now, so she can understand, and she can't always be spared.
+She'd better get a little knowledge of hardships while she has us to
+help her bear 'em."
+
+"This ain't a hardship, and there ain't anything to spare, Ellen,"
+said Andrew; and he laughed with a hilarity totally unlike him.
+
+That was all Fanny could get out of him, but she was half reassured.
+She told Eva that she didn't believe but he had been buying some
+Christmas present that he knew was extravagant for Ellen, and was
+afraid to tell her because he knew she would scold. But Andrew had
+not been buying Christmas presents, but speculating in mining
+stocks. He had resisted the temptation long. Year in and year out he
+had heard the talk right and left in the shop, on the street, and at
+the store of an evening. "I'll give you a point," he had heard one
+say to another during a discussion as to prices and dividends. He
+had heard it all described as a short cross-cut over the fields of
+hard labor to wealth and comfort, and he had kept his face straight
+ahead in his narrow track of caution and hereditary instincts until
+then. "The savings bank is good enough for me," he used to say;
+"that's where my father kept his money. I don't know anything about
+your stocks. I'd rather have a little and have it safe."  The men
+could not reason him out of his position, not even when Billy Monroe
+made fifteen hundred dollars on a Colorado mine which had cost him
+fifteen cents per share, and left the shop, and drove a fast horse
+in a Goddard buggy.
+
+It was even reported that fifteen hundred was fifteen thousand, but
+Andrew was proof against this brilliant loadstar of success, though
+many of his mates followed it afar, just before the shares dropped
+below par.
+
+Jim Tenny went with the rest. "Tell you what 'tis, Andrew, old man,"
+he said, clapping Andrew on the shoulder as they were going out of
+the shop one night, "you'd better go in too."
+
+"The savings-bank is good enough for me," said Andrew, with his
+gentle doggedness.
+
+"You can buy a trotter," urged Jim.
+
+"I never was much on trotters," replied Andrew.
+
+"I ain't going to walk home many times more, you bet," Jim said to
+Eva when he got home, and then he bent back her tensely set face and
+kissed it. Eva was crocheting hoods for fifteen cents apiece for a
+neighboring woman who was a padrone on a small scale, having taken a
+large order from a dealer for which she realized twenty cents
+apiece, and employed all the women in the neighborhood to do the
+work.
+
+"Why not?" said she.
+
+"Oh," said Jim, gayly, "I've bought some of that 'Golden Hope'
+mining stock. Billy Monroe has just made fifteen thousand on it, and
+I'll make as much in a week or two."
+
+"Oh, Jim, you 'ain't taken all the money out of the bank?"
+
+"Don't you worry, old girl," replied Jim. "I guess you'll find I can
+take care of you yet."
+
+But the stock went down, and Jim's little venture with it.
+
+"Guess you were about right, old man," he said to Andrew.
+
+Andrew was rather looked up to for his superior caution and
+sagacity. He was continually congratulated upon it. "Savings-banks
+are good enough for me," he kept repeating. But that was four years
+ago, and now his turn had come; the contagion of speculation had
+struck him at last. That was the way with Lloyd's failing employes.
+
+Andrew kept his stock certificate in a little, tin, trunk-shaped box
+which had belonged to his father. It had a key and a tiny padlock,
+and he had always stored in it the deed of his house, his
+savings-bank book, and his insurance policy. He carried the key in
+his pocket. Fanny never opened the box, or had any curiosity about
+it, believing that she was acquainted with its contents; but now
+when, on coming unexpectedly into the bedroom--the box was always
+kept at the head of the bed--she heard a rattle of papers, and
+caught Andrew locking the box with a confused air, she began to
+suspect something. She began to look hard at the box, to take it up
+and shake it when her husband was away. Fanny was crocheting hoods
+as well as Eva. Ellen wished to learn, but her mother would not
+allow that. "You've got enough to do to study your lessons," she
+said. Andrew watched his wife crochet with ill-concealed impatience.
+
+"I ain't goin' to have you do that long," he said--"workin' at that
+rate for no more money. That Mrs. William Pendergrass that lets out
+these hoods is as bad as any factory boss in the country."
+
+"Well, she got the chance," said Fanny, "and they won't let out the
+work except that way; they can get it done so much cheaper."
+
+"Well, you sha'n't have it, anyhow," said Andrew, smiling
+mysteriously.
+
+"Why, you ain't goin' to work again, be you, Andrew?"
+
+"You wait."
+
+"Well, don't you talk the way poor Jim did. Eva wasn't going to
+crochet any more hoods, and now Jim's out of work again. Eva told me
+yesterday that she didn't know where the money was comin' from.
+Jim's mother owns the place, and it ain't worth much, anyhow, and
+they can't take it from her in her lifetime, even if she was willing
+to let it go. Eva said she was goin' to try again for work herself
+in the shop. She thought maybe there might be some kind of a job she
+could get. Don't you talk like Jim did about his good-for-nothin'
+mining stock. I've been glad enough that you had sense enough to
+keep what little we had where 'twas safe."
+
+"Ain't it most time for Ellen to be comin' home?" asked Andrew, to
+turn the conversation, as he felt somewhat guilty and uncomfortable,
+though his eyes were jubilant. He had very little doubt about the
+success of his venture. As it is with a man who yields to love for
+the first time in his life, it was with Andrew in his tardy
+subjection to the hazards of fortune. He was a much more devoted
+slave than those who had long wooed her. He had always taken nothing
+but the principal newspaper published in Rowe, but now he subscribed
+to a Boston paper, the one which had the fullest financial column,
+though Fanny exclaimed at his extravagance.
+
+Along in midsummer, in the midst of Ellen's vacation, the mining
+stock dropped fast a point or more a day. Andrew's heart began to
+sink, though he was far from losing hope. He used to talk it over
+with the men who advised him to buy, and come home fortified.
+
+All he had to do was to be patient; the fall meant nothing wrong
+with the mine, only the wrangle of speculators. "It's like a
+football, first on one side, and then on the other," said the man,
+"but the football's there all the same, and if it's that you want,
+you're all right."
+
+One night when Nahum Beals and Atkins and John Sargent were in,
+Andrew repeated this wisdom, concealing the fact of its personal
+application. He was anxious to have some confirmation.
+
+"I suppose it's about so," he said.
+
+Then John Sargent spoke up. "No, it is not so," he said--"that is,
+not in many cases. There isn't any football--that's the trouble.
+There's nothing but the money; a lot of fools have paid for it when
+it never existed out of their imagination."
+
+"About so," said Nahum Beals. Andrew and Atkins exchanged glances.
+Atkins was at once sympathizing and triumphant.
+
+"Lots of those things appear to be doing well, and to be all right,"
+said Andrew, uneasily. "The directors keep saying that they are in a
+prosperous condition, even if the stock drops."  He almost betrayed
+himself.
+
+John Sargent laughed that curious, inflexible laugh of his. "Lord, I
+know all about that," said he. "I had some once. First one thing and
+then another came up to hinder the working of the mine and the
+payments of dividends. First there wasn't any water, an
+unprecedented dry season in those parts, oldest inhabitants for
+evidence. Then there was too much water, no way to mine except they
+employed professional divers, everything under water. Then the
+transportation was to pay; then, when that was remedied, the ore
+didn't come out in shape to transport in the rough and had to be
+worked up on the premises, and new mills had to be built and new
+machinery put in, and a few little Irish dividends were collected
+for that. Then when they got the mills up and the machinery in, they
+struck another kind of ore that ought to be transported; then there
+came a landslide and carried half the road into a canon. So it went
+on, one thing and another. If ever that darned mine had got into
+working order, right kind of ore, water enough and not too much,
+roads and machinery all right, and everything swimming, the Day of
+Judgment would have come."
+
+"Did you ever get anything out of it?" inquired Andrew.
+
+"Anything out of it?" repeated the other. "Yes, I got enough worldly
+wisdom never to buy any more mining stock, after I had paid
+assessments on it for two years and the whole thing went to pieces."
+
+"It may come up yet," said Andrew.
+
+"There's nothing to come up," said John Sargent. He had been away
+from Rowe a year, but had just returned, and was again boarding with
+Atkins, and all the family lived on his board money. Andrew and
+Nahum Beals were smoking pipes. Andrew gently, like a philosopher,
+who smokes that he may dream; Nahum with furious jets and frequent
+removals of his pipe for scowling speeches. John Sargent did not
+smoke at all. He had left off cigars first, then even his pipe. He
+gave the money which he saved thereby to Mrs. Atkins as a bonus on
+his board money.
+
+The lamp burned dimly in the blue fog of tobacco smoke, and the
+windows where the curtains were not drawn were blanks of silvery
+moonlight. Ellen sat on the doorstep outside and heard the talk. She
+did not understand it, nor take much interest in it. Their minds
+were fixed upon the way of living, and hers upon life itself. She
+could bring her simplicity to bear upon the world-old question of
+riches and poverty and labor, but this temporal adjunct of stocks
+and markets was as yet beyond her. Her mother had gone to her aunt
+Eva's and she sat alone out in the wide mystery of the summer night,
+watching the lovely shift of radiance and shadows, as she might have
+watched the play of a kaleidoscope, seeing the beauty of the new
+combinations, and seeing without comprehending the unit which
+governed them all. The night was full of cries of insistent life and
+growth, of birds and insects, of calls of children, and now and then
+the far-away roar of railroad trains. It was nearly midsummer. The
+year was almost at its height, but had not passed it. Growth and
+bloom was still in the ascendant, and had not yet attained that
+maturity of perfection beyond which is the slope of death.
+
+Everywhere about her were the revolutions of those unseen wheels of
+nature whose immortal trend is towards the completion of time, and
+whose momentum can overlap the grave; and the child was within them
+and swept onward with the perfecting flowers, and the ripening
+fruit, and the insects which were feeling their wings; and all
+unconsciously, in a moment as it were, she unfolded a little farther
+towards her own heyday of bloom. Suddenly from those heights of the
+primitive and the eternal upon which a child starts and where she
+still lingered she saw her future before her, shining with new
+lights, and a wonderful conviction of bliss to come was over her. It
+was that conviction which comes at times to all unconquered souls,
+and which has the very essence of truth in it, since it overleaps
+the darkness of life that lies between them and that bliss. Suddenly
+Ellen felt that she was born to great happiness, and all that was to
+come was towards that end. Her heart beat loud in her ears. There
+was a whippoorwill calling in some trees to the left; the moon was
+dim under a golden dapple of clouds. She could not feel her hands or
+her feet; she seemed to feel nothing except her soul.
+
+Then she heard, loud and sweet and clear, a boy's whistle, one of
+the popular tunes of the day. It came nearer and nearer, and it was
+in the same key with the child's thoughts and dreams. Then she saw a
+slender figure dark against the moonlight stop at a fence, and she
+jumped up and ran towards it with no hesitation through the dewy
+grass; and it was the boy, Granville Joy. He stood looking at her.
+He had a handsome, eager face, and Ellen looked at him, her lips
+parted, her face like a lily in the white light.
+
+"Hulloo," said the boy.
+
+"Hulloo," Ellen responded, faintly.
+
+Granville extended one rough, brown, boyish hand over the fence, and
+Ellen laid her little, soft hand in it. He pulled her gently close,
+then Ellen lifted her face, and the boy bent his, and the two kissed
+each other over the fence. Then the boy went on down the street, but
+he did not whistle, and Ellen went back to the doorstep, and,
+looking about to be sure that none of the men in the sitting-room
+saw, pulled off one little shoe and drew forth a sprig of
+southernwood, or boy's-love, which was crushed under her foot.
+
+That day Floretta Vining had told her that if she would put a sprig
+of boy's-love in her shoe, the very first boy she met would be the
+one she was going to marry; and Ellen, who was passing from one
+grade of school to another, had tried it.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+
+The high-school master was a distant relative of the Lloyd's,
+through whom he had obtained the position. One evening when he was
+taking tea with them at Cynthia Lennox's, he spoke of Ellen. "I have
+one really remarkable scholar," he said, with a curious air of
+self-gratulation, as if he were principally responsible for it; "her
+name is Brewster--Ellen Brewster."
+
+"Good land! That must be the child that ran away five or six years
+ago, and all the town up in arms over it," said Mrs. Norman Lloyd.
+"Don't you remember, Cynthia?"
+
+"Yes," replied Cynthia, and continued pouring tea. Cynthia was very
+little changed. In some faces time seems to engrave lines
+delicately, once for all, and then lay by. She was rather more
+charming now than when one had looked at her with any expectancy of
+youth, since there was now no sense of disappointment.
+
+"I remember that," said Norman Lloyd. "The child would never tell
+where she had been. A curious case."
+
+"Well," said the school-master, "leaving that childish episode out
+of the question, she has a really remarkable mind. If she were a
+boy, I should advise a thorough education and a profession. I should
+as it is, if her family were able to bear the expense. She has that
+intuitive order of mind which is wonderful enough, though not, after
+all, so rare in a girl; but in addition she has the logical, which,
+according to my experience, is almost unknown in a woman. She ought
+to have an education."
+
+"But," said Risley, "what is the use of educating that unfortunate
+child?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"What I say. What is the use? There she is in her sphere of life,
+the daughter of a factory operative, in all probability in
+after-years to be the wife of one and the mother of others. Nothing
+but a rich marriage can save her, and that she is not likely to
+make. Milk-maids are more likely to make rich marriages than factory
+girls; there is a certain savor of romance about milk, and the dewy
+meadows, and the breath of kine, but a shoe factory is brutally
+realistic and illusionary. Now, why do you want to increase the poor
+child's horizon farther than her little feet can carry her? Fit her
+to be a good female soldier in the ranks of labor, to be a good wife
+and mother to the makers of shoes, to wash and iron their uniforms
+of toil, to cook well the food which affords them the requisite
+nourishment to make shoes, to appreciate book-lore, which is a
+pleasure and a profit to the makers of shoes; possibly in the
+non-event of marriage she will make shoes herself. The system of
+education in our schools is all wrong. It is both senseless and
+futile. Look at the children filing past to school, and look at
+their fathers, and their mothers too, filing past to the factory.
+Look at their present, and look at their future. And look at the
+trash taught them in their text-books--trash from its utter
+dissociation with their lives. You might as well teach a Zulu
+lace-work, instead of the use of the assagai."
+
+"Now look here, Mr. Risley," said the school-master, his face
+flushing, "is not--I beg your pardon, of course--this view of yours
+a little narrow and ultra-conservative? You do not want to establish
+a permanent factory-operative class in this country, do you? That is
+what your theory would ultimately tend towards. Ought not these
+children be given their chance to rise in the ranks; ought they to
+be condemned to tread in the same path as their fathers?"
+
+"I would have those little paths which intersect every unoccupied
+field in this locality worn by the feet of these men and their
+children after them unto the third and fourth generation," said
+Risley. "If not, where is our skilled labor?"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Risley," said Mrs. Lloyd, anxiously, "you wouldn't want all
+those dear little children to work as hard as their fathers, and not
+do any better, would you?"
+
+"If they don't, who is going to make our shoes, dear Mrs. Lloyd?"
+asked Risley.
+
+Mrs. Lloyd and the school-master stared at him, and Lloyd laughed
+his low, almost mirthless laugh.
+
+"Don't you know, Edward," he said, "that Mr. Risley is not in
+earnest, and speaks with the deadly intent of an anarchist with a
+bomb in his bag? He is the most out-and-out radical in the country.
+If there were a strike, and I did not yield to the demands of the
+oppressed, and imported foreign labor, I don't know that my life
+would be safe from him."
+
+"Then you do approve of a higher education?" asked the
+school-master, while Mrs. Lloyd stared from one to the other in
+bewilderment.
+
+"Yes, if we and our posterity have to go barefoot," said Risley,
+laughing out with a sudden undertone of seriousness.
+
+"I suppose everybody could get accustomed to going barefoot after a
+while," said Mrs. Lloyd. "Do you suppose that dear little thing was
+barefooted when she ran away, Cynthia?"
+
+Risley answered as if he had been addressed. "I can vouch for the
+fact that she was not, Mrs. Lloyd," he said. "They would sooner have
+walked on red-hot ploughshares themselves than let her."
+
+"Her father is getting quite an old man," Norman Lloyd said, with no
+apparent relevancy, as if he were talking to himself.
+
+All the time Cynthia Lennox had been quietly sitting at the head of
+the table. When the rest of the company had gone, and she and Risley
+were alone, seated in the drawing-room before the parlor fire, for
+it was a chilly day, she turned her fair, worn face towards him on
+the crimson velvet of her chair. "Do you know why I did not speak
+and tell them where the child was that time?" she asked.
+
+"Because of your own good sense?"
+
+"No; because of you."
+
+He looked at her adoringly. She was older than he, her beauty rather
+recorded than still evident on her face; she had been to him from
+the first like a fair, forbidden flower behind a wall of
+prohibition, but nothing could alter his habit of loving her.
+
+"Yes," said she. "It was more on your account than on my own;
+confession would be good for the soul. The secret has always rankled
+in my pride. I would much rather defy opinion than fly before it.
+But I know that you would mind. However, there was another reason."
+
+"What?"
+
+She hesitated a little and colored, even laughed a little,
+embarrassed laugh which was foreign to her. "Well, Lyman," said she,
+finally, "one reason why I did not speak was that I see my way clear
+to making up to that child and her parents for any wrong which I may
+have done them by causing them a few hours' anxiety. When she has
+finished the high-school I mean to send her to college."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+
+When Ellen was about sixteen, in her second year at the high-school,
+her own family never looked at her without a slight shock of
+wonder, as before the unexpected. Her mates, being themselves
+in the transition state, received her unquestioningly as a
+fellow-traveller, and colored like themselves with the new lights of
+the journey. But Ellen's father and mother and grandmother never
+ceased regarding her with astonishment and admiration and something
+like alarm. While they regarded Ellen with the utmost pride, they
+still privately regretted this perfection of bloom which was the
+forerunner of independence of the parent stalk--at least, Andrew
+did. Andrew had grown older and more careworn; his mine had not yet
+paid any dividends, but he had scattering jobs of work, and with his
+wife's assistance had managed to rub along, and his secret was still
+safe.
+
+One day in February there was a half-holiday. Lloyd's was shut for
+the rest of the day, for his brother in St. Louis was dead, and had
+been brought to Rowe to be buried, and his funeral was at two
+o'clock.
+
+"Goin' to the funeral, old man?" one of Andrew's fellow-workmen had
+asked, jostling him as he went out of the shop at noon. Before
+Andrew could answer, another voice broke in fiercely. It belonged to
+Joseph Atkins, who was ghastly that day.
+
+"I ain't goin' to no funerals," he said; "guess they won't shut up
+shop for mine."  Then he coughed. His daughter Abby, who had been
+working in the factory for some time then, pressed close behind her
+father, and the expression in her face was an echo of his.
+
+"When I strike, that's what I'm going to strike for--to have the
+shop shut up the day of my funeral," said she; and the remark had a
+ghastly flippancy, contradicted by her intense manner. A laugh went
+around, and a young fellow with a handsome, unshaven face caught her
+by the arm.
+
+"You'd better strike to have the shop shut up the day you're
+married," said he; but Abby flung away from him.
+
+"I'll thank you to let me alone, Tom Hardy," she said, with a snap;
+and the men laughed harder.
+
+Abby was attractive to men in spite of her smallness and leanness
+and incisiveness of manner. She was called mighty smart and dry,
+which was the shop synonym for witty, and her favors, possibly
+because she never granted them, were accounted valuable. Abby Atkins
+had more admirers than many a girl who was prettier and presumably
+more winning in every way, and could have married twice to their
+once. But Abby had no wish for a lover. "I've got all I can do to
+earn my own living and the living of them that belong to me," said
+she.
+
+That afternoon Andrew Brewster stayed at home. After dinner Eva
+Tenny and her little girl came in, and Ellen went down street on an
+errand.
+
+Mrs. Zelotes Brewster was crossing her yard to her son's house when
+she saw Ellen passing, and paused to gaze at her with that superb
+pride which pertains to self and is yet superior to it. It was the
+idealized pride of her own youth. When she proceeded again against
+the February gusts, it was with an unconscious aping of her
+granddaughter's freedom of gait. Mrs. Zelotes wore an old red
+cashmere scarf crossed over her bosom; she held up her black skirts
+in front, and they trailed pointedly in the rear; she also stood
+well back on her heels, and when she paused in the wind-swept yard
+presented a curious likeness to an old robin pausing for
+reconnoitre. Fanny and Eva Tenny in the next house saw her coming.
+
+"Look at her holding up her dress in front and letting it drag in
+the back," said Eva. "It always seemed to me there was somethin'
+wrong about any woman that held up her dress in front and let it
+drag behind."
+
+Eva retained all the coarse beauty of her youth, but lines of
+unalterable hardness were fixed on her forehead and at her mouth
+corners, and the fierce flush in her cheeks was as set as paint. Her
+beauty had endured the siege; no guns of mishaps could affect it,
+but that charm of evanescence which awakens tenderness was gone. Jim
+Tenny's affection seemed to be waning, and Eva looked at herself in
+the glass even when bedecked with tawdry finery, and owned that she
+did not wonder. She strained up her hair into the latest perkiness
+of twist, and crimped it, and curled her feathers, and tied her
+ribbons not as much in hope as in a stern determination to do her
+part towards the furbishing of her faded star of attraction. "Jim
+don't act as if he thought so much of me, an' I dun'no' as I
+wonder," she told her sister.
+
+Fanny looked at her critically. "You mean you ain't so good-lookin'
+as you used to be?" said she.
+
+Eva nodded.
+
+"Well, if that is all men care for us," said Fanny.
+
+"It ain't," said Eva, "only it's the key to it. It's like losin' the
+key and not bein' able to get in the door in consequence."
+
+"It wa'n't my husband's key," said Fanny, with a glance at her own
+face, faded as to feature and bloom, but intensified as to love and
+daily duty, like that of a dog sharpened to one faithfulness of
+existence.
+
+"Andrew ain't Jim," said Eva, shortly.
+
+"I know he ain't," Fanny assented, with emphasis.
+
+"But I wouldn't swap off my husband for a dozen of yours," said Eva.
+
+"Well, I wouldn't swap off mine for a thousand of yours," returned
+Fanny, sharply; and there might have been one of the old-time
+tussles between the sisters had not Eva's violent, half-bitter sense
+of humor averted it. She broke into a hard laugh.
+
+"Good Lord," she said, "I dun'no' as I should want a thousand like
+Jim. Seems to me it would be considerable care."
+
+Fanny began to speak, but checked herself. She had heard rumors
+regarding Jim Tenny of late and had flown fiercely with denial at
+the woman who told her, and had not repeated them to her sister.
+
+She was thinking how she had heard that Jim had been seen driving in
+Wenham with Aggie Morse several times lately. Aggie Morse had been
+Aggie Bemis, Jim's old sweetheart. She had married a well-to-do
+merchant in Wenham, who died six months before and left her with
+considerable property. It was her own smart little turn-out in which
+she had been seen with Jim.
+
+Eva was working in the shop, and Jim had been out of employment for
+nearly a year, and living on his wife. There was a demand for girls
+and not for men just then, so Jim loafed. His old mother cared for
+the house as well as she was able, and Eva did the rest nights and
+mornings. At first Jim had tried to help about the house-work, but
+Eva had interfered.
+
+"It ain't a man's work," said she. "Your mother can leave the hard
+part of it till I get home."  Eva used to put the money she earned
+surreptitiously into her husband's pockets that he might not feel
+his manly pride injured, but she defeated her own ends by her very
+solicitude. Jim Tenny began to reason that his wife saw his shame
+and ignominious helplessness, else she would not have been so
+anxious to cover it. The stoop of discouragement which Eva used to
+fear for his shoulders did not come, but, instead, something
+worse--the defiant set-back of recklessness. He took his wife's
+earnings and despised himself. Whenever he paid a bill, he was sure
+the men in the store said, the minute his back was turned, "It's his
+wife's money that paid for that."  He took to loafing on sunny
+corners, and eying the passers-by with the blank impudence of regard
+of those outside the current of life. When his wife passed by on her
+way from the shop he nodded to her as if she were a stranger, and
+presently followed her home at a distance. He would not be seen on
+the street with her if he could avoid it. If by any chance when he
+was standing on his corner of idleness his little girl came past, he
+melted away imperceptibly. He could not bear it that the child
+should see him standing there in that company of futility and openly
+avowed inadequacy. The child was a keen-eyed, slender little girl,
+resembling neither father nor mother, but looking rather like her
+paternal grandmother, who was a fair, attenuated woman, with an
+intelligence which had sharpened on herself for want of anything
+more legitimate, and worn her out by the unnatural friction. The
+little Amabel, for Eva had been romantic in the naming of her child,
+was an old-fashioned-looking child in spite of Eva's careful
+decoration of the little figure in the best childish finery which
+she could muster.
+
+Little Amabel was reading a child's book at another window. When
+Mrs. Zelotes entered she eyed her with the sharpness and inscrutable
+conclusions therefrom of a kitten, then turned a leaf in her book.
+
+When Mrs. Zelotes had greeted her daughter-in-law and Eva, she
+looked with disapproval at Amabel.
+
+"When I was a little girl I should have been punished if I hadn't
+got up and curtsied and said good-afternoon when company came in,"
+she remarked, severely.
+
+Amabel was not a favorite outside of her own family. People used to
+stare aghast at her unexpected questions and demands delivered in a
+shrill clarion as from some summit of childish wisdom, and they said
+she was a queer child. She yielded always to command from utter
+helplessness, but the why of obedience was strongly alert within
+her. The child might have been in some subtle and uncanny fashion
+the offspring of her age and generation instead of her natural
+parents, she was so unlike either of them, and so much a product of
+the times, with her meekness and slavishness of weakness and
+futility, and her unquenchable and unconquerable vitality of
+dissent.
+
+Ellen adored the little Amabel. Presently, when she returned from
+her errand down-town, she cried out with delight when she saw her;
+and the child ran to meet her, and clung to her, with her flaxen
+head snuggled close to her cheek. Ellen caught the child up, seated
+herself, and sat cuddling her as she used to cuddle her doll.
+
+"You dear little thing!" she murmured, "you dear little thing! You
+did come to see Ellen, didn't you?"  And the child gazed up in the
+young girl's face with a rapt expression. Nothing can express the
+admiration, which is almost as unquestionable as worship, of a very
+little girl for a big one. Amabel loved her mother with a rather
+unusual intensity for a child, but Ellen was what she herself would
+be when she was grown up. Through Ellen her love of self and her
+ambition budded into blossom. Ellen could do nothing wrong because
+she did what she herself would do when she was grown. She never
+questioned Ellen for her reasons.
+
+Mrs. Zelotes kept looking at the two, with pride in Ellen and
+disapproval of her caresses of the child. "Seems to me you might
+speak to your own folks as well as to have no eyes for anybody but
+that child," she said, finally.
+
+"Why, grandma, I spoke to you just a little while ago," returned
+Ellen. "You know I saw you just a few minutes before I went
+down-town."  Ellen straightened the child on her knees, and began to
+try to twist her soft, straight flaxen locks into curls. Andrew
+lounged in from the kitchen and sat down and regarded Ellen fondly.
+The girl's cheeks were a splendid color from her walk in the cold
+wind, her hair around her temples caught the light from the window,
+and seemed to wreathe her head with a yellow flame. She tossed the
+child about with lithe young arms, whose every motion suggested
+reserves of tender strength. Ellen was more beautiful than she had
+ever been before, and yet something was gone from her face, though
+only temporarily, since the lines for the vanished meaning was still
+there. All the introspection and dreaminess and poetry of her face
+were gone, for the girl was, for the time, overbalanced on the
+physical side of her life. The joy of existence for itself alone was
+intoxicating her. The innocent frivolities of her sex had seized her
+too, and the instincts which had not yet reached her brain nor gone
+farther than her bounding pulses of youth. "Ellen is getting real
+fond of dress," Fanny often said to Andrew. He only laughed at that.
+"Well, pretty birds like pretty feathers, and no wonder," said he.
+But he did not laugh when Fanny added that Ellen seemed to think
+more about the boys than she used to. There was scarcely a boy in
+the high-school who was not Ellen's admirer. It was a curious
+happening in those days when Ellen was herself in much less degree
+the stuff of which dreams are made than she had been and would be
+thereafter, that she was the object of so many. Every morning when
+she entered the school-room she was reflected in a glorious multiple
+of ideals in no one could tell how many boyish hearts. Floretta
+Vining began to imitate her, and kept close to Ellen with supremest
+diplomacy, that she might thereby catch some of the crumbs of
+attention which fell from Ellen's full table. Often when some happy
+boy had secured a short monopoly of Ellen, his rival took up with
+Floretta, and she was content, being one of those purely feminine
+things who have no pride when the sweets of life are concerned.
+Floretta dressed her hair like Ellen's, and tied her neck-ribbons
+the same way; she held her head like her, she talked like her,
+except when the two girls were absolutely alone; then she sometimes
+relapsed suddenly, to Ellen's bewilderment, into her own ways, and
+her blue eyes took on an expression as near animosity as her
+ingratiating politic nature could admit.
+
+Ellen did not affiliate as much with Floretta as with Maria Atkins.
+Abby had gone to work in the shop, and so Ellen did not see so much
+of her. Maria was not as much a favorite with the boys as she had
+been since they had passed and not yet returned to that stage when
+feminine comradeship satisfies; so Ellen used to confide in her with
+a surety of sympathy and no contention. Once, when the girls were
+sleeping together, Ellen made a stupendous revelation to Maria,
+having first bound her to inviolable secrecy. "I love a boy," said
+she, holding Maria's little arm tightly.
+
+"I know who," said Maria, with a hushed voice.
+
+"He kissed me once, and then I knew it," said Ellen.
+
+"Well, I guess he loves you," said Maria. Ellen shivered and drew a
+fluttering sigh of assent. Then the two girls lay in each other's
+arms, looking at the moonlight which streamed in through the window.
+God knew in what realms of pure romance, and of passion so
+sublimated by innocence that no tinge of earthliness remained, the
+two wandered in their dreams.
+
+At last, that afternoon in February, Ellen put down little Amabel
+and got out her needle-work. She was making a lace neck-tie for her
+own adornment. She showed it to her grandmother at her mother's
+command. "It's real pretty," said Mrs. Zelotes. "Ellen takes after
+the Brewsters; they were always handy with their needles."
+
+"Can uncle sew?" asked little Amabel, suddenly, from her corner, in
+a tone big with wonder.
+
+Eva and the others chuckled, but Mrs. Zelotes eyed the child
+severely. "Little girls shouldn't ask silly questions," said she.
+
+Andrew passed his hand with a rough caress over the small flaxen
+head. "Uncle Andrew can't sew anything but shoes," said he.
+
+Little Amabel's question had aroused in Mrs. Zelotes a carping
+spirit even against Ellen. Presently she turned to her. "I heard
+something about you," said she. "I want to know if it is true. I
+heard that you were walking home from school with that Joy boy one
+day last week."  Ellen looked at her grandmother without flinching,
+though the pink was over her face and neck.
+
+"Yes'm, I did," said she.
+
+"Well, I think it's about time it was put a stop to," said Mrs.
+Zelotes. "That Joy boy!"
+
+Then Fanny lost her temper. "I can manage my own daughter, Grandma
+Brewster," said she, "and I'll thank you to attend to your own
+affairs."
+
+"You don't seem to know enough to manage her," retorted Mrs.
+Zelotes, "if you let her go traipsin' round with that Joy boy."
+
+The warfare waged high for a time. Andrew withdrew to the kitchen.
+Ellen took little Amabel up in her own chamber and showed her her
+beautiful doll, which looked not a day older, so carefully had she
+been cherished, than when she first had her. Ellen felt both
+resentment and shame, and also a fierce dawning of partisanship
+towards Granville Joy. "Why should my grandmother speak of him so
+scornfully?" she asked herself. "He is a real good boy."
+
+That night was very cold, a night full of fierce white glitter of
+frost and moonlight, and raging with a turbulence of winds. Ellen
+lay awake listening to them. Presently between the whistle of the
+wind she heard another, a familiar pipe from a boyish throat. She
+sprang out of bed and peeped from her window, and there was a dark,
+slight figure out in the yard, and he was looking up at her window,
+whistling. Shame, and mirth, and also exultation, which overpowered
+them both, stirred within the child's breast. She had read of things
+like this. Here was her boy lover coming out this bitter night just
+for the sake of looking up at her window. She adored him for it.
+Then she heard a window raised with a violent rasp across the yard,
+and saw her grandmother's night-capped head thrust forth. She heard
+her shrill, imperious voice call out quite distinctly, "Boy, who be
+you?"
+
+The lovelorn whistler ceased his pipe, and evidently, had he
+consulted his own discretion, would have shown a pair of flying
+heels, but he walked bravely up to the window and the night-capped
+head and replied. Ellen could not hear what he said, but she
+distinguished plainly enough her grandmother's concluding remarks.
+
+"Go home," cried Mrs. Zelotes; "go home just as fast as you can and
+go to bed. Go home!"  Mrs. Zelotes made a violent shooting motion
+with her hands and her white head as if he were a cat, and Granville
+Joy obeyed. However, Ellen heard his brave, retreating whistle far
+down the road. She went back to bed, and lay awake with a fervor of
+young love roused into a flame by opposition swelling high in her
+heart. But the next afternoon, after school, Ellen, to Granville
+Joy's great bliss and astonishment, insinuated herself, through the
+crowd of out-going scholars, close to him, and presently, had he not
+been so incredulous, for he was a modest boy, he would have said it
+was by no volition of his own that he found himself walking down the
+street with her. And when they reached his house, which was only
+half-way to her own, she looked at him with such a wistful surprise
+as he motioned to leave her that he could not mistake it, and he
+walked on at her side quite to her own house. Granville Joy was a
+gentle boy, young for his age, which was a year more than Ellen's.
+He had a face as gentle as a girl's, and really beautiful. Women all
+loved him, and the school-girls raised an admiring treble chorus in
+his praise whenever his name was spoken. He was saved from
+effeminacy by nervous impulses which passed for sustained manly
+daring. "He once licked a boy a third bigger than he was, and you
+needn't call him sissy," one girl said once to a decrying friend.
+To-day, as the boy and girl neared Mrs. Zelotes's house, Granville
+was conscious of an inward shrinking before the remembrance of the
+terrible old lady. He expected every minute to hear the grating
+upward slide of the window and that old voice, which had in it a
+terrible intimidation of feminine will. Granville had a mother as
+gentle as himself, and a woman with the strength of her own
+conviction upon her filled him with awe as of something anomalous.
+He wondered uneasily what he should do if the old lady were to hail
+him and call him to an account again, whether it would be a more
+manly course to face her, or obey, since she was Ellen's
+grandmother. He kept an uneasy eye upon the house, and presently,
+when he saw the stern old face at the window, he quailed a little.
+But Ellen for the first time in her life took his arm, and the two
+marched past under the fire of Mrs. Zelotes's gaze. Ellen had
+retaliated, not nobly, but as naturally under the conditions of her
+life at that time as the branch of a tree blows east before the west
+wind.
+
+[Illustration: He found himself walking home from school with her]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+
+Ellen, when she graduated, was openly pronounced the flower of her
+class. Not a girl equalled her, not a boy surpassed her. When Ellen
+came home one night about two months before her graduation, and
+announced that she was to have the valedictory, such a light of pure
+joy flashed over her mother's face that she looked ten years
+younger.
+
+"Well, I guess your father will be pleased enough," she said. She
+was hard at work, finishing women's wrappers of cheap cotton. The
+hood industry had failed some time before, since the hoods had gone
+out of fashion. The same woman had taken a contract to supply a
+large firm with wrappers, and employed many in the neighborhood,
+paying them the smallest possible prices. This woman was a usurer on
+a scale so pitiful and petty that it almost condoned usury.
+Sometimes a man on discovering the miserable pittance for which his
+wife toiled during every minute which she could snatch from her
+household duties and the care of her children, would inveigh against
+it. "That woman is cheating you," he would say, to be met with the
+argument that she herself was only making ten cents on a wrapper.
+Looked at in that light, the wretched profit of the workers did not
+seem so out of proportion. It was usury in a nutshell, so
+infinitesimal as almost to escape detection. Fanny worked every
+minute which she could secure on these wrappers--the ungainly,
+slatternly home-gear of other poor women. There was an air of
+dejected femininity and slipshod drudgery about every fold of one of
+them when it was hung up finished. Fanny used to keep them on a row
+of hooks in her bedroom until a dozen were completed, when she
+carried them to her employer, and Ellen used to look at them with a
+sense of depression. She imagined worn, patient faces of the sisters
+of poverty above the limp collars, and poor, veinous hands dangling
+from the clumsy sleeves.
+
+Fanny would never allow Ellen to assist her in this work, though she
+begged hard to do so. "Wait till you get out of school," said she.
+"You've got enough to do while you are in school."
+
+When Ellen told her about the valedictory, Fanny was so overjoyed
+that she lost sight of her work, and sewed in the sleeves wrong.
+"There, only see what you have made me do!" she cried, laughing with
+delight at her own folly. "Only see, you have made me sew in both
+these sleeves wrong. You are a great child. Another time you had
+better keep away with your valedictories till I get my wrapper
+finished."  Ellen looked up from the book which she had taken.
+
+"Let me rip them out for you, mother," she said.
+
+"No, you keep on with your study--it won't take me but a minute. I
+don't know what your father will say. It is a great honor to be
+chosen to write the valedictory out of that big class. I guess your
+father will be pleased."
+
+"I hope I can write a good one," said Ellen.
+
+"Well, if you can't, I'd give up my beat," said the mother, looking
+at her with enthusiasm, and speaking with scornful chiding. "Why
+don't you go over and tell your grandmother Brewster? She'll be
+tickled 'most to death."
+
+Ellen had not been gone long when Andrew came home, coming into the
+yard, bent as if beneath some invisible burden of toil. Just then he
+had work, but not in Lloyd's. He had grown too old for Lloyd's, and
+had been discharged long ago.
+
+He had so far been able to conceal from Fanny the fact that he had
+withdrawn all his little savings to invest in that mining stock. The
+stock had not yet come up, as he had expected. He very seldom had a
+circular reporting progress nowadays. When he did have one in the
+post-office his heart used to stand still until he had torn open the
+envelope and read it. It was uniformly not so hopeful as formerly,
+while speciously apologetic. Andrew still had faith, although his
+heart was sick with its long deferring. He could not actually
+believe that all his savings were gone, sunken out of sight forever
+in this awful shaft of miscalculation and misfortune. What he
+dreaded most was that Fanny should find out, as she would have to
+were he long out of employment.
+
+Andrew, when he entered the house on his return from work, had come
+to open a door into the room where his wife was, with a deprecating
+and apologetic air. He gained confidence when, after a few minutes,
+the sore subject had not been broached.
+
+To-night, as usual, when he came into the sitting-room where Fanny
+was sewing it was with a sidelong glance of uneasy deprecation
+towards her, and an attempt to speak easily, as if he had nothing on
+his mind.
+
+"Pretty warm day," he began, but his wife cut him short. She faced
+around towards him beaming, her work--a pink wrapper--slid from her
+lap to the floor.
+
+"What do you think, Andrew?" she said. "What do you s'pose has
+happened? Guess."  Andrew laughed gratefully, and with the greatest
+alacrity. Surely this was nothing about mining-stocks, unless,
+indeed, she had heard, and the stocks had gone up, but that seemed
+to much like the millennium. He dismissed that from his mind before
+it entered. He stood before her in his worn clothes. He always wore
+a collar and a black tie, and his haggard face was carefully shaven.
+Andrew was punctiliously neat, on Ellen's account. He was always
+thinking, suppose he should meet Ellen coming home from school, with
+some young ladies whose fathers were rich and did not have to work
+in the shop, how mortified she might feel if he looked shabby and
+unkempt.
+
+"Guess, Andrew," she said.
+
+"What is it?" said Andrew.
+
+"Oh, you guess."
+
+"I don't see what it can be, Fanny."
+
+"Well, Ellen has got the valedictory. What's the matter with you? Be
+you deaf? Ellen has got the valedictory out of all them girls and
+boys."
+
+"She has, has she?" said Andrew. He dropped into a chair and looked
+at his wife. There was something about the intense interchange of
+confidence of delight between these two faces of father and mother
+which had almost the unrestraint of lunacy. Andrew's jaw fairly
+dropped with his smile, which was a silent laugh rather than a
+smile; his eyes were wild with delight. "She has, has she?" he kept
+repeating.
+
+"Yes, she has," said Fanny. She tossed her head with an incomparable
+pride; she coughed a little, affected cough. "I s'pose you know what
+a compliment it is?" said she. "It means that she's smarter than all
+them boys and girls--the smartest one in her whole class."
+
+"Yes, I s'pose it does," said Andrew. "So she has got it! Well!"
+
+"There she comes now," said Fanny, "and Grandma Brewster."
+
+Andrew borrowed money to buy a gold watch and chain for a graduating
+gift for his daughter. He would scarcely have essayed anything quite
+so magnificent, but Fanny innocently tempted him. The two had been
+sitting in the door in the cool of the evening, one day in June,
+about two weeks before the graduation, and had just watched Ellen's
+light muslin skirts flutter out of sight. She had gone down-town to
+purchase some ribbon for her graduating dress--she and Floretta
+Vining, who had come over to accompany her. "I feel kind of anxious
+to have her have something pretty when she graduates," Fanny said,
+speaking as if she were feeling her way into a mind of opposition.
+Neither she nor Andrew had ever owned a watch, and the scheme seemed
+to her breathless with magnificence.
+
+"Yes, she ought to have something pretty," agreed Andrew.
+
+"I don't want her to feel ashamed when she sees the other girls'
+presents," said Fanny.
+
+"That's so," assented Andrew.
+
+"Well," said Fanny, "I've been thinkin'--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Well, I've been thinkin' that--of course your mother is goin' to
+give her the dress, and that's all, of course, and it's a real
+handsome present. I ain't sayin' a word against that; but there
+ain't anybody else to give her much except us. Poor Eva 'd like to,
+but she can't; it takes all she earns, since Jim's out of work, and
+I don't know what she's goin' to do. So that leaves nobody but us,
+and I've been thinkin'--I dun'no' what you'll say, Andrew, but I've
+been thinkin'--s'pose you took a little money out of the bank,
+and--got Ellen--a watch."  Fanny spoke the last word in a faint
+whisper. She actually turned pale in the darkness.
+
+"A watch?" repeated Andrew.
+
+"Yes, a watch. I've always wanted Ellen to have a gold watch and
+chain. I've always thought she could, and so she could if you hadn't
+been out of work so much."
+
+"Yes, she could," said Andrew--"a watch and mebbe a piano. I thought
+I'd be back in Lloyd's before now. Well, mebbe I shall before long.
+They say there's better times comin' by fall."
+
+"Well, Ellen will be graduated by that time," said Fanny, "and she
+ought to have the watch now if she's ever goin' to. She'll never
+think so much of it. Floretta Vining is goin' to have a watch, too.
+Mrs. Cross says her mother told her so; said Mr. Vining had it all
+bought--a real handsome one. I don't believe Sam Vining can afford
+to buy a gold watch. I don't believe it is all gold, for my part.
+They 'ain't got as much as we have, if Sam has had work steadier. I
+don't believe it's gold. I don't want Ellen to have a watch at all
+unless it's a real good one. It seems to me you'd better take a
+little money out and buy her one, Andrew."
+
+"Well, I'll see," said Andrew. He had a terrible sense of guilt
+before Fanny. Suppose she knew that there was no money at all in the
+bank to take out?
+
+"Well, I'll buy her one if you say so," said he, in a curious, slow,
+stern voice. In his heart was a fierce rising of rebellion, that he,
+hard-working and frugal and self-denying all his life, should be
+denied the privilege of buying a present for his darling without
+resorting to deception, and even almost robbery. He did not at that
+minute blame himself in the least for his misadventure with his
+mining stock. Had not the same relentless Providence driven him to
+that also? His weary spirit took for the first time a poise of utter
+self-righteousness in opposition to this Providence, and he
+blasphemed in his inner closet of self, before the face of the Lord,
+as he comprehended it.
+
+"Well, I have a sort of set my heart on it," said Fanny.
+
+"She shall have the watch," repeated Andrew, and his voice was
+fairly defiant.
+
+After Fanny had gone into the house and lighted her lamp, and
+resumed work on her wrapper, Andrew still sat on the step in the
+cool evening. There was a full moon, and great masses of shadows
+seemed to float and hover and alight on the earth with a gigantic
+brooding as of birds. The trees seemed redoubled in size from the
+soft indetermination of the moonlight which confused shadow and
+light, and deceived the eye as with soft loomings out of false
+distances. There was a tall pine, grown from a sapling since Ellen's
+childhood, and that looked more like a column of mist than a tree,
+but the Norway spruces clove the air sharply like silhouettes in
+ink, and outlined their dark profiles clearly against the silver
+radiance.
+
+To Andrew, looking at it all, came the feeling of a traveller who
+passes all scenes whether of joy or woe, being himself in his
+passing the one thing which remains, and somehow he got from it an
+enormous comfort.
+
+"We're all travellin' along," he said aloud, in a strained, solemn
+voice.
+
+"What did you say, Andrew?" Fanny called from the open window.
+
+"Nothin'," replied Andrew.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+
+Ellen had always had objective points, as it were, in her life, and
+she always would have, no matter how long she lived. She came to
+places where she stopped mentally, for retrospection and
+forethought, wherefrom she could seem to obtain a view of that which
+lay behind, and of the path which was set for her feet in advance.
+She saw the tracked and the trackless. Once, going with Abby Atkins
+and Floretta in search of early spring flowers, Ellen had lingered
+and let them go out of sight, and had sat down on a springing mat of
+wintergreen leaves under the windy outstretch of a great pine, and
+had remained there quite deaf to shrill halloos. She had sat there
+with eyes of inward scrutiny like an Eastern sage's, motionless as
+on a rock of thought, while her daily life eddied around her. Ellen,
+sitting there, had said to herself: "This I will always remember. No
+matter how long I live, where I am, and what happens to me, I will
+always remember how I was a child, and sat here this morning in
+spring under the pine-tree, looking backward and forward. I will
+never forget."
+
+When, finally, Abby and Floretta had run back, and spied her there,
+they had stared half frightened. "You ain't sick, are you, Ellen?"
+asked Abby, anxiously.
+
+"What are you sitting there for?" asked Floretta.
+
+Ellen had replied that she was not sick, and had risen and run on,
+looking for flowers, but the flowers for her bloomed always against
+a background of the past, and nodded with forward flings of
+fragrance into the future; for the other children, who were wholly
+of their own day and generation, they bloomed in the simple light of
+their own desire of possession. They picked only flowers, but Ellen
+picked thoughts, and they kept casting bewildered side-glances at
+her, for the look which had come into her eyes as she sat beneath
+the pine-tree lingered.
+
+It was as if a rose had a second of self-consciousness between the
+bud and the blossom; a bird between its mother's brooding and the
+song. She had caught sight of the innermost processes of things, of
+her wheels of life.
+
+Ellen waked up on that June morning, and the old sensation of a
+pause before advance was upon her, and the strange solemnity which
+was almost a terror, from the feeble clutching of her mind at the
+comprehension of infinity. She looked at the morning sunlight coming
+between the white slants of her curtains, an airy flutter of her new
+dress from the closet, her valedictory, tied with a white satin
+ribbon, on the stand, and she saw quite plainly all which had led up
+to this, and to her, Ellen Brewster; and she saw also the
+inevitableness of its passing, the precious valedictory being laid
+away and buried beneath a pile of future ones; she saw the crowd of
+future valedictorians advancing like a flock of white doves in their
+white gowns, when hers was worn out, and its beauty gone, pressing
+forward, dimming her to her own vision. She saw how she would come
+to look calmly and coldly upon all that filled her with such joy and
+excitement to-day; how the savor of the moment would pass from her
+tongue, and she said to herself that she would always remember this
+moment.
+
+Then suddenly--since she had in herself an impetus of motion which
+nothing, not even reflection, could long check--she saw quite
+plainly a light beyond, after all this should have passed, and the
+leaping power of her spirit to gain it. And then, since she was
+healthy, and given only at wide intervals to these Eastern lapses of
+consciousness from the present, she was back in her day, and alive
+to all its importance as a part of time.
+
+She felt the bounding elation of tossing on the crest of her wave of
+success, and the full rainbow glory of it dazzled her eyes. She was
+first in her class, she was valedictorian, she had a beautiful
+dress, she was young, she was first. It is a poor spirit, and one
+incapable of courage in defeat, who feels not triumph in victory.
+Ellen was triumphant and confident. She had faith in herself and the
+love and approbation of everybody.
+
+When she was seated with her class on the stage in the city hall,
+where the graduating exercises were held, she saw herself just as
+she looked, and it was with a satisfaction which had nothing weakly
+in its vein, and smiled radiantly and innocently at herself as seen
+in this mirror of love and appreciation of all who knew her.
+
+[Illustration: The valedictory]
+
+When the band stopped playing, and Ellen, who as valedictorian came
+last as the crown and capsheaf of it all, stepped forward from the
+semicircle of white-clad girls and seriously abashed boys, there was
+a subdued murmur and then a hush all over the hall. Andrew and Fanny
+and the grandmother, seated directly in front of the stage--for they
+had come early to secure good seats--heard whispers of admiration on
+every side. It was admiration with no dissent--such jealous ears as
+theirs could not be deceived. Fanny's face was blazing with the
+sweet shame of pride in her child; Andrew was pale; the grandmother
+sat as if petrified, with a proud toss of her head. They looked
+straight ahead; they dared not encounter each other's eyes, for they
+were more self-conscious than Ellen. They felt the attention of the
+whole assembly upon them. Andrew was conscious of feeling ill and
+faint. His own joy seemed to overwhelm him. He forgot his stocks, he
+forgot his borrowed money, he forgot Lloyd's; he was perfectly happy
+at the sight of that beautiful young creature of his own heart, who
+was preferred before all others in the sight of the whole city. In
+truth, there was about Ellen a majesty and nobility of youth and
+innocence and beauty which overawed. The other girls of the class
+were as young and as pretty, but none of them had that indescribable
+quality which seemed to raise her above them all. Ellen still kept
+her blond fairness, but there was nothing of the doll-like which
+often characterizes the blond type. Although she was small, Ellen's
+color had the firmness and unwavering of tinted marble; she carried
+her crown of yellow braids as if it had been gold; she moved and
+looked and spoke with decision. The violent and intense temperament
+which she had inherited from two sides of her family had
+crystallized in her to something more forcible, but also more
+impressive. However, she was, after all, only a young girl, scarcely
+more than a child, whatever her principle of underlying character
+might be, and when she stood there before them all--all her
+townspeople who represented her world, the human shore upon which
+her own little individuality beat--when she saw those attentive
+faces, row upon row, all fixed upon her, she felt her heart pound
+against her side; she had no sensation of the roll of paper in her
+hand; an awful terror as of suddenly discovered depths came over
+her, as the wild clapping of hands to which her appearance had given
+rise died away. Ellen stood still, holding the valedictory as if it
+had been a stick. A little wondering murmur began to be heard.
+Andrew felt as if he were dying. Fanny gripped his arm hard. Mrs.
+Zelotes had the look of one about to spring. Ellen had the terrible
+sensation which has in it a nightmare of inability to move, allied
+with the intensest consciousness. She knew that she was to read her
+valedictory, she knew that she must raise that white-ribboned roll
+and read, or else be disgraced forever, and yet she was powerless.
+But suddenly some compelling glance seemed to arouse her from this
+lock of nerve and muscle; she raised her eyes, and Cynthia Lennox,
+on the farther side of the hall, was gazing full at her with an
+indescribable gaze of passion and help and command. Her own mother's
+look could not have influenced her. Ellen raised her valedictory,
+bowed, and began to read. Andrew looked so pale that people nudged
+one another to look at him. Mrs. Zelotes settled back, relaxing
+stiffly from her fierce attitude. Fanny wiped her forehead with a
+cheap lace-bordered handkerchief. There was a stifled sob farther
+back, that came from Eva Tenny, who sat back on account of a break
+across the shoulders in the back of her silk dress. Amabel, anaemic
+and eager in a little, tawdry, cheap muslin frock, sat beside her,
+with worshipful eyes on Ellen. "What ailed her?" she whispered,
+hitting her mother with a sharp little elbow. "Hush up!" whispered
+Eva, angrily, surreptitiously wiping her eyes. In front, directly in
+her line of vision, sat the woman of whom she was jealous--the young
+widow, who had been Aggie Bemis, arrayed in a handsome India silk
+and a flower-laden hat. Eva's hat was trimmed with a draggled
+feather and a bunch of roses which she had tried to color with
+aniline dye. When she got home that night she tore the feather out
+of the hat and flung it across the room. She wished to do it that
+afternoon every time she looked at the other woman's roses against
+the smooth knot of her brown hair, and that repressed impulse, with
+her alarm at Ellen's silence, had made her almost hysterical. When
+Ellen's clear young voice rose and filled the hall she calmed
+herself. Ellen had not folded back her first page with a flutter of
+the white satin ribbons before people began to sit straight and
+stare at each other incredulously. The subject of the valedictory,
+as well as those of the other essays, had been allotted, and Ellen's
+had been "Equality," and she had written a most revolutionary
+valedictory. Ellen had written with a sort of poetic fire, and,
+crude as it all was, she might have had the inspiration of a Shelley
+or a Chatterton as she stood there, raising her fearless young front
+over the marshalling of her sentiments on the smooth sheets of
+foolscap. Her voice, once started, rang out clear and full. She had
+hesitated at nothing, she flung all castes into a common heap of
+equality with her strong young arms, and she set them all on one
+level of the synagogue. She forced the employer and his employe to
+one bench of service in the grand system of things; she gave the
+laborer, and the laborer only, the reward of labor. As Ellen went on
+reading calmly, with the steadfastness of one promulgating
+principles, not the excitement of one carried away by enthusiasm,
+she began to be interrupted by applause, but she read on, never
+wavering, her clear voice overcoming everything. She was quite
+innocently throwing her wordy bomb to the agitation of public
+sentiment. She had no thought of such an effect. She was stating
+what she believed to be facts with her youthful dogmatism. She had
+no fear lest the facts strike too hard. The school-master's face
+grew long with dismay; he sat pulling his mustache in a fashion he
+had when disturbed. He glanced uneasily now and then at Mr. Lloyd,
+and at another leading manufacturer who was present. The other
+manufacturer sat quite stolid and unsmiling beside a fidgeting wife,
+who presently arose and swept out with a loud rustle of silks. She
+looked back once and beckoned angrily to her husband, but he did not
+stir. He was on the school-board. The school-master trembled when he
+saw that imperturbable face of storing recollection before him. Mr.
+Lloyd leaned towards Lyman Risley, who sat beside him and whispered
+and laughed. It was quite evident that he did not consider the
+flight of this little fledgling in the face of things seriously. But
+even he, as Ellen's clearly delivered sentiments grew more and more
+defined--almost anarchistic--became a little grave in spite of the
+absurd incongruity between them and the girlish lips. Once he looked
+in some wonder at the school-teacher as much as to say, "Why did you
+permit this?" and the young man pulled his mustache harder.
+
+When Ellen finished and made her bow, such a storm of applause arose
+as had never before been heard at a high-school exhibition. The
+audience was for the most part composed of factory employes and
+their families, as most of the graduates were of that class of the
+community. Many of them were of foreign blood, people who had come
+to the country expecting the state of things advocated in Ellen's
+valedictory, and had remained more or less sullen and dissenting at
+the non-fulfilment of their expectation. One tall Swede, with a
+lurid flashing of blue eyes under a thick, blond thatch, led the
+renewed charges of applause. Red spots came on his cheeks, gaunt
+with high cheekbones; his cold Northern blood was up. He stood
+upreared against a background of the crowd under the balcony; he
+stamped when the applause died low; then it swelled again and again
+like great waves. The Swede brandished his long arms, he shouted,
+others echoed him. Even the women hallooed in a frenzy of applause,
+they clapped their hands, they stood up in their seats. Only a few
+sat silent and contemptuous through all the enthusiasm. Thomas
+Briggs, the manufacturer, was one of them. He sat like a rock, his
+great, red, imperturbable face of dissent fixed straight ahead. Mrs.
+Lloyd clapped wildly, on account of the girl who had read the
+valedictory. She had slept through the greater part of it, for it
+was very warm, and the heat always made her drowsy. She kept leaning
+towards Cynthia as she clapped, and asking in a loud whisper if she
+wasn't sweet. Cynthia did not applaud, but her delicate face was
+pale with emotion. Lyman Risley, beside her, was clapping
+energetically. "She may have a bomb somewhere concealed among those
+ribbons and frills," he said to Lloyd when the applause was waxing
+loudest, and Lloyd laughed.
+
+As for Ellen, when the storm of applause burst at her feet, she
+stood still for a moment bewildered. Then she bowed again and turned
+to go, then the compelling uproar brought her back. She stood there
+quite piteous in her confusion. This was too much triumph, and,
+moreover, she had not the least idea of the true significance of it
+all. She was like a chemist who had brought together, quite
+ignorantly and unwittingly, the two elements of an explosive. She
+thought that her valedictory must have been well done, that they
+liked it, and that was all. She had no sooner finished reading than
+the ushers began in the midst of the storm of applause to approach
+the stage with her graduating presents. They were laden with great
+bouquets and baskets of flowers, with cards conspicuously attached
+to most of them. Cynthia Lennox had sent a basket of roses. Ellen
+took it on her arm, and wondered when she saw the name attached to
+the pink satin bow on the handle. She did not look again towards
+Cynthia since the old impulse of concealment on her account came
+over her. Ellen had great boxes of candy from her boy admirers,
+that being a favorite token of young affection upon such occasions.
+She had a gift-book from her former school-teacher, and a
+ninety-eight-cent gilded vase from Eva and Amabel, who had been
+saving money to buy it. She heard a murmur of admiration when she
+had finally reached her seat, after the storm of applause had at
+last subsided, and she unrolled the packages with trembling fingers.
+
+"My, ain't that handsome!" said Floretta, pressing her muslin-clad
+shoulder against Ellen's. "My, didn't they clap you, Ellen! What's
+that in that package?"
+
+The package contained Ellen's new watch and chain. Floretta had
+already received hers, and it lay in its case on her lap. Ellen
+looked at the package, not hearing in the least the Baptist minister
+who had taken his place on the stage, and was delivering an address.
+She had felt her aunt Eva's and Amabel's eager eyes on her when she
+unrolled the gaudy vase; now she felt her father's and mother's. The
+small, daintily tied package was inscribed "Ellen Brewster, from
+Father and Mother."
+
+"Why don't you open it?" came in her ear from Floretta. Maria was
+leaning forward also, over her lapful of carnations which John
+Sargent had presented to her.
+
+"Why don't she open it?" she whispered to Floretta. They were all
+quite oblivious of the speaker, who moved nervously back and forth
+in front of them, so screening them somewhat from the observation of
+the audience. Still Ellen hesitated, looking at the little package
+and feeling her father's and mother's eyes on her face.
+
+Finally she untied the cord and took out the jeweller's case from
+the wrapping-paper. "My, you've got one too, I bet!" whispered
+Floretta. Ellen opened the box, and gazed at her watch and chain;
+then she glanced at her father and mother down in the audience, and
+the three loving souls seemed to meet in an ineffable solitude in
+the midst of the crowd. All three faces were pale--Ellen's began to
+quiver. She felt Floretta's shoulder warm through her thin sleeve
+against hers.
+
+"My! you've got one--I said so," she whispered. "It isn't chased as
+much as mine, but it's real handsome. My, Ellen Brewster, you ain't
+going to cry before all these people!"
+
+Ellen smiled against a sob, and she gave her head a defiant toss.
+Down in the audience Fanny had her handkerchief to her eyes, and
+Andrew sat looking sternly at the speaker. Ellen said to herself
+that she would not cry--she would not, but she sat gazing down at
+her flower-laden lap and the presents. The golden disk under her
+fixed eyes waxed larger and larger, until it seemed to fill her
+whole comprehension as with a golden light of a suffering,
+self-denying love which was her best reward of life and labor on the
+earth.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII
+
+
+After the exhibition there was a dance. The Brewsters, even Mrs.
+Zelotes, remained to see the last of Ellen's triumph. Mrs. Zelotes
+was firmly convinced that Ellen's appearance excelled any one's in
+the hall. Not a girl swung past them in the dance but she eyed her
+white dress scornfully, then her rosy face, and sniffed with high
+nostrils like an old war-horse. "Jest look at that Vining girl's
+dress, coarse enough to strain through," she said to Fanny, leaning
+across Andrew, who was sitting rapt, his very soul dancing with his
+daughter, his eyes never leaving her one second, following her fair
+head and white flutter of muslin ruffles and ribbons around the
+hall.
+
+"Yes, that's so," assented Fanny, but not with her usual sharpness.
+A wistful softness and sweetness was on her coarsely handsome face.
+Once she reached her hand over Andrew's and pressed it, and blushed
+crimson as she did so. Andrew turned and smiled at her. All that
+annoyed Andrew was that Ellen danced with Granville Joy often, and
+also with other boys. It disturbed him a little, even while it
+delighted him, that she should dance at all, that she should have
+learned to dance. Andrew had been brought up to look upon dancing as
+an amusement for Louds rather than for Brewsters. It had not been in
+vogue among the aristocracy of this little New England city when he
+was young.
+
+Mrs. Zelotes watched Ellen dance with inward delight and outward
+disapproval. "I don't approve of dancing, never did," she said to
+Andrew, but she was furious once when Ellen sat through a dance.
+Towards the end of the evening she saw with sudden alertness Ellen
+dancing with a new partner, a handsome young man, who carried
+himself with more assurance than the school-boys. Mrs. Zelotes hit
+Andrew with her sharp elbow.
+
+"Who's that dancing with her now?" she said.
+
+"That's young Lloyd," answered Andrew. He flushed a little, and
+looked pleased.
+
+"Norman Lloyd's nephew?" asked his mother, sharply.
+
+"Yes, he's on here from St. Louis. He's goin' into business with his
+uncle," replied Andrew. "Sargent was telling me about it yesterday.
+Young Lloyd came into the post-office while we were there."  Fanny
+had been listening. Immediately she married Ellen to young Lloyd,
+and the next moment she went to live in a grand new house built in a
+twinkling in a vacant lot next to Norman Lloyd's residence, which
+was the wonder of the city. She reared this castle in Spain with
+inconceivable swiftness, even while she was turning her head towards
+Eva on the other side, and prodding her with an admonishing elbow as
+Mrs. Zelotes had prodded Andrew. "That's Norman Lloyd's nephew
+dancing with her now," she said. Eva looked at her, smiling.
+Directly the idea of Ellen's marriage with the young man with whom
+she was dancing established full connections and ran through the
+line of Ellen's relatives as though an electric wire.
+
+As for Ellen, dancing with this stranger, who had been introduced to
+her by the school-master, she certainly had no thought of a possible
+marriage with him, but she had looked into his face with a curious,
+ready leap of sympathy and understanding of this other soul which
+she met for the first time. It seemed to her that she must have
+known him before, but she knew that she had not. She began to
+reflect as they were whirling about the hall, she gazed at that
+secret memory of hers, which she had treasured since her childhood,
+and discovered that what had seemed familiar to her about the young
+man was the face of a familiar thought. Ever since Miss Cynthia
+Lennox had told her about her nephew, the little boy who had owned
+and loved the doll, Ellen had unconsciously held the thought of him
+in her mind. "You are Miss Cynthia Lennox's nephew," she said to
+young Lloyd.
+
+"Yes," he replied. He nodded towards Cynthia, who was sitting on the
+opposite side from the Brewsters, with the Norman Lloyds and Lyman
+Risley. "She used to be like a mother to me," he said. "You know I
+lost my mother when I was a baby."
+
+Ellen nodded at him with a look of pity of that marvellous scope
+which only a woman in whom the maternal slumbers ready to awake can
+compass. Ellen, looking at the handsome face of the young man, saw
+quite distinctly in it the face of the little motherless child, and
+all the tender pity which she would have felt for that child was in
+her eyes.
+
+"What a beautiful girl she is," thought the young man. He smiled at
+her admiringly, loving her look at him, while not in the least
+understanding it. He had asked to be presented to Ellen from
+curiosity. He had not been at the exhibition, and had heard the
+school-master and Risley talking about the valedictory. "I didn't
+know that you taught anarchy in school, Mr. Harris," Risley had
+said. He laughed as he said it, but Harris had colored with an
+uneasy look at Norman Lloyd, whose face wore an expression of
+amusement. "Perhaps I should have," he began, but Lloyd interrupted
+him. "My dear fellow," he said, "you don't imagine that any man in
+his senses could take seriously enough to be annoyed by it that
+child's effusion on her nice little roll of foolscap tied with her
+pretty white satin ribbon?"
+
+"She is just as sweet as she can be," said Mrs. Norman, "and I
+thought her composition was real pretty. Didn't you, Cynthia?"
+
+"Very," replied Cynthia.
+
+"What your are worrying about it for, Edward, I don't see," said
+Mrs. Norman to the school-master.
+
+"Well, I am glad if it struck you that way," said he, "but when I
+heard the applause from all those factory people"--he lowered his
+voice, since a number were sitting near--"I didn't know, but--"  He
+hesitated.
+
+"That the spark that would fire the mine might be in that pretty
+little beribboned roll of foolscap," said Risley, laughing. "Well,
+it was a very creditable production, and it was written with the
+energy of conviction. The Czar and that little school-girl would not
+live long in one country, if she goes on as she has begun."
+
+It was then that young Lloyd, who had just come in, and was standing
+beside the school-master, turned eagerly to him, and asked who the
+girl was, and begged him to present him.
+
+"Perhaps he'll fall in love with her," said Mrs. Norman, directly,
+when the two men had gone across the hall in quest of Ellen. Her
+husband laughed.
+
+"You have not seen your aunt for a long time," Ellen said to young
+Lloyd, when they were sitting out a dance after their waltz
+together.
+
+"Not since--I--I came on--with my father when he died," he replied.
+Again Ellen looked at him with that wonderful pity in her face, and
+again the young man thought he had never seen such a girl.
+
+"I think your aunt is beautiful," Ellen said, presently, gazing
+across at Cynthia.
+
+"Yes, she must have been a beauty when she was young."
+
+"I think she is now," said Ellen, quite fervently, for she was able
+to disabuse her mind of associations and rely upon pure observation,
+and it was quite true that leaving out of the question Cynthia's age
+and the memory of her face in stronger lights at closer view, she
+was as beautiful from where they sat as some graceful statue. Only
+clear outlines showed at that distance, and her soft hair, which was
+quite white, lay in heavy masses around the intense repose of her
+face.
+
+"Yes--s," admitted Robert, somewhat hesitatingly. "She used to think
+everything of me when I was a little shaver," he said.
+
+"Doesn't she now?"
+
+"Oh yes, I suppose she does, but it is different now. I am grown up.
+A man doesn't need so much done for him when he is grown up."
+
+Then again he looked at Ellen with eyes of pleading which would have
+made of the older woman what he remembered her to have been in his
+childhood, and hers answered again.
+
+Robert did not say anything to her about the valedictory until just
+before the close of the evening, when their last dance together was
+over.
+
+"I am sorry I did not have a chance to hear your valedictory," he
+said. "I could not come early."
+
+Ellen blushed and smiled, and made the conventional school-girl
+response. "Oh, you didn't miss anything," said she.
+
+"I am sure I did," said the young man, earnestly. Then he looked at
+her and hesitated a little. "I wonder if you would be willing to
+lend it to me?" he said, then. "I would be very careful of it, and
+would return it immediately as soon as I had read it. I should be so
+interested in reading it."
+
+"Certainly, if you wish," said Ellen, "but I am afraid you won't
+think it is good."
+
+"Of course I shall. I have been hearing about it, how good it was,
+and how you broke up the whole house."
+
+Ellen blushed. "Oh, that was only because it was the valedictory.
+They always clap a good deal for the valedictory."
+
+"It was because it was you, you dear beauty," thought the young man,
+gazing at her, and the impulse to take her in his arms and kiss that
+blush seized upon him. "I know they applauded your valedictory
+because it was worthy of it," said he, and Ellen's eyes fell before
+his, and the blush crept down over her throat, and up to the soft
+toss of hair on her temples. The two were standing, and the man
+gazed at Ellen's pink arms and neck through the lace of her dress,
+those incomparable curves of youthful bloom shared by a young girl
+and a rose; he gazed at that noble, fair head bent not so much
+before him as before the mystery of life, of which a perception had
+come to her through his eyes, and he said to himself that there
+never was such a girl, and he also wondered if he saw aright, he
+being one who seldom entirely lost the grasp of his own leash.
+Having the fancy and the heart of a young man, he was given like
+others of his kind to looking at every new girl who attracted him in
+the light of a problem, the unknown quantity being her possible
+interest for him, but he always worked it out calmly. He kept
+himself out of his own shadow, when it came to the question of
+emotions, in something the same fashion that his uncle Norman did.
+Now, looking at Ellen Brewster with the whole of his heart setting
+towards her in obedience to that law which had brought him into
+being, he yet was saying quite coolly and loudly in his own inner
+consciousness, "Wait, wait, wait! Wait until to-morrow, see how you
+feel then. You have felt in much this way before. Wait! Perhaps you
+don't see it as it is. Wait!"
+
+He realized his own wisdom all the more clearly when Ellen led him
+to the settee where her relatives sat guarding her graduation
+presents and her precious valedictory. She presented him gracefully
+enough. Ellen knew nothing of society etiquette, she had never
+introduced such a young gentleman as this to any one in her life,
+but her inborn dignity of character kept her self-poise perfect.
+Still, when young Lloyd saw the mother coarsely perspiring and
+fairly aggressive in her delight over her daughter, when poor Andrew
+hoped he saw him well, and Mrs. Zelotes eyed him with sharp
+approbation, and Eva, conscious of her shabbiness, bowed with a
+stiff toss of her head and sat back sullenly, and little Amabel
+surveyed him with uncanny wisdom divided between himself and Ellen,
+he became conscious of a slight disappearance of his glamour. He
+thanked Ellen most heartily for the privilege which she granted him,
+when she took the valedictory from the heap of flowers, and took his
+leave with a bow which made Fanny nudge Andrew, almost before the
+young man's back was turned.
+
+Then she looked at Ellen, but she said nothing. A sudden impulse of
+delicacy prevented her. There was something about this beloved
+daughter of hers which all at once seemed strange to her. She began
+to associate her with the sacred mystery of life as she had never
+done. Then, too, there was the more superficial association with one
+of another class which she held in outward despite but inward awe.
+
+Ellen gathered up her presents into her lap, and sat there a few
+minutes through the last dance, which she had refused to Granville
+Joy, who went away with nervous alertness for another girl, and
+nobody spoke to her.
+
+When young Lloyd and Cynthia Lennox and the others left, as they did
+directly, Fanny murmured, "They've gone," and they all knew what she
+meant. She was thinking--and so were they all, except Ellen--that
+that was the reason, because he had to go, that he had not asked
+Ellen for the last dance.
+
+As for Ellen, she sat looking at her gold watch and chain, which she
+had taken out of the case. Her face grew intensely sober, and she
+did not notice when young Lloyd left. All at once she had reflected
+how her father had never owned a watch in his whole life, though he
+was a man, but he had given one to her. She reflected how he had so
+little work, how shabby his clothes were, how he must have gone
+without himself to buy this for her, and the girl had such a heart
+of gold that it rose triumphantly loyal to its first loves and
+tendernesses, and her father's old, worn face came between her and
+that of the young man who might become her lover.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX
+
+
+The day after Ellen's graduation there might have been seen a
+touching little spectacle passing along the main street of Rowe
+about ten o'clock in the fore-noon. It was touching because it gave
+evidence of that human vanity common to all, which strives to
+perpetuate the few small, good things that come into the hard lives
+of poor souls, and strives with such utter futility. Ellen held up
+her fluffy skirts daintily, the wind caught her white ribbons and
+the loose locks of her yellow hair under her white hat. She carried
+Cynthia Lennox's basket of roses on her arm, and each of the others
+was laden with bouquets. Little Amabel clasped both slender arms
+around a great sheaf of roses; the thorns pricked through her thin
+sleeves, but she did not mind that, so upborne with the elation of
+the occasion was she. Her small, pale face gazed over the mass of
+bloom with challenging of admiration from every one whom she met.
+She was jealous lest any one should not look with full appreciation
+of Ellen.
+
+Ellen was the one in the little procession who had not unmixed
+delight in it. She had a certain shamefacedness about going through
+the streets in such a fashion. She avoided looking at the people
+whom she met, and kept her head slightly bent and averted, instead
+of carrying it with the proud directness which was her habit. She
+felt vaguely that this was the element of purely personal vanity
+which degrades a triumph, and the weakness of delight and gloating
+in the faces of her relatives irritated her. It was a sort of
+unveiling of love, and the girl was sensitive enough to understand
+it. "Oh, mother, I don't want to have us all go through the street
+with all these flowers, and me in my white dress," she had said. She
+had looked at her mother with a shrinking in her eyes which was
+incomprehensible to the other coarser-natured woman.
+
+"Nonsense," she had said. "Sometimes you have real silly notions,
+Ellen."  Fanny said it adoringly, for even silliness in this girl
+was in a way worshipful to her. Ellen, with her heart still softened
+almost to grief by the love shown her on the day before, had
+yielded, but she was glad when they arrived at the photograph
+studio. She had particularly dreaded passing Lloyd's, for the
+thought came to her that possibly young Mr. Lloyd might see her. She
+supposed that he was likely to be in the office. When they passed
+the office-windows she looked the other way, but before she was well
+past, her aunt Eva hit her violently and laughed loudly. Ellen
+shrank, coloring a deep crimson. Then her mother also laughed, and
+even Amabel, shrilly, with precocious recognition of the situation.
+Only Mrs. Zelotes stalked along in silent dignity.
+
+"Don't laugh so loud, he'll hear you," said she, severely.
+
+"It was that young man who was at the hall last night, and he was
+looking at you awful sharp," said little Amabel to Ellen, squeezing
+her warm arm, and sending out that shrill peal of laughter again.
+
+"Don't, dear," said Ellen. She felt humiliated, and the more so
+because she was ashamed of being humiliated by her own mother and
+aunt. "Why should I be so sensitive to things in which they see no
+harm?" she asked herself, reprovingly.
+
+As for young Lloyd, he had, ever since he parted with the girl the
+night before, that sensation of actual contact which survives
+separation, and had felt the light pressure of her hand in his all
+night, and along with it that ineffable pain of longing which would
+draw the substance of a dream to actuality and cannot. He saw her
+with her coarsely exultant relatives, the inevitable blur of her
+environments, and felt himself not so much disillusioned as
+confirmed. He had been constantly saying to himself, when the girl's
+face haunted his eyes, and her hand in his own, that he was a fool,
+that he had felt so before, that he must have, that there was no
+sense in it, that he was Robert Lloyd, and she a good girl, a
+beautiful girl, but a common sort of girl, born of common people to
+a common lot. "Now," he said to himself, with a kind of bitter
+exultation, "there, I told you so."  The inconceivable folly of that
+glance of the mother at him, then at Ellen, and the meaning
+laughter, repelled him to the point of disgust. He turned his back
+to the window and resumed his work, but, in spite of himself, the
+pathos of the picture which he had seen began to force itself upon
+him, and he thought almost tenderly and forgivingly that she, the
+girl, had not once looked his way. He even wondered, pityingly, if
+she had been mortified and annoyed by her mother's behavior. A great
+anger on Ellen's behalf with her mother seized upon him. How pretty
+she did look moving along in that little flower-laden procession, he
+thought, how very pretty. All at once a desire for the photograph
+which would be taken seized him, for he divined the photograph.
+However, he said to himself that he would send back the valedictory
+which he had not yet read by post, with a polite note, and that
+would be the end.
+
+But it was only the next evening that Robert Lloyd with the
+valedictory in hand got off the trolley-car in front of the Brewster
+house. He had proved to himself that it was an act of actual
+rudeness to return anything so precious and of so much importance to
+the owner by the post, that he ought to call and deliver it in
+person. When he regained his equilibrium from the quick sidewise
+leap from the car, and stood hesitating a little, as one will do
+before a strange house, for he was not quite sure as to his
+bearings, he saw a white blur as of feminine apparel in the front
+doorway. He advanced tentatively up the little path between two rows
+of flowering bushes, and Ellen rose.
+
+"Good-evening, Mr. Lloyd," she said, in a slightly tremulous voice.
+
+"Oh, good-evening, Miss Brewster," he cried, quickly. "So I am
+right! I was not sure as to the house."
+
+"People generally tell by the cherry-trees in the yard," replied
+Ellen, taking refuge from her timidity in the security of
+commonplace observation, as she had done the night before, giving
+thereby both a sense of disappointment and elusiveness.
+
+"Won't you walk in?" she added, with the prim politeness of a child
+who accosts a guest according to rule and precept. Ellen had never,
+in fact, had a young man make a formal call upon her before. She
+reflected now, both with relief and trepidation, that her mother was
+away, having gone to her aunt Eva's. She had an instinct which she
+resented, that her mother and this young man were on two parallels
+which could never meet. Her father was at home, seated in the south
+door with John Sargent and Nahum Beals and Joe Atkins, but she never
+thought of such a thing as her father's receiving a young man
+caller, though she would not have doubted so much his assimilating
+with Robert Lloyd. She understood that the young man might look at
+her mother with dissent, while she resented it, but with her father
+it was different.
+
+The group of men at the south door were talking in loud, fervent
+voices which seemed to rise and fall like waves. Nahum Beals's
+strained, nervous tones were paramount. "Mr. Beals is talking about
+the labor question, and he gets quite excited," Ellen remarked,
+somewhat apologetically, as she ushered young Lloyd into the parlor.
+
+Lloyd laughed. "It sounds as if he were leading an army," he said.
+
+"He is very much in earnest," said the girl.
+
+She placed painstakingly for her guest the best chair, which was a
+spring rocker upholstered with crush-plush. The little parlor was
+close and stuffy, and the kerosene-lamp, with the light dimmed by a
+globe decorated with roses, heated the room still further. This lamp
+was Fanny's pride. It had, in her eyes, the double glory of high art
+and cheapness. She was fond of pointing at it, and inquiring, "How
+much do you think that cost?" and explaining with the air of one who
+expects her truth to be questioned that it only cost forty-nine
+cents. This lamp was hideous, the shape was aggressive, a discordant
+blare of brass, and the roses on the globe were blasphemous. Somehow
+this lamp was the first thing which struck Lloyd on entering the
+room. He could not take his eyes from it. As for Ellen, long
+acquaintance had dulled her eyes. She sat in the full glare of this
+hideous lamp, and Lloyd considered that she was not so pretty as he
+had thought last night. Still, she was undeniably very pretty. There
+was something in the curves of her shoulders, in her pink-and-white
+cotton waist, that made one's fingers tingle, and heart yearn, and
+there was an appealing look in her face which made him smile
+indulgently at her as he might have done at a child. After all, it
+was probably not her fault about the lamp, and lamps were a minor
+consideration, and he was finical, but suppose she liked it? Lloyd,
+sitting there, began to speculate if it were possible for one's
+spiritual nature to be definitely damaged by hideous lamps. Then he
+caught sight of a plate decorated with postage-stamps, with a
+perforated edge through which ribbons were run, and he wondered if
+she possibly made that.
+
+"They are undoubtedly perfectly moral people," he told his aunt
+Cynthia afterwards, "but I wonder that they keep such an immoral
+plate."  However, that was before he fell in love with Ellen, while
+he was struggling with himself in his desire to do so, and making
+all manner of sport of himself by way of hindrance.
+
+Ellen at that age could have had no possible conception of the
+sentiment with which the young man viewed her environment. She was
+sensitive to spiritual discords which might arise from meeting with
+another widely different nature, but when it came to material
+things, she was at a loss. Then, too, she was pugnaciously loyal to
+the glories of the best parlor. She was innocently glad that she had
+such a nice room into which to usher him. She felt that the
+marble-top table, the plush lambrequin on the mantle-shelf, the
+gilded vases, the brass clock, the Nottingham lace curtains, the
+olive-and-crimson furniture, the pictures in cheap gilt frames, the
+heavily gilded wall-paper, and the throws of thin silk over the
+picture corners must prove to him the standing of her family. She
+felt an ignoble satisfaction in it, for a certain measure of
+commonness clung to the girl like a cobweb. She was as yet too young
+to bloom free of her environment, her head was not yet over the
+barrier of her daily lot; her heart never would be, and that was her
+glory. Young Lloyd handed her the roll of valedictory as soon as he
+entered.
+
+"I am very much obliged to you for allowing me to read it," he said.
+
+Ellen took it, blushing. Her heart sank a little. She thought to
+herself that he probably did not like it. She looked at him proudly
+and timidly, like a child half holding, half withdrawing its hand
+for a sweet. It suddenly came to her that she would rather this
+young man would praise her valedictory than any one else, that if he
+had been present when she read it in the hall, and she had seen him
+standing applauding, she could not have contained her triumph and
+pride. She was not yet in love with him, but she began to feel that
+in his approbation lay the best coin of her realm.
+
+"It is very well written, Miss Brewster," said Robert, and she
+flushed with delight.
+
+"Thank you," she said.
+
+But the young man was looking at her as if he had something besides
+praise in mind, and she gazed at him, shrinking a little as before a
+blow whose motion she felt in the air. However, he laughed
+pleasantly when he spoke.
+
+"Do you really believe that?" he asked.
+
+"What?" she inquired, vaguely.
+
+"Oh, all that you say in your essay. Do you really believe that all
+the property in the world ought to be divided, that kings and
+peasants ought to share and share alike?"
+
+She looked at him with round eyes. "Why, of course I do!" she said.
+"Don't you?"
+
+Robert laughed. He had no mind to enter into an argument with this
+beautiful girl, nor even to express himself forcibly on the opposite
+side.
+
+"Well, there are a number of things to be considered," he said. "And
+do you really believe that employer and employes should share
+alike?"
+
+"Why not?" said she.
+
+Her blue eyes flashed, she tossed her head. Robert smiled at her.
+
+"Why not?" she repeated. "Don't the men earn the money?"
+
+"Well, no, not exactly," said Robert. "There is the capital."
+
+"The profit comes from the labor, not from the capital," said Ellen,
+quickly. "Doesn't it?" she continued, with fervor, and yet there was
+a charming timidity, as before some authority.
+
+"Possibly," replied Robert, guardedly; "but the question is how far
+we should go back before we stop in searching for causes."
+
+"How far back ought we to go?" asked Ellen, earnestly.
+
+"I confess I don't know," said Robert, laughingly. "I have thought
+very little about it all."
+
+"But you will have to, if you are to be the head of Lloyd's," Ellen
+said, with a severe accent, with grave, blue eyes full on his face.
+
+"Oh, I am not the head of Lloyd's yet," he answered, easily. "My
+uncle is far from his dotage. Then, too, you know that I was never
+intended for a business man, but a lawyer, like my father, if there
+had not been so little for my father's second wife and the
+children--"  He stopped himself abruptly on the verge of a
+confidence. "I think I saw you on your way to the photographer
+to-day," he said, and Ellen blushed, remembering her aunt Eva's
+violent nudge, and wondering if he had noticed. She gave him a
+piteous glance.
+
+"Yes," she said. "All the girls have their pictures taken in their
+graduating dresses with their flowers."
+
+"You looked to me as if the picture would be a great success," said
+Robert. He longed to ask for one and yet did not, for a reason
+unexplained to himself. He knew that this innocent, unsophisticated
+creature would see no reason on earth why he should not ask, and no
+reason why she should not grant, and on that account he felt
+prohibited. That night, after he had gone, Ellen wondered why he had
+not asked for one of her pictures, and felt anxious lest he should
+have seen the nudge.
+
+"Well," she said to herself, "if he finds any fault with anything
+that my mother has done, I don't want him to have one."
+
+Robert stayed a long time. He kept thinking that he ought to go, and
+also that he was bored, and yet he felt a singular unwillingness to
+leave, possibly because of his sense that the visit was in a measure
+forbidden by prudence. The longer he remained, the prettier Ellen
+looked to him. New beauties of line and color seemed to grow
+apparent in the soft glow from the hideous lamp. There was a
+wonderful starry radiance in her eyes now and then, and when she
+turned her head her eyeballs gleamed crimson and her hair seemed to
+toss into flame. When she spoke, he was conscious of unknown depths
+of sweetness in her voice, and it was so with her smile and her
+every motion. There was about the girl a mystery, not of darkness
+but of light, which seemed to draw him on and on and on without
+volition. And yet she said nothing especially remarkable, for Ellen
+was only a young girl, reared in a little provincial city in common
+environments. She would have been a great genius had she more than
+begun to glimpse the breadth and freedom of the outer world through
+her paling of life. She was too young and too unquestioning of what
+she had learned from her early loves.
+
+"Have you always lived here in Rowe?" asked Lloyd.
+
+"Yes," said she. "I was born here, and I have lived here ever
+since."
+
+"And you have never been away?"
+
+"Only once. Once I went to Dragon Beach and stayed a fortnight with
+mother."  She said this with a visible sense of its importance.
+Dragon Beach was some ten miles from Rowe, a cheap seashore place,
+built up with flimsy summer cottages of factory hands. Andrew had
+hired one for a fortnight once when Ellen was ailing, and it had
+been the event of a lifetime to the family. They hereafter dated
+from the year "we went to Dragon Beach."
+
+Lloyd looked with a quick impulse of compassionate tenderness at
+this child who had been away from Rowe once to Dragon Beach. He had
+his own impressions of Dragon Beach and also of Rowe.
+
+"I suppose you enjoyed that?" said he.
+
+"Very much. The sea is beautiful."
+
+So, after all, it was the sea which she had cared for at Dragon
+Beach, and not the clam-bakes and merry-go-rounds and women in
+wrappers in the surf. Robert felt rebuked for thinking of anything
+but the sea in his memory of Dragon Beach; there was a wonderful
+water-view there.
+
+All the time they sat there in the parlor, the murmur of
+conversation at the south door continued, and now and again over it
+swelled the fervid exhortations of Nahum Beals. Not a word could be
+distinguished, but the meaning was beyond doubt. That voice was full
+of denunciation, of frenzied appeal, of warning.
+
+"Who is it?" asked Lloyd, after an unusually loud burst.
+
+"Mr. Beals," replied Ellen, uneasily. She wished that he would not
+talk so loud.
+
+"He sounds as if he were preaching fire and brimstone," said Robert.
+
+"No, he is talking about the labor question," replied Ellen.
+
+Then she looked confused, for she remembered that this young man's
+uncle was the head of Lloyd's, that he himself would be the head of
+Lloyd's some day. All at once, along with another feeling which
+seemed about to conquer her, came a resentment against this young
+man with his fine clothes and his gentle manners. Two men passed the
+windows and one of them looked in, and when the electric-light
+flashed on his face she saw Granville Joy, and the man with him was
+in his shirt-sleeves. She saw those white shirt-sleeves swing into
+the darkness, and felt at once antagonized against herself and
+against Robert, and yet she knew that she had never seen a man like
+him.
+
+"I suppose he has settled it," said Robert.
+
+"I don't know," replied Ellen.
+
+"He sounds dangerous."
+
+"Oh, no. He is a good man. He wouldn't hurt anybody. He has always
+talked that way. He used to come here and talk when I was a child.
+It used to frighten me at first, but it doesn't now. It is only the
+way that poor people are treated that frightens me."
+
+Again Robert had a sensation of moving unobtrusively aside from a
+direct encounter. He looked across the room and started at something
+which he espied for the first time.
+
+"Pardon me," he said, rising, "but I am interested in dolls. I see
+you still keep your doll, Miss Brewster."
+
+Ellen sat stupefied. All at once it dawned upon her what might
+happen. In the corner of the parlor sat her beloved doll, still
+beloved, though the mother and not the doll had outgrown her first
+condition of love. The doll, in the identical dress in which she had
+come from Cynthia's so many years ago, sat staring forth with the
+fixed radiance of her kind, seated stiffly in a tiny rocking-chair,
+also one of the treasures of Ellen's childhood. It was a curious
+feature for the best parlor, but Ellen had insisted upon it. "She
+isn't going to be put away up garret because I have outgrown her,"
+said she. "She's going to sit in the parlor as long as she lives.
+Suppose I outgrew you, and put you up in the garret; you wouldn't
+like it, would you, mother?"
+
+"You are a queer child," Fanny had said, laughing, but she had
+yielded.
+
+When young Lloyd went close to examine the doll, Ellen's heart stood
+still. Suppose he should recognize it? She tried to tell herself
+that it was impossible. Could any young man recognize a doll after
+all those years? How much did a boy ever care for a doll, anyway?
+Not enough to think of it twice after he had given it up. It was
+different with a girl. Her doll meant--God only knew what her doll
+meant to her; perhaps it had a meaning of all humanity. But the boy,
+what had he cared for the doll? He had gone away out West and left
+it.
+
+But Lloyd remembered. He stared down at the doll a moment. Then he
+took her up gingerly in her fluffy pink robes of an obsolete
+fashion. He held her at arm's length, and stared and stared.
+Suddenly he parted the flaxen wig and examined a place on the head.
+Then he looked at Ellen.
+
+"Why, it is my old doll," he cried, with a great laugh of wonder and
+incredulity. "Yes, it is my old doll! How in the world did you come
+by my doll, Miss Brewster? Account for yourself. Are you a child
+kidnapper?"
+
+Ellen, who had risen and come forward, stood before him, absolutely
+still, and very pale.
+
+"Yes, it is my doll," said Lloyd, with another laugh. "I will tell
+you how I know. Of course I can tell her face. Dolls look a good
+deal alike, I suppose, but I tell you I loved this doll, and I
+remember her face, and that little cast in her left eye, and that
+beautiful, serene smile; but there's something besides. Once I
+burned her head with the red-hot end of the poker to see if she
+would wake up. I always had a notion when I was a child that it was
+only a question of violence to make her wake up and demonstrate some
+existence besides that eternal grin. So I burned her, but it made no
+difference; but here is the mark now--see."
+
+Ellen saw. She had often kissed it, but she made no reply. She was
+occupied with considerations of the consequences.
+
+"How did you come by her, if you don't mind telling?" said the young
+man again. "It is the most curious thing for me to find my old doll
+sitting here. Of course Aunt Cynthia gave her to you, but I didn't
+know that she was acquainted with you. I suppose she saw a pretty
+little girl getting around without a doll after I had gone, and sent
+her, but--"
+
+Suddenly between the young man's face and the girl's flashed a look
+of intelligence. Suddenly Robert remembered all that he had heard of
+Ellen's childish escapade. He _knew_. He looked from her to the
+doll, and back again. "Good Lord!" he said. Then he set the doll
+down in her little chair all of a heap, and caught Ellen's hand, and
+shook it.
+
+"You are a trump, that is what you are," he said; "a trump. So
+she--"  He shook his head, and looked at Ellen, dazedly. She did not
+say a word, but looked at him with her lips closed tightly.
+
+"It is better for you not to tell me anything," he said; "I don't
+want to know. I don't understand, and I never want to, how it all
+happened, but I do understand that you are a trump. How old were
+you?"  Robert's voice took on a tone of tenderness.
+
+"Eight," replied Ellen, faintly.
+
+"Only a baby," said the young man, "and you never told! I would like
+to know where there is another baby who would do such a thing."  He
+caught her hand and shook it again. "She was like a mother to me,"
+he said, in a husky voice. "I think a good deal of her. I thank
+you."
+
+Suddenly to the young man looking at the girl a conviction as of
+some subtle spiritual perfume came; he had seen her beauty before,
+he had realized her charm, but this was something different. A
+boundless approbation and approval which was infinitely more
+precious than admiration seized him. Her character began to reveal
+itself, to come in contact with his own; he felt the warmth of it
+through the veil of flesh. He felt a sense of reliance as upon an
+inexhaustibility of goodness in another soul. He felt something
+which was more than love, being purely unselfish, with as yet no
+desire of possession. "Here is a good, true woman," he said to
+himself. "Here is a good, true woman, who has blossomed from a good,
+true child."  He saw a wonderful faithfulness shining in her blue
+eyes, he saw truth itself on her lips, and could have gone down at
+the feet of the little girl in the pink cotton frock. Going home he
+tried to laugh at himself, but could not succeed. It is easy to
+shake off the clasp of a hand of flesh, but not the clasp of another
+soul.
+
+Ellen on her part was at once overwhelmed with delight and
+confusion. She felt the fervor of admiration in the young man's
+attitude towards her, but she was painfully conscious of her
+undeservingness. She had always felt guilty about her silence and
+disobedience towards her parents, and as for any self-approbation
+for it, that had been the farthest from her thoughts. She murmured
+something deprecatingly, but Lloyd cut her short.
+
+"It's no use crying off," said he; "you are one girl in a thousand,
+and I thank you, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. It might
+have made awful trouble. My aunt Lizzie told me what a commotion
+there was over it."
+
+"I ran away," said Ellen, anxiously. Suddenly it occurred to her he
+might think Cynthia worse than she had been.
+
+"Never mind," said Lloyd--"never mind. I know what you did. You held
+your blessed little tongue to save somebody else, and let yourself
+be blamed."
+
+The door which led into the sitting-room opened, and Andrew looked
+in.
+
+He made a shy motion when he saw Lloyd; still, he came forward. His
+own callers had gone, and he had heard voices in the parlor, and had
+feared Granville Joy was calling upon Ellen.
+
+As he came forward, Ellen introduced him shyly. "This is Mr. Lloyd,
+father," she said. "Mr. Lloyd, this is my father."  Then she added,
+"He came to bring back my valedictory."  She was very awkward, but
+it was the charming awkwardness of a beautiful child. She looked
+exceedingly childish standing beside her father, looking into his
+worn, embarrassed face.
+
+Lloyd shook hands with Andrew, and said something about the
+valedictory, which he had enjoyed reading.
+
+"She wrote it all herself without a bit of help from the teacher,"
+said Andrew, with wistful pride.
+
+"It is remarkably well written," said Robert.
+
+"You didn't hear it read at the hall?" said Andrew.
+
+"No, I had not that good fortune."
+
+"You ought to have heard them clap," said Andrew.
+
+"Oh, father," murmured Ellen, but she looked innocently at her
+father as if she delighted in his pride and pleasure without a
+personal consideration.
+
+The front door opened. "That's your mother," said Andrew.
+
+Fanny looked into the lighted parlor, and dodged back with a little
+giggle.
+
+Ellen colored painfully. "It is Mr. Lloyd, mother," she said.
+
+Then Fanny came forward and shook hands with Robert. Her face was
+flaming--she cast involuntary glances at Andrew for confirmation of
+her opinion. She was openly and shamelessly triumphant, and yet all
+at once Robert ceased to be repelled by it. Through his insight into
+the girl's character, he had seemed to gain suddenly a clearer
+vision for the depths of human love and pity which are beneath the
+coarse and the common. When Fanny stood beside her daughter and
+looked at her, then at Robert, with the reflection of the beautiful
+young face in her eyes of love, she became at once pathetic and
+sacred.
+
+"It is all natural," he said to himself as he was going home.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX
+
+
+Robert Lloyd when he came to Rowe was confronted with one of the
+hardest tasks in the world, that of adjustment to circumstances
+which had hitherto been out of his imagination. He had not dreamed
+of a business life in connection with himself. Though he had always
+had a certain admiration for his successful uncle, Norman Lloyd, yet
+he had always had along with the admiration a recollection of the
+old tale of the birthright and the mess of pottage. He had expected
+to follow the law, like his father, but when he had finished
+college, about two years after his father's death, he had to face
+the unexpected. The stocks in which the greater part of the elder
+Lloyd's money had been invested had depreciated; some of them were
+for the time being quite worthless as far as income was concerned.
+There were two little children--girls--by his father's second
+marriage, and there was not enough to support them and their mother
+and allow Robert to continue his reading for the law. So he pursued,
+without the slightest hesitation, but with bitter regret, the only
+course which he saw open before him. He wrote to his uncle Norman,
+and was welcomed to a position in his factory with more warmth than
+he had ever seen displayed by him. In fact, Norman Lloyd, who had no
+son of his own, saw with a quickening of his pulses the handsome
+young fellow of his own race who had in a measure thrown himself
+upon his protection. He had never shared his wife's longing for
+children as children, and had never cared for Robert when a child;
+but now, when he was a man grown and bore his name, he appealed to
+him.
+
+Norman Lloyd was supposed to be heaping up riches, and wild stories
+of his wealth were told in Rowe. He gave large sums to public
+benefactions, and never stinted his wife in her giving within
+certain limits. It would have puzzled any one when faced with facts
+to understand why he had the name of a hard man, but he had it,
+whether justly or not. "He's as hard as nails," people said. His
+employes hated him--that is, the more turbulent and undisciplined
+spirits hated him, and the others regarded him as slaves might a
+stern master. When Robert started his work in his uncle's office he
+started handicapped by this sentiment towards his uncle. He looked
+like his uncle, he talked like him, he had his same gentle
+stiffness, he was never unduly familiar. He was at once placed in
+the same category by the workmen.
+
+Robert Lloyd did not concern himself in the least as to what the
+employes in his uncle's factory thought of him. Nothing was more
+completely out of his mind. He was conscious of standing on a firm
+base of philanthropic principle, and if ever these men came directly
+under his control, he was resolved to do his duty by them so far as
+in him lay.
+
+
+Ellen, since her graduation, had been like an animal which circles
+about in its endeavors to find its best and natural place of
+settlement.
+
+"What shall I do next?" she had said to her mother. "Shall I go to
+work, or shall I try to find a school somewhere in the fall, or
+shall I stay here, and help you with some work I can do at home? I
+know father cannot afford to support me always at home."
+
+"I guess he can afford to support his only daughter at home a little
+while after she has just got out of school," Fanny had returned
+indignantly, with a keen pain at her heart.
+
+Fanny mentioned this conversation to Andrew that night after Ellen
+had gone to bed.
+
+"What do you think--Ellen was asking me this afternoon what she had
+better do!" said she.
+
+"What she had better do?" repeated Andrew, vaguely. He looked
+shrinkingly at Fanny, who seemed to him to have an accusing air, as
+if in some way he were to blame for something. And, indeed, there
+were times when Fanny in those days did blame Andrew, but there was
+some excuse for her. She blamed him when her own back was filling
+her very soul with the weariness of its ache as she bent over the
+seams of those grinding wrappers, and when her heart was sore over
+doubt of Ellen's future. At those times she acknowledged to herself
+that it seemed to her that Andrew somehow might have gotten on
+better. She did not know how, but somehow. He had not had an
+expensive family. "Why had he not succeeded?" she asked herself. So
+there was in her tone an unconscious recrimination when she answered
+his question about Ellen.
+
+"Yes--what she had better go to work at," said Fanny, dryly, her
+black eyes cold on her husband's face.
+
+Andrew turned so white that he frightened her. "Go to work!" said
+he. Then all at once he gave an exceedingly loud and bitter groan.
+It betrayed all his pride in and ambition for his daughter and his
+disgust and disappointment over himself. "Oh! my God, has it come to
+this," he groaned, "that I cannot support my one child!"
+
+Fanny laid down her work and looked at him. "Now, Andrew," said she,
+"there's no use in your taking it after such a fashion as this. I
+told Ellen that it was all nonsense--that she could stay at home and
+rest this summer."
+
+"I guess, if she can't--" said Andrew. He dropped his gray head into
+his hands, and began to sob dryly. Fanny, after staring at him a
+moment, tossed her work onto the floor, went over to him, and drew
+his head to her shoulder.
+
+"There, old man," said she, "ain't you ashamed of yourself? I told
+her there was no need for her to worry at present. Don't do so,
+Andrew; you've done the best you could, and I know it, if I stop to
+think, though I do seem sort of impatient sometimes. You've always
+worked hard and done your best. It ain't your fault."
+
+"I don't know whether it is or not," said Andrew, in a high,
+querulous voice like a woman's. "It seems as if it must be
+somebody's fault. If it ain't my fault, whose is it? You can't blame
+the Almighty."
+
+"Maybe it ain't anybody's fault."
+
+"It must be. All that goes wrong is somebody's fault. It can't be
+that it just happens--that would be worse than the other. It is
+better to have a God that is cruel than one that don't care, and it
+is better to be to blame yourself, and have it your fault, than His.
+Somehow, I have been to blame, Fanny. I must have. It would have
+been enough sight better for you, Fanny, if you'd married another
+man."
+
+"I didn't want another man," replied Fanny, half angrily, half
+tenderly. "You make me all out of patience, Andrew Brewster. What's
+the need of Ellen going to work right away? Maybe by-and-by she can
+get an easy school. Then, we've got that money in the bank."
+
+Andrew looked away from her with his face set. Fanny did not know
+yet about his withdrawal of the money for the purpose of investing
+in mining-stocks. He never looked at her but the guilty secret
+seemed to force itself between them like a wedge of ice.
+
+"Then Grandma Brewster has got a little something," said Fanny.
+
+"Only just enough for herself," said Andrew. Then he added,
+fiercely, "Mother can't be stinted of her little comforts even for
+Ellen."
+
+"I 'ain't never wanted to stint your mother of her comforts," Fanny
+retorted, angrily.
+
+"She 'ain't got but a precious little, unless she spends her
+principal," said Andrew. "She 'ain't got more'n a hundred and fifty
+or so a year clear after her taxes and insurance are paid."
+
+"I ain't saying anything," said Fanny. "But I do say you're dreadful
+foolish to take on so when you've got so much to fall back on, and
+that money in the bank. Here you haven't had to touch the interest
+for quite a while and it has been accumulating."
+
+It was agreed between the two that Ellen must say nothing to her
+grandmother Brewster about going to work.
+
+"I believe the old lady would have a fit if she thought Ellen was
+going to work," said Fanny. "She 'ain't never thought she ought to
+lift her finger."
+
+So Ellen was charged on no account to say anything to her
+grandmother about the possible necessity of her going to work.
+
+"Your grandmother's awful proud," said Fanny, "and she's always
+thought you were too good to work."
+
+"I don't think anybody is too good to work," replied Ellen, but she
+uttered the platitude with a sort of mental reservation. In spite of
+herself, the attitude of worship in which she had always seen all
+who belonged to her had spoiled her a little. She did look at
+herself with a sort of compunction when she realized the fact that
+she might have to go to work in the shop some time. School-teaching
+was different, but could she earn enough school-teaching? There was
+a sturdy vein in the girl. All the time she pitied herself she
+blamed herself.
+
+"You come of working-people, Ellen Brewster. Why are you any better
+than they? Why are your hands any better than their hands, your
+brain than theirs? Why are you any better than the other girls who
+have gone to work in the shops? Do you think you are any better than
+Abby Atkins?"
+
+And still Ellen used to look at herself with a pitying conviction
+that she would be out of place at a bench in the shoe-factory, that
+she would suffer a certain indignity by such a course. The
+realization of a better birthright was strong upon her, although she
+chided herself for it. And everybody abetted her in it. When she
+said once to Abby Atkins, whom she encountered one day going home
+from the shop, that she wondered if she could get a job in her room
+in the fall, Abby turned upon her fiercely.
+
+"Good Lord, Ellen Brewster, you ain't going to work in a shoe-shop?"
+she said.
+
+"I don't see why not as well as you," returned Ellen.
+
+"Why not?" repeated the other girl. "Look at yourself, and look at
+us!"
+
+As she spoke, Ellen saw projected upon her mental vision herself
+passing down the street with the throng of factory operatives which
+her bodily eyes actually witnessed. She had come opposite Lloyd's as
+the six o'clock whistle was blowing. She saw herself in her clean,
+light summer frock, slight and dainty, with little hands like white
+flowers in the blue folds of her skirt, with her fine, sensitive
+outlook of fair face, and her dainty carriage; and she saw
+others--those girls and women in dingy skirts and bagging blouses,
+with coarse hair strained into hard knots of exigency from patient,
+or sullen faces, according to their methods of bearing their lots;
+all of them rank with the smell of leather, their coarse hands
+stained with it, swinging their poor little worn bags which had held
+their dinners. There were not many foreigners among them, except the
+Irish, most of whom had been born in this country, and a sprinkling
+of fair-haired, ruddy Swedes and keen Polanders, who bore themselves
+better than the Americans, being not so apparently at odds with the
+situation.
+
+The factory employes in Rowe were a superior lot, men and women.
+Many of the men had put on their worn coats when they emerged from
+the factory, and their little bags were supposed to disguise the
+fact of their being dinner satchels. And yet there was a difference
+between Ellen Brewster and the people among whom she walked, and she
+felt it with a sort of pride and indignation with herself that it
+was so.
+
+"I don't see why I should be any better than the rest," said she,
+defiantly, to Abby Atkins. "My father works in a shop, and you are
+my best friend, and you do. Why shouldn't I work in a shop?"
+
+"Look at yourself," repeated the other girl, mercilessly. "You are
+different. You ain't to blame for it any more than a flower is to
+blame for being a rose and not a common burdock. If you've got to do
+anything, you had better teach school."
+
+"I would rather teach school," said Ellen, "but I couldn't earn so
+much unless I got more education and got a higher position than a
+district school, and that is out of the question."
+
+"I thought maybe your grandmother could send you," said Abby.
+
+"Oh no, grandma can't afford to. Sometimes I think I could work my
+own way through college, if it wasn't for being a burden in the mean
+time, but I don't know."
+
+Suddenly Abby Atkins planted herself on the sidewalk in front of
+Ellen, and looked at her sharply, while an angry flush overspread
+her face.
+
+"I want to know one thing," said she.
+
+"What?"
+
+"It ain't true what I heard the other day, is it?"
+
+"I don't know what you heard."
+
+"Well, I heard you were going to be married."
+
+Ellen turned quite pale, and looked at the other girl with a steady
+regard of grave, indignant blue eyes.
+
+"No, I am not," said she.
+
+"Well, don't be mad, Ellen. I heard real straight that you were
+going to marry Granville Joy in the fall."
+
+"Well, I am not," repeated Ellen.
+
+"I didn't suppose you were, but I knew he had always wanted you."
+
+"Always wanted me!" said Ellen. "Why, he's only just out of school!"
+
+"Oh, I know that, and he's only just gone to work, and he can't be
+earning much, but I heard it."
+
+The stream of factory operatives had thinned; many had taken the
+trolley-cars, and others had gone to the opposite side of the
+street, which was shady. The two girls were alone, standing before a
+vacant lot grown to weeds, rank bristles of burdock, and slender
+spikes of evanescent succory. Abby burst out in a passionate appeal,
+clutching Ellen's arm hard.
+
+"Ellen, promise me you never will," she cried.
+
+"Promise you what, Abby?"
+
+"Oh, promise me you never will marry anybody like him. I know it's
+none of my business--I know that is something that is none of
+anybody's business, no matter how much they think of anybody; but I
+think more of you than any man ever will, I don't care who he is. I
+know I do, Ellen Brewster. And don't you ever marry a man like
+Granville Joy, just an ordinary man who works in the shop, and will
+never do anything but work in the shop. I know he's good, real good
+and steady, and it ain't against him that he ain't rich and has to
+work for his living, but I tell you, Ellen Brewster, you ain't the
+right sort to marry a man like that, and have a lot of children to
+work in shops. No man, if he thinks anything of you, ought to ask
+you to; but all a man thinks of is himself. Granville Joy, or any
+other man who wanted you, would take you and spoil you, and think
+he'd done a smart thing."  Abby spoke with such intensity that it
+redeemed her from coarseness. Ellen continued to look at her, and
+two red spots had come on her cheeks.
+
+"I don't believe I'll ever get married at all," she said.
+
+"If you've got to get married, you ought to marry somebody like
+young Mr. Lloyd," said Abby.
+
+Then Ellen blushed, and pushed past her indignantly.
+
+"Young Mr. Lloyd!" said she. "I don't want him, and he doesn't want
+me. I wish you wouldn't talk so, Abby."
+
+"He would want you if your were a rich girl, and your father was
+boss instead of a workman," said Abby.
+
+Then she caught hold of Ellen's arm and pressed her own thin one in
+its dark-blue cotton sleeve lovingly against it.
+
+"You ain't mad with me, are you, Ellen?" she said, with that
+indescribable gentleness tempering her fierceness of nature which
+gave her caresses the fascination of some little, untamed animal.
+Ellen pressed her round young arm tenderly against the other.
+
+"I think more of you than any man I know," said she, fervently. "I
+think more of you than anybody except father and mother, Abby."
+
+The two girls walked on with locked arms, and each was possessed
+with that wholly artless and ignorant passion often seen between two
+young girls. Abby felt Ellen's warm round arm against hers with a
+throbbing of rapture, and glanced at her fair face with adoration.
+She held her in a sort of worship, she loved her so that she was
+fairly afraid of her. As for Ellen, Abby's little, leather-stained,
+leather-scented figure, strung with passion like a bundle of
+electric wire, pressing against her, seemed to inform her farthest
+thoughts.
+
+"If I live longer than my father and mother, we'll live together,
+Abby," said she.
+
+"And I'll work for you, Ellen," said Abby, rapturously.
+
+"I guess you won't do all the work," said Ellen. She gazed tenderly
+into Abby's little, dark, thin face. "You're all worn out with work
+now," said she, "and there you bought that beautiful pin for me with
+your hard earnings."
+
+"I wish it had been a great deal better," said Abby, fervently.
+
+She had given Ellen a gold brooch for a graduating-gift, and had
+paid a week's wages for it, and gone without her new dress, and
+stayed away from the graduation, but that last Ellen never knew;
+Abby had told her that she was sick.
+
+
+That evening Robert Lloyd and his aunt Cynthia Lennox called on the
+Brewsters. Ellen was under the trees in the west yard when she heard
+a carriage stop in front of the house and saw the sitting-room lamp
+travel through the front entry to the front door. She wondered
+indifferently who it was. Carriages were not given to stopping at
+their house of an evening; then she reflected that it might be some
+one to get her mother to do some sewing, and remained still.
+
+It was a bright moonlight night; the whole yard was a lovely dapple
+of lights and shadows. Ellen had a vivid perception of the beauty of
+it all, and also that unrest and yearning which comes often to a
+young girl in moonlight. This beauty and strangeness of familiar
+scenes under the silver glamour of the moon gave her, as it were, an
+assurance of other delights and beauties of life besides those which
+she already knew, and along with the assurance came that wild
+yearning. Ellen seemed to scent her honey of life, and at the same
+time the hunger for it leaped to her consciousness. She had begun by
+thinking of what Abby had said to her that afternoon, and then the
+train of thought led her on and on. She quite ignored all about the
+sordid ways and means of existence, about toil and privation and
+children born to it. All at once the conviction was strong upon her
+that love, and love alone, was the chief end and purpose of life, at
+once its source and its result, the completion of its golden ring of
+glory. Her thought, started in whatever direction, seemed to slide
+always into that one all-comprehending circle--she could not get her
+imagination away from it. She began to realize that the mind of
+mortal man could not get away from the law which produced it. She
+began to understand dimly, as one begins to understand any great
+truth, that everything around her obeyed that unwritten fundamental
+law of love, expressed it, sounded it, down to the leaves of the
+trees casting their flickering shadows on the silver field of
+moonlight, and the long-drawn chorus of the insects of the summer
+night. She thought of Abby and how much she loved her; then that
+love seemed the step which gave her an impetus to another love. She
+began to remember Granville Joy, how he had kissed her that night
+over the fence and twice since, how he had walked home with her from
+entertainments, how he had looked at her. She saw the boy's face and
+his look as plain as if he stood before her, and her heart leaped
+with a shock of pain which was joy.
+
+Then she thought of Robert Lloyd, and his face came before her.
+Ellen had not thought as much of Robert as he of her. For some two
+weeks after his call she had watched for him to come again; she had
+put on a pretty dress and been particular about her hair, and had
+stayed at home expecting him; then when he had not come, she had put
+him out of mind resolutely. When her mother and aunt had joked her
+about him she had been sensitive and half angry. "You know it is
+nothing, mother," she said; "he only came to bring back my
+valedictory. You know he wouldn't think of me. He'll marry somebody
+like Maud Hemingway."  Maud Hemingway was the daughter of the
+leading physician in Rowe, and regarded with a mixture of spite and
+admiration by daughters of the factory operatives. Maud Hemingway
+was attending college, and rode a saddle-horse when home on her
+vacations. She had been to Europe.
+
+But that evening in the moonlight Ellen began thinking again of
+Robert Lloyd. His face came before her as plainly as Granville
+Joy's. She had arrived at that stage when life began to be as a
+picture-gallery of love. Through this and that face the goddess
+might look, and the look was what she sought; as yet, the man was a
+minor quantity.
+
+All at once it seemed to Ellen, looking at her mental picture of
+young Lloyd, that she could see love in his face yet more plainly,
+more according to her conception of it, than in the other. She began
+to build an air-castle which had no reference whatever to Robert's
+position, and to his being the nephew of the richest factory-owner
+in Rowe, and so far as that went he had not a whit the advantage of
+Granville Joy in her eyes. But Robert's face wore to her more of the
+guise of that for which the night and the moonlight, and her youth,
+had made her long. So she began innocently to imagine a meeting with
+him at a picnic which would be held some time at Liberty Park. She
+imagined their walking side by side, through a lovely dapple of
+moonlight like this, and saying things to each other. Then all at
+once the man of her dreams touched her hand in a dream, and a
+faintness swept over her. Then suddenly, gathering shape out of the
+indetermination of the shadows and the moonlight, came a man into
+the yard, and Ellen thought with awe and delight that it was he; but
+instead Granville Joy stood before her, lifting his hat above his
+soft shock of hair.
+
+"Hullo!" he said.
+
+"Good-evening," responded Ellen, and Granville Joy felt abashed. He
+lay awake half the night reflecting that he should have greeted her
+with a "Good-evening" instead of "Hullo," as he had been used to do
+in their school-days; that she was now a young lady, and that Mr.
+Lloyd had accosted her differently. Ellen rose with a feeling of
+disappointment that Granville was himself, which is the hardest
+greeting possible for a guest, involving the most subtle reproach in
+the world--the reproach for a man's own individuality.
+
+"Oh, don't get up, Ellen," the young man said, awkwardly.
+"Here--I'll sit down here on the rock."  Then he flung himself down
+on the ledge of rock which cropped out like a bare rib of the earth
+between the trees, and Ellen seated herself again in her chair.
+
+"Beautiful night, ain't it?" said Granville.
+
+Ellen noticed that Granville said "ain't" instead of "isn't,"
+according to the fashion of his own family, although he was recently
+graduated from the high-school. Ellen had separated herself,
+although with no disparaging reflections, from the language of her
+family. She also noticed that Granville presently said "wa'n't"
+instead of "wasn't."  "Hot yesterday, wa'n't it?" said he.
+
+"Yes, it was very warm," replied Ellen. That "wa'n't" seemed to
+insert a tiny wedge between them. She would have flown at any one
+who had found fault with her father and mother for saying "wa'n't,"
+but with this young man in her own rank and day it was different. It
+argued something in him, or a lack of something. An indignation all
+out of proportion to the offence seized her. It seemed to her that
+he had in this simple fashion outraged that which was infinitely
+higher than he himself. He had not lived up to her thought of him,
+and fallen short by a little slip in English which argued a slip in
+character. She wanted to reproach him sharply--to ask him if he had
+ever been to school.
+
+He noticed her manner was cool, and was as far as the antipodes from
+suspecting the cause. He never knew that he said "ain't" and
+"wa'n't," and would die not knowing. All that he looked at was the
+substance of thought behind the speech. And just then he was farther
+than ever from thinking of it, for he was single-hearted with Ellen.
+
+The boy crept nearer her on the rock with a shy, nestling motion;
+the moonlight shone full on his handsome young face, giving it a
+stern quality. "Ellen, look at here," he said.
+
+Then he stopped. Ellen waited, not dreaming what was to follow. She
+had never had a proposal; then, too, he had just been chased out of
+her mental perspective by the other man.
+
+"Look at here, Ellen," said Granville. He stopped again; then when
+he spoke his voice had an indescribably solemn, beseeching quality.
+"Oh, Ellen," he said, reaching up and catching her hand. He dragged
+himself nearer, leaned his cheek against her hand, which it seemed
+to burn; then he began kissing it with soft, pouting lips.
+
+Ellen tried to pull her hand away. "Let my hand go this minute,
+Granville Joy," she said, angrily.
+
+The boy let her hand go immediately, and stood up, leaning over her.
+
+"Don't be angry; I didn't mean any harm, Ellen," he whispered.
+
+"I shall be angry if you do such a thing again," said Ellen. "We
+aren't children; you have no right to do such a thing, and you know
+it."
+
+"But I thought maybe you wouldn't mind, Ellen," said Granville. Then
+he added, with his voice all husky with emotion and a kind of fear:
+"Ellen, you know how I feel about you. You know how I have always
+felt."
+
+Ellen made no reply. It seemed inconceivable that she for the minute
+should not know his meaning, but she was bewildered.
+
+"You know I've always counted on havin' you for my wife some day
+when we were both old enough," said the boy, "and I've gone to work
+now, and I hope to get bigger pay before long, and--"
+
+Ellen rose with sudden realization. "Granville Joy," cried she, with
+something like panic in her voice, "you must not! Oh, if I had
+known! I would not have let you finish. I would not, Granville."
+She caught his arm, and clung to it, and looked up at him pitifully.
+"You know I wouldn't have let you finish," she said. "Don't be hurt,
+Granville."
+
+The boy looked at her as if she had struck him.
+
+"Oh, Ellen," he groaned. "Oh, Ellen, I always thought you would!"
+
+"I am not going to marry anybody," said Ellen. Her voice wavered in
+spite of herself; the young man's look and voice were shaking her
+through weakness of her own nature which she did not understand, but
+which might be mightier than her strength. Something crept into her
+tone which emboldened the young man to seize her hand again. "You
+do, in spite of all you say--" he began; but just then a long shadow
+fell athwart the moonlight, and Ellen snatched her hand away
+imperceptibly, and young Lloyd stood before them.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI
+
+
+Granville Joy was employed in Lloyd's, and Robert had seen him that
+very day and spoken to him, but he did not recognize him, not until
+Ellen spoke. "This is Mr. Joy, Mr. Lloyd," she said; "perhaps you
+know him. He works in your uncle's shop."  She said it quite simply,
+as if it was a matter of course that Robert was on speaking terms
+with all the employes in his uncle's factory.
+
+Granville colored. "I saw Mr. Lloyd this afternoon in the
+cutting-room," he said, "and we had some talk together; but maybe he
+don't remember, there are so many of us."  Granville said "so many
+of us" with an indescribably bitter emphasis. Suddenly his
+gentleness seemed changed to gall. It was the terrible protest of
+one of the herd who goes along with the rest, yet realizes it, and
+looks ever out from his common mass with fierce eyes of individual
+dissent at the immutable conditions of things. Immediately, when
+Granville saw the other young man, this gentleman in his light
+summer clothes, who bore about him no stain nor odor of toil, he
+felt that here was Ellen's mate; that he was left behind. He looked
+at him, not missing a detail of his superiority, and he saw himself
+young and not ill-looking, but hopelessly common, clad in awkward
+clothes; he smelled the smell of leather that steamed up in his face
+from his raiment and his body; and he looked at Ellen, fair and
+white in her dainty muslin, and saw himself thrust aside, as it
+were, by his own judgment as to the fitness of things, but with no
+less bitterness. When he said "there are so many of us," he felt the
+impulse of revolution in his heart; that he would have liked to lead
+the "many of us" against this young aristocrat. But Robert smiled,
+though somewhat stiffly, and bowed. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Joy," he
+said; "I do remember, but for a minute I did not."
+
+"I don't wonder," said Granville, and again he repeated, "There are
+so many of us," in that sullen, bitter tone.
+
+"What is the matter with the fellow?" thought Robert; but he said,
+civilly enough; "Oh, not at all, Mr. Joy. I will admit there are a
+good many of you, as you say, but that would not prevent my
+remembering a man to whom I was speaking only a few hours ago. It
+was only the half-light, and I did not expect to see you here."
+
+"Mr. Joy is a very old friend of mine," Ellen said, quickly, with a
+painful impulse of loyalty. The moment she saw her old school-boy
+lover intimidated, and manifestly at a disadvantage before this
+elegant young gentleman, she felt a fierce instinct of partisanship.
+She stood a little nearer to him. Granville's face lightened, he
+looked at her gratefully, and Robert stared from one to the other
+doubtfully. He began to wonder if he had interrupted a love-scene,
+and was at once pained with a curious, new pain, and indignant.
+Then, too, he scarcely knew what to do. He had been sent to ask
+Ellen to come into the parlor.
+
+"My aunt is in the house," he said.
+
+"Your aunt?"
+
+"Yes, my aunt, Miss Lennox."
+
+Ellen gave a great start, and stared at him. "Does she want to see
+me?" she asked, abruptly.
+
+Robert glanced at Granville. He was afraid of being rude towards
+this possible lover, but the young man was quick to perceive the
+situation.
+
+"I guess I must be going," he said to Ellen.
+
+"Must you hurry?" she returned, in the common, polite rejoinder of
+her class in Rowe.
+
+"Yes, I guess I must," said Granville. He held out his hand towards
+Ellen, then drew it away, but she extended hers resolutely, and so
+forced his back again. "Good-night," she said, kindly, almost
+tenderly, and again Robert thought with that sinking at his heart
+that here was quite possibly the girl's lover, and all his dreams
+were thrown away.
+
+As for Granville, he glowed with a sudden triumph over the other.
+Again he became almost sure that Ellen loved him after all, that it
+was only her maiden shyness which had led her to refuse him. He
+pressed her hand hard, and held it as long as he dared; then he
+turned to Robert. "I'll bid you good-evening, sir," he said, with
+awkward dignity, and was gone.
+
+"I will go in and see your aunt," Ellen said to Robert, regarding
+him as she spoke with a startled expression. It had flashed through
+her mind that Miss Lennox had possibly come to confess the secret of
+so many years ago, and she shrank with terror as before the lowering
+of some storm of spirit. She knew how little was required to lash
+her mother's violent nature into fury. "She was not--?" she began to
+say to Robert, then she stopped; but he understood. "Don't be
+afraid, Miss Brewster," he said, kindly. "It is not a matter of
+by-gones, but the future. My aunt has a plan for you which I think
+you will like."
+
+Ellen looked at him wonderingly, but she went with him across the
+moonlit yard into the house.
+
+She found Miss Cynthia Lennox, fair and elegant in a filmy black
+gown, and a broad black hat draped with lace and violets shading her
+delicate, clear-cut face, and her father and mother. Fanny's eyes
+were red. She looked as if she had been running--in fact, one could
+easily hear her breathe across the room. "Ellen, here is Miss
+Lennox," she said. Ellen approached the lady, who rose, and the two
+shook hands. "Good-evening, Miss Brewster," said Cynthia, in the
+same tone which she might have used towards a society acquaintance.
+Ellen would never have known that she had heard the voice before. As
+she remembered it, it was full of intensest vibrations of maternal
+love and tenderness and protection beyond anything which she had
+ever heard in her own mother's voice. Now it was all gone, and also
+the old look from her eyes. Cynthia Lennox was, in fact, quite
+another woman to the young girl from what she had been to the child.
+In truth, she cared not one whit for Ellen, but she was possessed
+with a stern desire of atonement, and far stronger than her love was
+the appreciation of what that mother opposite must have suffered
+during that day and night when she had forcibly kept her treasure.
+The agony of that she could present to her consciousness very
+vividly, but she could not awaken the old love which had been the
+baby's for this young girl. Cynthia felt much more affection for
+Fanny than for Ellen. When she had unfolded her plan for sending
+Ellen to college, and Fanny had almost gone hysterical with delight,
+she found it almost impossible to keep her tears back. She knew so
+acutely how this other woman felt that she almost seemed to lose her
+own individuality. She began to be filled with a vicarious adoration
+of Ellen, which was, however, dissipated the moment she actually saw
+her. She realized that this grown-up girl, who could no longer be
+cuddled and cradled, was nothing to her, but her sympathy with the
+mother remained.
+
+Ellen remained standing after she had greeted Cynthia. Robert went
+over to the mantle-piece and stood leaning against it. He was
+completely puzzled and disturbed by the whole affair. Ellen looked
+at Cynthia, then at her parents. "Ellen, come here, child," said her
+father, suddenly, and Ellen went over to him, sitting on the plush
+sofa beside her mother.
+
+Andrew reached up and took hold of Ellen's hands, and drew her down
+on his knee as if she had been a child. "Ellen, look here," he said,
+in an intense, almost solemn voice, "father has got something to
+tell you."
+
+Fanny began to weep almost aloud. Cynthia looked straight ahead,
+keeping her features still with an effort. Robert studied the carpet
+pattern.
+
+"Look here, Ellen," said Andrew; "you know that father has always
+wanted to do everything for you, but he ain't able to do all he
+would like to. God hasn't prospered him, and it seems likely that he
+won't be able to do any more than he has done, if so much, in the
+years to come. You know father has always wanted to send you to
+college, and give you an extra education so you could teach in a
+school where you would make a good living, and now here Miss Lennox
+says she heard your composition, and she has heard a good deal about
+you from Mr. Harris, how well you stood in the high-school, and she
+says she is willing to send you to Vassar College."
+
+Ellen turned pale. She looked long at her father, whose pathetic,
+worn, half-triumphant, half-pitiful face was so near her own; then
+she looked at Cynthia, then back again. "To Vassar College?" she
+said.
+
+"Yes, Ellen, to Vassar College, and she offers to clothe you while
+you are there, but we thank her, and tell her that ain't necessary.
+We can furnish your clothes."
+
+"Yes, we can," said Fanny, in a sobbing voice, but with a flash of
+pride.
+
+"Well, what do you say to it, Ellen?" asked Andrew, and he asked it
+with the expression of a martyr. At that moment indescribable pain
+was the uppermost sensation in his heart, over all his triumph and
+gladness for Ellen. First came the anticipated agony of parting with
+her for the greater part of four years, then the pain of letting
+another do for his daughter what he wished to do himself. No man
+would ever look in Ellen's eyes with greater love and greater
+shrinking from the pain which might come of love than Andrew at that
+moment.
+
+"But--" said Ellen; then she stopped.
+
+"What, Ellen?"
+
+"Can you spare me for so long? Ought I not to be earning money
+before that, if you don't have much work?"
+
+"I guess we can spare you as far as all that goes," cried Andrew. "I
+guess we can. I guess we don't want you to support us."
+
+"I rather guess we don't," cried Fanny.
+
+Ellen looked at her father a moment longer with an adorable look,
+which Robert saw with a sidewise glance of his downcast eyes, then
+at her mother. Then she slid from her father's knee and crossed the
+room and stood before Cynthia. "I don't know how to thank you
+enough," she said, "but I thank you very much, and not only for
+myself but for them"; she made a slight, graceful, backward motion
+of her shoulder towards her parents. "I will study hard and try to
+do you credit," said she. There was something about Ellen's direct,
+childlike way of looking at her, and her clear speech, which brought
+back to Cynthia the little girl of so many years ago. A warm flush
+came over her delicate cheeks; her eyes grew bright with tenderness.
+
+[Illustration: I'll study hard and try to do you credit]
+
+"I have no doubt as to your doing your best, my dear," she said,
+"and it gives me great pleasure to do this for you."
+
+With that, said with a graceful softness which was charming, she
+made as if to rise, but Ellen still stood before her. She had
+something more to say. "If ever I am able," she said--"and I shall
+be able some day if I have my health--I will repay you."  Ellen
+spoke with the greatest sweetness, yet with an inflexibility of
+pride evident in her face. Cynthia smiled. "Very well," she said,
+"if you feel better to leave it in that way. If ever you are able
+you shall repay me; in the mean time I consider that I am amply paid
+in the pleasure it gives me to do it."  Cynthia held out her slender
+hand to Ellen, who took it gratefully, yet a little constrainedly.
+
+In the opposite corner the doll sat staring at them with eyes of
+blank blue and her vacuous smile. A vague sense of injury was over
+Ellen, in spite of her delight and her gratitude--a sense of injury
+which she could not fathom, and for which she chided herself.
+However, Andrew felt it also.
+
+After this surprising benefactress and Robert had gone, after
+repeated courtesies and assurances of obligation on both sides,
+Andrew turned to Fanny. "What does she do it for?" he asked.
+
+"Hush; she'll hear you."
+
+"I can't help it. What does she do it for? Ellen isn't anything to
+her."
+
+Fanny looked at him with a meaning smile and nod which made her
+tear-stained face fairly grotesque.
+
+"What do you mean lookin' that way?" demanded Andrew.
+
+"Oh, you wait and see," said Fanny, with meaning, and would say no
+more. She was firm in her conclusion that Cynthia was educating
+their girl to marry her favorite nephew, but that never occurred to
+Andrew. He continued to feel, while supremely grateful and
+overwhelmed with delight at this good fortune for Ellen, the
+distrust and resentment of a proud soul under obligation for which
+he sees no adequate reason, and especially when it is directed
+towards a beloved one to whom he would fain give of his own strength
+and treasure.
+
+As for Ellen, she was in a tumult of wonder and delight, but when
+she looked at the doll in her corner there came again that vague
+sense of injury, and she felt again as if in some way she were being
+robbed instead of being made the object of benefit.
+
+After Ellen had gone to bed that night she wondered if she ought to
+go to college, and maybe gain thereby a career which was beyond
+anything her own loved ones had known, and if it were not better for
+her to go to work in the shop after all.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII
+
+
+When Mrs. Zelotes was made acquainted with the plan for sending
+Ellen to Vassar she astonished Fanny. Fanny ran over the next
+morning, after Andrew had gone to work, to tell her mother-in-law.
+She sat a few minutes in the sitting-room, where the old lady was
+knitting, before she unfolded the burden of her errand.
+
+"Cynthia Lennox came to our house last night with Robert Lloyd," she
+said, finally.
+
+"Did they?" remarked Mrs. Zelotes, who had known perfectly well that
+they had come, having recognized the Lennox carriage in the
+moonlight, and having been ever since devoured with curiosity, which
+she would have died rather than betray.
+
+"Yes, they did," said Fanny. Then she added, after a pause which
+gave wonderful impressiveness to the news, "Cynthia Lennox wants to
+send Ellen to college--to Vassar College."
+
+Then she jumped, for the old woman seemed to spring at her like
+released wire.
+
+"Send her to college!" said she. "What does she want to send her to
+college for? What right has Cynthia Lennox got to send Ellen
+Brewster anywhere?"
+
+Fanny stared at her dazedly.
+
+"What right has she got interfering?" demanded Mrs. Zelotes again.
+
+"Why," replied Fanny, stammering, "she thought Ellen was so smart.
+She heard her valedictory, and the school-teacher had talked about
+her, what a good scholar she was, and she thought it would be nice
+for her to go to college, and she should be very much obliged
+herself, and feel that we were granting her a great pleasure and
+privilege if we allowed her to send Ellen to Vassar."
+
+All unconsciously Fanny imitated to the life Cynthia's soft elegance
+of speech and language.
+
+"Pshaw!" said Mrs. Zelotes; but still she said it not so much
+angrily as doubtfully. "It's the first time I ever heard of Cynthia
+Lennox doing such a thing as that," said she. "I never knew she was
+given to sending girls to college. I never heard of her giving
+anything to anybody."
+
+Fanny looked mysteriously at her mother-in-law with sudden
+confidence. "Look here," she said.
+
+"What?"
+
+The two women looked at each other, and neither said a word, but the
+meaning of one flashed to the other like telegraphy.
+
+"Do you s'pose that's it?" said Mrs. Zelotes, her old face relaxing
+into half-shamed, half-pleased smiles.
+
+"Yes, I do," said Fanny, emphatically.
+
+"You do?"
+
+"Yes, I 'ain't a doubt of it."
+
+"He did act as if he couldn't take his eyes off her at the
+exhibition," agreed Mrs. Zelotes, reflectively; "mebbe you're
+right."
+
+"I know I'm right just as well as if I'd seen it."
+
+"Well, mebbe you are. What does Andrew say?"
+
+"Oh, he wishes he was the one to do it."
+
+"Of course he does--he's a Brewster," said his mother.
+
+"But he's got sense enough to be pleased that Ellen has got the
+chance."
+
+"He ain't any more pleased than I be at anything that's a good
+chance for Ellen," said the grandmother; but all the same, after
+Fanny had gone, her joy had a sharp sting for her. She was not one
+who could take a gift to heart without feeling its sharp edge.
+
+Had Ellen's sentiment been analyzed, she felt in something the same
+way that her grandmother did. However, she had begun to dream
+definitely about Robert, and the reflection had come, too, that this
+might make her more his equal, as nearly his equal as Maud
+Hemingway.
+
+Maud Hemingway went to college, and so would she. Of the minor
+accessories of wealth she thought not so much. She looked at her
+hands, which were very small and as delicately white as flowers, and
+reflected with a sense of comfort, of which she was ashamed, that
+she would not need ever to stain them with leather now. She looked
+at the homeward stream of dingy girls from the shops, and thought
+with a sense of escape that she would never have to join them; but
+she was conscious of loving Abby better, and Maria, who had also
+entered Lloyd's. Abby, when she heard the news about Vassar, had
+looked at her with a sort of fierce exultation.
+
+"Thank the Lord, you're out of it, anyhow!" she cried, fervently, as
+a soul might in the midst of flames.
+
+Maria had smiled at her with the greatest sweetness and a certain
+wistfulness. Maria was growing delicate, and seemed to inherit her
+father's consumptive tendencies.
+
+"I am so glad, Ellen," she said. Then she added, "I suppose we
+sha'n't see so much of you."
+
+"Of course we sha'n't, Maria Atkins," interposed Abby, "and it won't
+be fitting we should. It won't be best for Ellen to associate with
+shop-girls when she's going to Vassar College."
+
+But Ellen had cast an impetuous arm around a neck of each.
+
+"If ever I do such a thing as that!" said she. "If ever I turn a
+cold shoulder to either of you for such a reason as that! What's
+Vassar College to hearts? That's at the bottom of everything in this
+world, anyhow. I guess you'll see it won't make any difference
+unless you keep on thinking such things. If you do--if you think I
+can do anything like that--I won't love you so much."
+
+Ellen faced them both with gathering indignation. Suddenly this
+ignoble conception of herself in the minds of her friends stung her
+to resentment. But Abby seized her in two wiry little arms.
+
+"I never did, I never did!" she cried. "Don't I know what you are
+made of, Ellen Brewster? Don't you think I know? But after all, it
+might be better for you if you were worse. That was all I meant."
+
+Ellen, one afternoon, set out in her pretty challis, a white ground
+with long sprays of blue flowers running over it, and a blue ribbon
+at her neck and waist, and her leghorn hat with white ribbons, and a
+knot of forget-me-nots under the brim. She wore her one pair of nice
+gloves, too, but those she did not put on until she reached the
+corner of the street where Cynthia lived. Then she rubbed them on
+carefully, holding up her challis skirts under one arm.
+
+Cynthia was at home, seated on the back veranda, in a rattan chair,
+with a book which she was not reading. Ellen stood before her, in
+her cheap attire, which she wore with an air which seemed to make it
+precious, such faith she had in it. Ellen regarded her coarse
+blue-flowered challis with an innocent admiration which seemed
+almost able to glorify it into silk. Cynthia took in at a glance the
+exceeding commonness of it all; she saw the hat, the like of which
+could be seen in the milliners' windows at fabulously low prices;
+the foam of spurious lace and the spray of wretched blue flowers
+made her shudder. "The poor child, she must have something better
+than that," she thought, and insensibly she also thought that the
+girl must lose her evident faith in the splendor of such attire;
+must change her standard of taste. She rose and greeted Ellen
+sweetly, though somewhat reservedly. When the two were seated
+opposite each other, Cynthia tried to talk pleasantly, but all the
+time with a sub-consciousness as one will have of some deformity
+which must be ignored. The girl looked so common to her in this
+array that she began to have a hopeless feeling of disgust about it
+all. Was it not manifestly unwise to try to elevate a girl who took
+such evident satisfaction in a gown like that, in a hat like that?
+Ellen wore her watch and chain ostentatiously. The watch was too
+large for a chatelaine, but she had looped the heavy chain across
+her bosom, and pinned it with the brooch which Abby Atkins had given
+her, so it hung suspended. Cynthia riveted her eyes helplessly upon
+that as she talked.
+
+"I hope you are having a pleasant vacation," said she, as she looked
+at the watch, and all at once Ellen knew.
+
+Ellen replied that she was having a very pleasant vacation, then she
+plunged at once into the subject of her call, though with inward
+trembling.
+
+"Miss Lennox," said she--and she followed the lines of a little
+speech which she had been rehearsing to herself all the way
+there--"I am very grateful to you for what you propose doing for me.
+It will make a difference to me during my whole life. I cannot begin
+to tell you how grateful I am."
+
+"I am very grateful to be allowed to do it," replied Cynthia, with
+her unfailing refrain of gentle politeness, but a kindly glance was
+in her eyes. Something in the girl's tone touched her. It was
+exceedingly earnest, with the simple earnestness of childhood.
+Moreover, Ellen was regarding her with great, steadfast, serious
+eyes, like a baby's who shrinks and yet will have her will of
+information.
+
+"I wanted to say," Ellen continued--and her voice became insensibly
+hushed, and she cast a glance around at the house and the leafy
+grounds, as if to be sure that no one was within hearing--"that I
+should never under any circumstances have said anything regarding
+what happened so long ago. That I never have and never should have,
+that I never thought of doing such a thing."
+
+Then the elder woman's face flushed a burning red, and she knew at
+once what the girl had suspected. "You might proclaim it on the
+house-tops if it would please you," she cried out, vehemently. "If
+you think--if you think--"
+
+"Oh, I do not!" cried Ellen, in an agony of pleading. "Indeed, I do
+not. It was only that--I--feared lest you might think I would be
+mean enough to tell."
+
+"I would have told, myself, long ago if there had been only myself
+to consider," said Cynthia, still red with anger, and her voice
+strained. All at once she seemed to Ellen more like the woman of her
+childhood. "Yes, I would," said she, hotly--"I will now."
+
+"Oh, I beg you not!" cried Ellen.
+
+"I will go with you this minute and tell your mother," Cynthia said,
+rising.
+
+Ellen sprang up and moved towards her as if to push her back in her
+chair. "Oh, please don't!" she cried. "Please don't. You don't know
+mother; and it would do no good. It was only because I wondered if
+you could have thought I would tell, if I would be so mean."
+
+"And you thought, perhaps, I was bribing you not to tell, with
+Vassar College," Cynthia said, suddenly. "Well, you have suspected
+me of something which was undeserved."
+
+"I am very sorry," Ellen said. "I did not suspect, really, but I do
+not know why you do this for me."  She said the last with her steady
+eyes of interrogation on Cynthia's face.
+
+"You know the reasons I have given."
+
+"I do not think they were the only ones," Ellen replied, stoutly. "I
+do not think my valedictory was so good as to warrant so much, and I
+do not think I am so smart as to warrant so much, either."
+
+Cynthia laughed. She sat down again. "Well," she said, "you are not
+one to swallow praise greedily."  Then her tone changed. "I owe it
+to you to tell you why I wish to do this," she said, "and I will.
+You are an honest girl, with yourself as well as with other
+people--too honest, perhaps, and you deserve that I should be honest
+with you. I am not doing this for you in the least, my dear."
+
+Ellen stared at her.
+
+"No, I am not," repeated Cynthia. "You are a very clever, smart
+girl, I am sure, and it will be a nice thing for you to have a
+better education, and be able to take a higher place in the world,
+but I am not doing it for you. When you were a little child I would
+have done everything, given my life almost, for you, but I never
+care so much for children when they grow up. I am not doing this for
+you, but for your mother."
+
+"My mother?" said Ellen.
+
+"Yes, your mother. I know what agony your mother must have been in,
+that time when I kept you, and I want to atone in some way. I think
+this is a good way. I don't think you need to hesitate about letting
+me do it. You also owe a little atonement to your mother. It was not
+right for you to run away, in the first place."
+
+"Yes, I was very naughty to run away," Ellen said, starting. She
+rose, and held out her hand. "I hope you will forgive me," she said.
+"I am very grateful, and it will make my father and mother happier
+than anything else could, but indeed I don't think--it is so long
+ago--that there was any need--"
+
+"I do, for the sake of my own distress over it," Cynthia said,
+shortly. "Suppose, now, we drop the subject, my dear. There is a
+taint in the New England blood, and you have it, and you must fight
+it. It is a suspicion of the motives of a good deed which will often
+poison all the good effect from it. I don't know where the taint
+came from. Perhaps the Pilgrim Fathers', being necessarily always on
+the watch for the savage behind his gifts, have affected their
+descendants. Anyway, it is there. I suppose I have it."
+
+"I am very sorry," said Ellen.
+
+"I also am sorry," said Cynthia. "I did you a wrong, and your mother
+a wrong, years ago. I wonder at myself now, but you don't know the
+temptation. You will never know how you looked to me that night."
+
+Cynthia's voice took on a tone of ineffable tenderness and yearning.
+Ellen saw again the old expression in her face; suddenly she looked
+as before, young and beautiful, and full of a boundless attraction.
+The girl's heart fairly leaped towards her with an impulse of
+affection. She could in that minute have fallen at her feet, have
+followed her to the end of the world. A great love and admiration
+which had gotten its full growth in a second under the magic of
+a look and a tone shook her from head to foot. She went close to
+Cynthia, and leaned over her, putting her round, young face down to
+the elder woman's. "Oh, I love you, I love you," whispered Ellen,
+with a fervor which was strange to her.
+
+But Cynthia only kissed her lightly on her cheek, and pushed her
+away softly. "Thank you, my dear," she said. "I am glad you came
+and spoke to me frankly, and I am glad we have come to an
+understanding."
+
+Ellen, after she had taken her leave, was more in love than she had
+ever been in her life, and with another woman. She thought of
+Cynthia with adoration; she dreamed about her; the feeling of
+receiving a benefit from her hand became immeasurably sweet.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII
+
+
+Ellen, under the influence of that old fascination which Cynthia had
+exerted over her temporarily in her childhood, and which had now
+assumed a new lease of life, would have loved to see her every day,
+but along with the fascination came a great timidity and fear of
+presuming. She felt instinctively that the fascination was an
+involuntary thing on Cynthia's part. She kept repeating to herself
+what she had said, that she was not sending her to Vassar because
+she loved her. Strangely enough, this did not make Ellen unhappy in
+the least, she was quite content to do all the loving and adoring
+herself. She made a sort of divinity of the older woman, and who
+expects a divinity to step down from her marble heights, and love
+and caress? Ellen began to remember all Cynthia's ways and looks, as
+a scholar remembers with a view to imitation. She became her
+disciple. She began to move like Cynthia, and to speak like her,
+though she did not know it. Her imitation was totally unconscious;
+indeed, it was hardly to be called imitation; it was rather the
+following out of the leading of that image of Cynthia which was
+always present before her mind. Ellen saw Cynthia very seldom. Once
+or twice she arrayed herself in her best and made a formal call of
+gratitude, and once Fanny went with her. Ellen saw the incongruity
+of her mother in Cynthia's drawing-room with a torture which she
+never forgot. Going home she clung hard to her mother's arm all the
+way. She was fairly fierce with love and loyalty. She was so
+indignant with herself that she had seen the incongruity. "I think
+our parlor is enough sight prettier than hers," she said, defiantly,
+when they reached home and the hideous lamp was lighted. Ellen
+looked around the ornate room, and then at her mother, as with a
+challenge in behalf of loyalty, and of that which underlies
+externals.
+
+"I rather guess it is," agreed Fanny, happily, "and I don't s'pose
+it cost half so much. I dare say that mat on her hearth cost as much
+as all our plush furniture and the carpet, and it is a dreadful
+dull, homely thing."
+
+"Yes, it is," said Ellen.
+
+"I wish I'd been able to keep my hands as white as Miss Lennox's,
+an' I wish I'd had time to speak so soft and slow," said Fanny,
+wistfully. Then Ellen had her by both shoulders, and was actually
+shaking her with a passion to which she very seldom gave rein.
+
+"Mother," she cried--"mother, you know better, you know there is
+nobody in the whole world to me like my own mother, and never will
+be. It isn't being beautiful, nor speaking in a soft voice, nor
+dressing well, it's the being you--_you_. You know I love you best,
+mother, you know, and I love my own home best, and everything that
+is my own best, and I always will."  Ellen was almost weeping.
+
+"You silly child," said Fanny, tenderly. "Mother knows you love her
+best, but she wishes for your sake, and especially since you are
+going to have advantages that she never had, that she was a little
+different."
+
+"I don't, I don't," said Ellen, fiercely. "I want you just as you
+are, just exactly as you are, mother."
+
+Fanny laughed tearfully, and rubbed her coarse black head against
+Ellen's lovingly with a curious, cat-like motion, then bade her run
+away or she would not get her dress done. A dressmaker was coming
+for a whole week to the Brewster house to make Ellen's outfit. Mrs.
+Zelotes had furnished most of the materials, and Andrew was to pay
+the dressmaker. "You can take a little more of that money out of the
+bank," Fanny said. "I want Ellen to go looking so she won't be
+ashamed before the other girls, and I don't want Cynthia Lennox
+thinking she ain't well enough dressed, and we ought to have let her
+do it. As for being beholden to her for Ellen's clothes, I won't."
+
+"I rather guess not," said Andrew, but he was sick at heart. Only
+that afternoon the man from whom he had borrowed the money to buy
+Ellen's watch and chain had asked him for it. He had not a cent in
+advance for his weekly pay; he could not see where the money for
+Ellen's clothes was coming from. It was long since the "Golden Hope"
+had been quoted in the stock-list, but the next morning Andrew
+purchased a morning paper. He had stopped taking one regularly. He
+put on his spectacles, and spread out the paper in his shaking
+hands, and scrutinized the stock-list eagerly, but he could not find
+what he wanted. The "Golden Hope" had long since dropped to a still
+level below all record of fluctuations. A young man passing to his
+place at the bench looked over his shoulder. "Counting up your
+dividends, Brewster?" he asked, with a grin.
+
+Andrew folded up the paper gloomily and made no reply.
+
+"Irish dividends, maybe," said the man, with a chuckle at his own
+wit, and a backward roll of a facetious eye.
+
+"Oh, shut up, you're too smart to live," said the man who stood next
+at the bench. He was a young fellow who had been a school-mate of
+Ellen in the grammar-school. He had left to go to work when she had
+entered the high-school. His name was Dixon. He was wiry and alert,
+with a restless sparkle of bright eyes in a grimy face, and he cut
+the leather with lightning-like rapidity. Dixon had always thought
+Ellen the most beautiful girl in Rowe. He looked after Andrew with a
+sharp pain of sympathy when he went away with the roll of newspaper
+sticking out of his pocket.
+
+"Poor old chap," he said to the facetious man, thrusting his face
+angrily towards him. "He has had a devil of a time since he begun to
+grow old. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Wait till you begin
+to drop behind. It's what's bound to come to the whole boiling of
+us."
+
+"Mind your jaw," said the first man, with a scowl.
+
+"You'd better mind yours," said Dixon, slashing furiously at the
+leather.
+
+That noon Dixon offered Andrew, shamefacedly, taking him aside lest
+the other men see, a piece of pie of a superior sort which his
+mother had put into his dinner bag, but Andrew thanked him kindly
+and refused it. He could eat nothing whatever that noon. He kept
+thinking about the dressmaker, and how Fanny would ask him again to
+take some of that money out of the bank to pay her, and how the
+money was already taken out.
+
+That evening, when he sat down to the tea-table furnished with the
+best china and frosted cake in honor of the dressmaker, and heard
+the radiant talk about Ellen's new frills and tucks, he had a cold
+feeling at his heart. He was ashamed to look at the dressmaker.
+
+"You won't know your daughter when we get her fixed up for Vassar,"
+she told Andrew, with a smirk which covered her face with a network
+of wrinkles under her blond fluff of hair.
+
+"Do have some more cake, Miss Higgins," said Fanny. She was radiant.
+The image of her daughter in her new gowns had gone far to
+recompense her for all her disappointments in life, and they had not
+been few. "What, after all, did it matter?" she asked herself, "if a
+woman was growing old, if she had to work hard, if she did not know
+where the next dollar was coming from, if all the direct personal
+savor was fast passing out of existence, when one had a daughter who
+looked like that?"  Ellen, in a new blue dress, was ravishing. The
+mother looked at her when she was trying it on, with the possession
+of love, and the dressmaker as if she herself had created her.
+
+After supper Ellen had to try on the dress again for her father, and
+turn about slowly that he might see all its fine points.
+
+"There, what do you think of that, Andrew?" asked Fanny,
+triumphantly.
+
+"Ain't she a lady?" asked the dressmaker.
+
+"It is very pretty," said Andrew, smiling with gloomy eyes. Then he
+heaved a great sigh, and went out of the south door to the steps.
+"Your father is tired to-night," Fanny said to Ellen with a meaning
+of excuse for the dressmaker.
+
+The dressmaker reflected shrewdly on Andrew's sigh when she was on
+her way home. "Men don't sigh that way unless there's money to pay,"
+she thought. "I don't believe but he has been speculating."  Then
+she wondered if there was any doubt about her getting her pay, and
+concluded that she would ask for it from day to day to make sure.
+
+So the next night after tea she asked, with one of her smirks of
+amiability, if it would be convenient for Mrs. Brewster to pay her
+that night. "I wouldn't ask for it until the end of the week," said
+she, "but I have a bill to pay."  She said "bill" with a murmur
+which carried conviction of its deception. Fanny flushed angrily.
+"Of course," said she, "Mr. Brewster can pay you just as well every
+night if you need it."  Fanny emphasized the "need" maliciously.
+Then she turned to Andrew. "Andrew," said she, "Miss Higgins needs
+the money, if you can pay her for yesterday and to-day."
+
+Andrew turned pale. "Yes, of course," he stammered. "How much?"
+
+"Six dollars," said Fanny, and in her tone was unmistakable meaning
+of the dearness of the price. The dressmaker was flushed, but her
+thin mouth was set hard. It was as much as to say, "Well, I don't
+care so long as I get my money."  She was unmarried, and her lonely
+condition had worked up her spirit into a strong attitude of
+defiance against all masculine odds. She had once considered men
+from a matrimonial point of view. She had wondered if this one and
+that one wanted to marry her. Now she was past that, and considered
+with equal sharpness if this one or that one wanted to cheat her.
+She had missed men's love through some failing either of theirs or
+hers. She did not know which, but she was determined that she would
+not lose money. So she bore Fanny's insulting emphasis with
+rigidity, and waited for her pay.
+
+Andrew pulled out his old pocket-book, and counted the bills. Miss
+Higgins saw that he took every bill in it, unless there were some in
+another compartment, and of that she could not be quite sure. But
+Andrew knew. He would not have another penny until the next week
+when he received his pay. In the meantime there was a bill due at
+the grocery store, and one at the market, and there was the debt for
+Ellen's watch. However, he felt as if he would rather owe every man
+in Rowe than this one small, sharp woman. He felt the scorn lurking
+within her like a sting. She seemed to him like some venomous
+insect. He went out to the doorstep again, and wondered if she would
+want her pay the next night when she went home.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV
+
+
+Ellen had a flower-garden behind the house, and a row of sweet-peas
+which was her pride. It had occurred to her that she might venture,
+although Cynthia Lennox had her great garden and conservatories, to
+carry her a bunch of these sweet-peas. She had asked her mother what
+she thought about it. "Why, of course, carry her some if you want
+to," said Fanny. "I don't see why you shouldn't. I dare say she's
+got sweet-peas, but yours are uncommon handsome, and, anyway, it
+ought to please her to have some given her. It ain't altogether
+what's given, it's the giving."
+
+So Ellen had cut a great bouquet of the delicate flowers, selecting
+the shades carefully, and set forth. She was as guiltily conscious
+as a lover that she was making an excuse to see Miss Lennox. She
+hurried along in delight and trepidation, her great bouquet shedding
+a penetrating fragrance around her, her face gleaming white out of
+the dusk. She had to pass Granville Joy's house on her way, and saw
+with some dismay, as she drew near, a figure leaning over the gate.
+
+He pushed open the gate when she drew near, and stood waiting.
+
+"Good-evening, Ellen," he said. He was mindful not to say "Hullo"
+again. He bowed with a piteous imitation of Robert Lloyd, but Ellen
+did not notice it.
+
+"Good-evening," she returned, rather stiffly, then she added, in a
+very gentle voice, to make amends, that it was a beautiful night.
+
+The young man cast an appreciative glance at the crescent moon in
+the jewel-like blue overhead, and at the soft shadows of the trees.
+
+"Yes, beautiful," he replied, with a sort of gratitude, as if the
+girl had praised him instead of the night.
+
+"May I walk along with you?" he asked, falling into step with her.
+
+"I am going to take these sweet-peas to Miss Lennox," said Ellen,
+without replying directly.
+
+She was in terror lest Granville should renew his appeal of a few
+weeks before, and she was in terror of her own pity for him, and
+also of that mysterious impulse and longing which sometimes seized
+her to her own wonder and discomfiture. Sometimes, in thinking of
+Granville Joy, and his avowal of love, and the touch of his hand on
+hers, and his lips on hers, she felt, although she knew she did not
+love him, a softening of her heart and a quickening of her pulse
+which made her wonder as to her next movement, if it might be
+something which she had not planned. And always, after thinking of
+Granville, she thought of Robert Lloyd; some mysterious sequence
+seemed to be established between the two in the girl's mind, though
+she was not in love with either.
+
+Ellen was just at that period almost helpless before the demands of
+her own nature. No great stress in her life had occurred to awaken
+her to a stanchness either of resistance or yielding. She was in the
+full current of her own emotions, which, added to a goodly flood
+inherited from the repressed passion of New England ancestors, had a
+strong pull upon her feet. Sooner or later she would be given that
+hard shake of life which precipitates and organizes in all strong
+natures, but just now she was in a ferment. She walked along under
+the crescent moon, with the young man at her side whose every
+thought and imagination was dwelling upon her with love. She was
+conscious of a tendency of her own imagination in his direction, or
+rather in the direction of the love and passion which he
+represented, and all the time her heart was filled with the ideal
+image of another woman. She was prostrated with that hero-worship
+which belongs to young and virgin souls, and yet she felt the
+drawing of that other admiration which is more earthly and more
+fascinating, as it shows the jewel tints in one's own soul as well
+as in the other.
+
+As for Granville Joy, who had scrubbed his hands and face well with
+scented soap to take away the odor of the leather, and put on a
+clean shirt and collar, being always prepared for the possibility of
+meeting this dainty young girl whom he loved, he walked along by her
+side, casting, from time to time, glances which were pure admiration
+at the face over the great bunch of sweet-peas.
+
+"Don't you want me to carry them for you?" he asked.
+
+"No, thank you," replied Ellen. "They are nothing to carry."
+
+"They're real pretty flowers," said Granville, timidly.
+
+"Yes, I think they are."
+
+"Mother planted some, but hers didn't come up. Mother has got some
+beautiful nasturtiums. Perhaps you would like some," he said,
+eagerly.
+
+"No, thank you, I have some myself," Ellen said, rather coldly. "I'm
+just as much obliged to you."
+
+Granville quivered a little and shrank as a dog might under a blow.
+He saw this dainty girl-shape floating along at his side in a
+flutter of wonderful draperies, one hand holding up her skirts with
+maddening revelations of whiteness. If a lily could hold up her
+petals out of the dust she might do it in the same fashion as Ellen
+held her skirts, with no coarse clutching nor crumpling, not
+immodestly, but rather with disclosures of modesty itself. Ellen's
+wonderful daintiness was one of her chief charms. There was an
+immaculateness about her attire and her every motion which seemed to
+extend to her very soul, and hedged her about with the lure of
+unapproachableness. It was more that than her beauty which roused
+the imagination and quickened the pulses of a young man regarding
+her.
+
+Granville Joy did not feel the earth beneath his feet as he walked
+with Ellen. The scent of the sweet-peas came in his face, he heard
+the soft rustle of Ellen's skirts and his own heart-beats. She was
+very silent, since she did not wish him to go with her, though she
+was all the time reproaching herself for it. Granville kept casting
+about for something to say which should ingratiate him with her. He
+was resolved to say nothing of love to her.
+
+"It is a beautiful night," he said.
+
+"Yes, it is," agreed Ellen, and she looked at the moon. She felt the
+boy's burning, timid, worshipful eyes on her face. She trembled, and
+yet she was angry and annoyed. She felt in an undefined fashion that
+she herself was the summer night and the flowers and the crescent
+moon, and all that was fair and beautiful in the whole world to this
+other soul, and shame seized her instead of pride. He seemed to
+force her to a sight of her own pettiness, as is always the case
+when love is not fully returned. She made an impatient motion with
+the shoulder next Granville, and walked faster.
+
+"You said you were going to Miss Lennox's," he remarked, anxiously,
+feeling that in some way he had displeased her.
+
+"Yes, to carry her some sweet-peas."
+
+"She must have been real good-looking when she was young," Granville
+said, injudiciously.
+
+"When she was young," retorted Ellen, angrily. "She is beautiful
+now. There is not another woman in Rowe as beautiful as she is."
+
+"Well, she is good-looking enough," agreed Granville, with
+unreasoning jealousy. He had not heard of Ellen's good fortune. His
+mother had not told him. She was a tenderly sentimental woman, and
+had always had her fancies with regard to her son and Ellen
+Brewster. When she heard the news she reflected that it would
+perhaps remove the girl from her boy immeasurably, that he would be
+pained, so she said nothing. Every night when he came home she had
+watched his face to see if he had heard.
+
+Now Ellen told him. "You know what Miss Cynthia Lennox is going to
+do for me," she said, abruptly, almost boastfully, she was so eager
+in her partisanship of Cynthia.
+
+Granville looked at her blankly. They were coming into the crowded,
+brilliantly lighted main street of the city, and their two faces
+were quite plain to each other's eyes.
+
+"No, I don't," said he. "What is it, Ellen?"
+
+"She is going to send me to Vassar College."
+
+Granville's face whitened perceptibly. There was a queer sound in
+his throat.
+
+"To Vassar College!" he repeated.
+
+"Yes, to Vassar College. Then I shall be able to get a good school,
+and teach, and help father and mother."
+
+Granville continued to look at her, and suddenly an intense pity
+sprang into life in the girl's heart. She felt as if she were
+looking at some poor little child, instead of a stalwart young man.
+
+"Don't look so, Granville," she said, softly.
+
+"Of course I am glad at any good fortune which can come to you,
+Ellen," Granville said then, huskily. His lips quivered a little,
+but his eyes on her face were brave and faithful. Suddenly Ellen
+seemed to see in this young man a counterpart of her own father.
+Granville had a fine, high forehead and contemplative outlook. He
+had been a good scholar. Many said that it was a pity he had to
+leave school and go to work. It had been the same with her father.
+Andrew had always looked immeasurably above his labor. She seemed to
+see Granville Joy in the future just such a man, a finer animal
+harnessed to the task of a lower, and harnessed in part by his own
+loving faithfulness towards others. Ellen had often reflected that,
+if it hadn't been for her and her mother, her father would not have
+been obliged to work so hard. Now in Granville she saw another man
+whom love would hold to the ploughshare. A great impulse of loyalty
+as towards her own came over her.
+
+"It won't make any difference between me and my old friends if I do
+go to Vassar College," she said, without reflecting on the dangerous
+encouragement of it.
+
+"You can't get into another track of life without its making a
+difference," returned Granville, soberly. "But I am glad. God knows
+I'm glad, Ellen. I dare say it is better for you than if--"  He
+stopped then and seemed all at once to see projected on his mirror
+of the future this dainty, exquisite girl, with her fine intellect,
+dragging about a poor house, with wailing children in arm and at
+heel, and suddenly a great courage of renunciation came over him.
+
+"It _is_ better, Ellen," he said, in a loud voice, like a hero's, as
+if he were cheering his own better impulses on to victory over his
+own passions. "It is better for a girl like you, than to--"
+
+Ellen knew that he meant to say, "to marry a fellow like me."  Ellen
+looked at him, the sturdy backward fling of his head and shoulders,
+and the honest regard of his pained yet unflinching eyes, and a
+great weakness of natural longing for that which she was even now
+deprecating nearly overswept her. She was nearer loving him that
+moment than ever before. She realized something in him which could
+command love--the renunciation of love for love's sake.
+
+"I shall never forget my old friends, whatever happens," she said,
+in a trembling voice, and it might have all been different had they
+not then arrived at Cynthia Lennox's.
+
+"Shall I wait and go home with you, Ellen?" Granville asked,
+timidly.
+
+"No, thank you. I don't know how long I shall stay," Ellen replied.
+"You are real kind, but I am not a bit afraid."
+
+"It is sort of lonesome going past the shops."
+
+"I can take a car," Ellen said. She extended her hand to Granville,
+and he grasped it firmly.
+
+"Good-night, Ellen; I am always glad of any good fortune that may
+come to you," he said.
+
+But Granville Joy, going alone down the brilliant street, past the
+blaze of the shop-windows and the knots of loungers on the corners,
+reflected that he had seen the fiery tip of a cigar on the Lennox
+veranda, that it might be possible that young Lloyd was there, since
+Miss Lennox was his aunt, and that possibly the aunt's sending Ellen
+to Vassar might bring about something in that quarter which would
+not otherwise have happened, and he writhed at the fancy of that
+sort of good fortune for Ellen, but held his mind to it resolutely
+as to some terrible but necessary grindstone for the refinement of
+spirit. "It would be a heap better for her," he said to himself,
+quite loud, and two men whom he was passing looked at him curiously.
+"Drunk," said one to the other.
+
+When he was on his homeward way he overtook a slender girl
+struggling along with a kerosene-can in one hand and a package of
+sugar in the other, and, seeing that it was Abby Atkins, he
+possessed himself of both. She only laughed and did not start. Abby
+Atkins was not of the jumping or screaming kind, her nerves were so
+finely balanced that they recovered their equilibrium, after
+surprises, before she had time for manifestations. There was a
+curious healthfulness about the slender, wiry little creature who
+was overworked and under-fed, a healthfulness which seemed to result
+from the action of the mind upon a meagre body.
+
+"Hullo, Granville Joy!" she said, in her good-comrade fashion, and
+the two went on together. Presently Abby looked up in his face.
+
+"Know about Ellen?" said she. Granville nodded.
+
+"Well, I'm glad of it, aren't you?" Abby said, in a challenging
+tone.
+
+"Yes, I am," replied Granville, meeting her look firmly.
+
+Suddenly he felt Abby's little, meagre, bony hand close over the
+back of his, holding the kerosene-can. "You're a good fellow,
+Granville Joy," said she.
+
+Granville marched on and made no response. He felt his throat fill
+with sobs, and swallowed convulsively. Along with this womanly
+compassion came a compassion for himself, so hurt on his little
+field of battle. He saw his own wounds as one might see a
+stranger's.
+
+"Think of Ellen dogging around to a shoe-shop like me and the other
+girls," said Abby, "and think of her draggin' around with half a
+dozen children and no money. Thank the Lord she's lifted out of it.
+It ain't you nor me that ought to grudge her fortune to her, nor
+wish her where she might have been otherwise."
+
+"That's so," said the young man.
+
+Abby's hand tightened over the one on the kerosene-can. "You are a
+good fellow, Granville Joy," she said again.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV
+
+
+Robert Lloyd was sitting on the veranda behind the green trail of
+vines when Ellen came up the walk. He never forgot the girl's face
+looking over her bunch of sweet-peas. There was in it something
+indescribably youthful and innocent, almost angelic. The light from
+the window made her hair toss into gold; her blue eyes sought
+Cynthia with the singleness of blue stars. It was evident whom she
+had come to see. She held out her flowers towards her with a gesture
+at once humble and worshipful, like that of some devotee at a
+shrine.
+
+She said "Good-evening" with a shy comprehensiveness, then, to
+Cynthia, like a child, "I thought maybe you would like some of my
+sweet-peas."
+
+Both gentlemen rose, and Risley looked curiously from the young girl
+to Cynthia, then placed his chair for her, smiling kindly.
+
+"The sweet-peas are lovely," Cynthia said. "Thank you, my dear. They
+are much prettier than any I have had in my garden this year. Please
+sit down," for Ellen was doubtful about availing herself of the
+proffered chair. She had so hoped that she might find Cynthia alone.
+She had dreamed, as a lover might have done, of a tete-a-tete with
+her, what she would say, what Cynthia would say. She had thought,
+and trembled at the thought, that possibly Cynthia might kiss her
+when she came or went. She had felt, with a thrill of spirit, the
+touch of Cynthia's soft lips on hers, she had smelt the violets
+about her clothes. Now it was all spoiled. She remembered things
+which she had heard about Mr. Risley's friendship with Cynthia, how
+he had danced attendance upon her for half a lifetime, and thought
+that she did not like him. She looked at his smiling, grizzled,
+blond face with distrust. She felt intuitively that he saw straight
+through her little subterfuge of the flowers, that he divined her
+girlish worship at the shrine of Cynthia, and was making fun of her.
+
+"Do you object to a cigar, Miss Brewster?" asked Robert, and Risley
+looked inquiringly at her.
+
+"Oh, no," replied Ellen, with the eager readiness of a child to fit
+into new conditions. She thought of the sitting-room at home, blue
+with the rank pipe-smoke of Nahum Beals and his kind. She pictured
+them to herself sitting about on these warm evenings in their
+shirt-sleeves, and she saw the two gentlemen in their light summer
+clothes with their fragrant cigars at their lips, and all of a
+sudden she realized that between these men and the others there was
+a great gulf, and that she was trying to cross it. She did not
+realize, as later, that the gulf was one of externals, and of width
+rather than depth, but it seemed to her then that from one shore she
+could only see dimly the opposite. A great fear and jealousy came
+over her as to her own future accessibility to those of the other
+kind among whom she had been brought up, like her father and
+Granville.
+
+Ellen felt all this as she sat beside Cynthia, who was casting about
+in her mind, in rather an annoyed fashion, for something to say to
+this young beneficiary of hers which should not have anything to do
+with the benefit.
+
+Finally she inquired if she were having a pleasant vacation, and
+Ellen replied that she was. Risley looked at her beautiful face with
+the double radiance of the electric-light and the lamp-light from
+the window on it, giving it a curious effect. It suddenly occurred
+to him to wonder why everybody seemed to have such an opinion as to
+the talents of this girl. Why did Cynthia consider that her native
+ability warranted this forcible elevation of her from her own sphere
+and setting her on a height of education above her kind? She looked
+and spoke like an ordinary young girl. She had a beautiful face, it
+is true, and her shyness seemed due to the questioning attitude of a
+child rather than to self-consciousness, but, after all, why did she
+give people that impression? Her valedictory had been clever, no
+doubt, and there was in it a certain fire of conviction, which,
+though crude, was moving; but, after all, almost any bright girl
+might have written it. She had been a fine scholar, no doubt, but
+any girl with a ready intelligence might have done as well. Whence
+came this inclination of all to rear the child upon a pedestal?
+Risley wondered, looking at her, narrowing his keen, light eyes
+under reflective brows, puffing at his cigar; then he admitted to
+himself that he was one with the crowd of Ellen's admirers. There
+was somehow about the girl that which gave the impression of an
+enormous reserve out of all proportion to any external evidence.
+"The child says nothing remarkable," he told Cynthia, after she had
+gone that evening, "but somehow she gives me an impression of power
+to say something extraordinary, and do something extraordinary.
+There is electricity and steel behind that soft, rosy flesh of hers.
+But all she does which is evident to the eye of man is to worship
+you, Cynthia."
+
+"Worship me?" repeated Cynthia, vaguely.
+
+"Yes, she has one of those aberrations common to her youth and her
+sex. She is repeating a madness of old Greece, and following you as
+a nymph might a goddess."
+
+"It is only because she is grateful," returned Cynthia, looking
+rather annoyed.
+
+"Gratitude may be a factor in it, but it is very far from being the
+whole of the matter. It is one of the spring madnesses of life; but
+don't be alarmed, it will be temporary in the case of a girl like
+that. She will easily be led into her natural track of love. Do you
+know, Cynthia, that she is one of the most normal, typical young
+girls I ever saw, and that makes me wonder more at this impression
+of unusual ability which she undoubtedly gives. She has all the
+weaknesses of her age and sex, she is much younger than some girls
+of her age, and yet there is the impression which I cannot shake
+off."
+
+"I have it, too," said Cynthia, rather impatiently.
+
+"Cynthia Lennox, I don't believe you care in the least for this
+young devotee of yours, for all you are heaping benefits upon her,"
+Risley said, looking at her quizzically.
+
+"I am not sure that I do," replied Cynthia, calmly.
+
+"Then why on earth--?"
+
+Suddenly Cynthia began speaking rapidly and passionately,
+straightening herself in her chair. "Oh, Lyman, do you think I could
+do a thing like that, and not repent it and suffer remorse for it
+all these years?" she cried.
+
+"A thing like that?"
+
+"Like stealing that child," Cynthia replied, in a whisper.
+
+"Stealing the child? You did not steal the child."
+
+"Yes, I did."
+
+"Why, it was only a few hours that you kept her."
+
+"What difference does it make whether you steal anything for a few
+hours or a lifetime? I kept her, and she was crying for her mother,
+and her mother was suffering tortures all that time. Then I kept it
+secret all these years. You didn't know what I have suffered,
+Lyman."
+
+Cynthia regarded him with a wan look.
+
+Risley half laughed, then checked himself. "My poor girl, you have
+the New England conscience in its worst form," he said.
+
+"You yourself told me it was a serious thing I was doing," Cynthia
+said, half resentfully. "One does not wish one's sin treated lightly
+when one has hugged its pricks to one's bosom for so long--it
+detracts from the dignity of suffering."
+
+"So I did, but all those years ago!"
+
+"If you don't leave me my remorse, how can I atone for the deed?"
+
+"Cynthia, you are horribly morbid."
+
+"Maybe you are right, maybe it is worse than morbid. Sometimes I
+think I am unnatural, out of drawing, but I did not make myself, and
+how can I help it?"  Cynthia spoke with a pathetic little laugh.
+
+She leaned her head back in her chair, and looked at a star through
+a gap in the vines. The shadows of the leaves played over her long,
+white figure. Again to Risley, gazing at her, came the conviction as
+of subtle spiritual deformity in the woman; she was unnatural in
+something the same fashion that an orchid is unnatural, and it was
+worse, because presumably the orchid does not know it is an orchid
+and regret not being another, more evenly developed, flower, and
+Cynthia had a full realization and a mental mirror clear enough to
+see the twist in her own character.
+
+Risley had never kissed her in his life, but that night, when they
+parted, he laid a hand on her soft, gray hair, and smoothed it back
+with a masculine motion of tenderness, leaving her white forehead,
+which had a candid, childish fulness about the temples, bare. Then
+he put his lips to it.
+
+"You are a silly girl, Cynthia," he said.
+
+"I wish I were different, Lyman," she responded, and, he felt, with
+a double meaning.
+
+"I don't," he said, and stroked her hair with a great tenderness,
+which seemed for the time to quite fill and satisfy his heart. He
+was a man of measureless patience, born to a firm conviction of the
+journey's end.
+
+"There are worse things than loving a good woman your whole life and
+never having her," he said to himself as he went home, but he said
+it without its full meaning. Risley's "nerves" were always lighted
+by the lamp of his own hope, which threw a gleam over unknown seas.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI
+
+
+Robert Lloyd accompanied Ellen home, though she had said timidly
+that she was not in the least afraid, that she would not trouble any
+one, that she could take a car. Cynthia herself had insisted that
+Robert should escort her.
+
+"It's too late for you to be out alone," she said, and the girl
+seemed to perceive dimly a hedge of conventionality which she had
+not hitherto known. She had often taken a car when she was alone of
+an evening, without a thought of anything questionable. Some of the
+conductors lived near Ellen, and she felt as if she were under
+personal friendly escort. "I know the conductor on that car, and it
+would take me right home, and I am not in the least afraid," she
+said to Robert, as the car came rocking down the street when they
+emerged from Cynthia's grounds.
+
+"It's a lovely night," Robert said, speaking quickly as they paused
+on the sidewalk. "I am not going to let you go alone, anyway. We
+will take the car if you say so, but what do you say to walking?
+It's a lovely night."
+
+It actually flashed through Ellen's mind--to such small issues of
+finance had she been accustomed--that the young man might insist
+upon paying her car-fare if he went with her on the car.
+
+"I would like to walk, but I am sorry to put you to so much
+trouble," she said, a little awkwardly.
+
+"Oh, I like to walk," returned Robert. "I don't walk half enough,"
+and they went together down the lighted street. Suddenly to Ellen
+there came a vivid remembrance, so vivid that it seemed almost like
+actual repetition of the time when she, a little child, maddened by
+the sudden awakening of the depths of her nature, had come down this
+same street. She saw that same brilliant market-window where she had
+stopped and stared, to the momentary forgetfulness of her troubles
+in the spectacular display of that which was entirely outside them.
+Curiously enough, Robert drew her to a full stop that night before
+the same window. It was one of those strange cases of apparent
+telepathy which one sometimes notices. When Ellen looked at the
+market-window, with a flash of reminiscence, Robert immediately drew
+her to a stop before it. "That is quite a study in color," he said.
+"I fancy there are a good many unrecognized artists among
+market-men."
+
+"Yes, it is really beautiful," agreed Ellen, looking at it with eyes
+which had changed very little from their childish outlook. Again she
+saw more than she saw. The window differed materially from that
+before which she had stood fascinated so many years ago, for that
+was in a different season. Instead of frozen game and winter
+vegetables, were the products of summer gardens, and fruits, and
+berries. The color scheme was dazzling with great heaps of tomatoes,
+and long, emerald ears of corn, and baskets of apples, and gold
+crooks of summer squashes, and speckled pods of beans.
+
+"Suppose," said Robert, as they walked on, "that all the market-men
+who had artistic tastes had art educations and set up studios and
+painted pictures, who would keep the markets?"
+
+He spoke gayly. His manner that night was younger and merrier than
+Ellen had ever seen it. She was naturally rather grave herself. What
+she had seen of life had rather disposed her to a hush of respect
+than to hilarity, but somehow his mood began to infect her.
+
+"I don't know," she answered, laughing, "I suppose somebody would
+keep the markets."
+
+"Yes, but they would not be as good markets. That is, they would not
+do as artistic markets, and they would not serve the higher purpose
+of catering to the artistic taste of man, as well as to his bodily
+needs."
+
+"Perhaps a picture like that is just as well and better than it
+would be painted and hung on a wall," Ellen admitted, reflectively.
+
+"Just so--why is it not?" Robert said, in a pleased voice.
+
+"Yes, I think it is," said Ellen. "I do think it is better, because
+everybody can see it there. Ever so many people will see it there
+who would not go to picture-galleries to see it, and then--"
+
+"And then it may go far to dignify their daily needs," said Robert.
+"For instance, a poor man about to buy his to-morrow's dinner may
+feel his soul take a little fly above the prices of turnips and
+cabbages."
+
+"Maybe," said Ellen, but doubtfully.
+
+"Don't you think so?"
+
+"The prices of turnips and cabbages may crowd other things out,"
+Ellen replied, and her tone was sad, almost tragic. "You see I am
+right in it, Mr. Lloyd," she said, earnestly.
+
+"You mean right in the midst of the kind of people whom necessity
+forces to neglect the aesthetic for the purely useful?"
+
+"Yes," said Ellen. Then she added, in an indescribably pathetic
+voice, "People have to live first before they can see, and they
+can't think until they are fed, and one needs always to have had
+enough turnips and cabbages to eat without troubling about the
+getting them, in order to see in them anything except food."
+
+Lloyd looked at her curiously. "Decidedly this child can think," he
+reflected. He shrugged his arm, on which Ellen's hand lay, a little
+closer to his side.
+
+Just then they were passing the great factories--Lloyd's, and
+Briggs's, and Maguire's. Many of the windows in Briggs's and
+Maguire's reflected light from the moon and the electric-lamps on
+the street. Lloyd's was all dark except for one brilliant spark of
+light, which seemed to be threading the building like a
+will-o'-the-wisp. "That is the night-watchman," said Robert. "He
+must have a dull time of it."
+
+"I should think he might be afraid," said Ellen.
+
+"Afraid of what?"
+
+"Of ghosts."
+
+"Ghosts in a shoe-shop?" asked Robert, laughing.
+
+"I don't believe there has been another building in the whole city
+which has held so many heart-aches, and I always wondered if they
+didn't make ghosts instead of dead people," Ellen said.
+
+"Do you think they have such a hard time?"
+
+"I know they do," said Ellen. "I think I ate the knowledge along
+with my first daily bread."
+
+Robert Lloyd looked down at the light, girlish figure on his arm,
+and again the resolution that he would not talk on such topics with
+a young girl like this came over him. He felt a reluctance to do so
+which was quite apart from his masculine scorn of a girl's opinion
+on such matters. Somehow he did not wish to place Ellen Brewster on
+the same level of argument on which another man might have stood. He
+felt a jealousy of doing so. She seemed more within his reach, and
+infinitely more for his pleasure, where she was. He looked
+admiringly down at her fair face fixed on his with a serious, intent
+expression. He was quite ready to admit that he might fall in love
+with her. He was quite ready to ask now why he should not. She was a
+beautiful girl, an uncommon girl. She was going to be thoroughly
+educated. It would probably be quite possible to divorce her
+entirely from her surroundings. He shuddered when he thought of her
+mother and aunt, but, after all, a man, if he were firm, need not
+marry the mother or aunt. And all this was in spite of a resolution
+which he had formed on due consideration after his last call upon
+Ellen. He had said to himself that it would not in any case be wise,
+that he had better not see more of her than he could help. Instead
+of going to see her, he had gone riding with Maud Hemingway, who
+lived near his uncle's, in an old Colonial house which had belonged
+to her great-grandfather. The girl was a good comrade, so good a
+comrade that she shunted, as it were, love with flings of ready
+speech and friendly greeting, and tennis-rackets and riding-whips
+and foils. Robert had been teaching Maud to fence, and she had
+fenced too well. Still, Robert had said to himself that he might
+some day fall in love with her and marry her. He charged his memory
+with the fact that this was a much more rational course than
+visiting a girl like Ellen Brewster, so he stayed away in spite of
+involuntary turnings of his thoughts in that direction. However, now
+when the opportunity had seemed to be fairly forced upon him, what
+was he to do? He felt that he was stirred as he had never been
+before. The girl's very soul seemed to meet his when she looked up
+at him with those serious blue eyes of hers. He knew that there had
+never been any like her for him, but he felt as if in another
+minute, if they did not drop topics which he might as well have
+discussed with another man, this butterfly of femininity which so
+delighted him would be beyond his hand. He wanted to keep her to her
+rose.
+
+"But the knowledge must not imbitter your life," he said. "It is not
+for a little, delicate girl to worry herself over the problems which
+are too much for men."
+
+In spite of himself a tenderness had come into his voice. Ellen
+looked down and away from him. She trembled.
+
+"It seems to me that the problems of life, like those in the algebra
+we studied at school, are for everybody who can read them, whether
+men or women," said she, but her voice was unsteady.
+
+"Some of them are for men to read and struggle with for the sake of
+the women," said Robert. His voice had a tender inflection. They
+were passing a garden full of old-fashioned flowers, bordered with
+box. The scent of the box seemed fairly to clamor over the garden
+fence, drowning out the smaller fragrances of the flowers, like the
+clamor of a mob. Even the sweetness of the mignonette was faintly
+perceived.
+
+"How strong the box is," said Ellen, imperceptibly shrinking a
+little from Robert.
+
+When they reached the Brewster house Robert said, as kindly as
+Granville Joy might have done, "Cannot we get better acquainted,
+Miss Brewster? May I call upon you sometimes?"
+
+"I shall be happy to see you," Ellen said, repeating the formula of
+welcome like a child, but she knew when she repeated it that it was
+very true. After she had parted from young Lloyd, she went into the
+sitting-room where were her mother and father, her mother sewing on
+a wrapper, her father reading the paper. Both of them looked up as
+the girl entered, and both stared at her in a bewildered way without
+rightly knowing why. Ellen's cheeks were a wonderful color, her eyes
+fairly blazed with blue light, her mouth was smiling in that
+ineffable smile of a simple overflow of happiness.
+
+"Did you ride home on the car?" asked Fanny. "I didn't hear it
+stop."
+
+"No, mother."
+
+"Did you come home alone?" asked Andrew, abruptly.
+
+"No," said Ellen, blinking before the glare of the lamp. Fanny
+looked at Andrew. "Who did come home with you?" she asked, in a
+foolish, fond voice.
+
+"Mr. Robert Lloyd. He was sitting on the piazza when I got there. I
+told Miss Lennox I had just as soon come on the cars alone, but she
+wouldn't let me, and then he said it would be pleasant to walk,
+and--"
+
+"Oh, you needn't make so many excuses," said Fanny, laughing.
+
+Ellen colored until her face was a blaze of roses, she blinked
+harder, and turned her head away impatiently.
+
+"I am not making excuses," said she, as if her modesty were
+offended. "I wish you wouldn't talk so, mother. I couldn't help it."
+
+"Of course you couldn't," her mother called out jocularly, as Ellen
+went into the other room to get her lamp to go to bed.
+
+Fanny was radiant with delight. After Ellen had gone up-stairs, she
+kept looking at Andrew, and longing to confide in him her
+anticipation with regard to Ellen and young Lloyd, but she
+refrained, being doubtful as to how he would take it. Andrew looked
+very sober. The girl's beautiful, metamorphosed face was ever before
+his eyes, and it was with him as if he were looking after the flight
+of a beloved bird into a farther blue which was sacred, even from
+the following of his love.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVII
+
+
+Ellen's first impulse, when she really began to love Robert Lloyd,
+was not yielding, but flight; her first sensation, not happiness,
+but shame. When he left her that night she realized, to her
+unspeakable dismay and anger, that he had not left her, that he
+would never in her whole life, or at least it seemed so, leave her
+again. Everywhere she looked she saw his face projected by her
+memory before her with all the reality of life. His face came
+between her and her mother's and father's, it came between her and
+her thoughts of other faces. When she was alone in her chamber,
+there was the face. She blew out the lamp in a panic of resentment
+and undressed in the dark, but that made no difference. When she lay
+in bed, although she closed her eyes resolutely, she could still see
+it.
+
+"I won't have it; I won't have it," she said, quite aloud in her
+shame and rebellion. "I won't have it. What does this mean?"
+
+In spite of herself the sound of his voice was in her ears, and she
+resented that; she fought against the feeling of utter rapture which
+came stealing over her because of it. She felt as if she wanted to
+spring out of bed and run, run far away into the freedom of the
+night, if only by so doing she could outspeed herself. Ellen began
+to realize the tyranny of her own nature, and her whole soul arose
+in revolt.
+
+But the girl could no more escape than a nymph of old the pursuit of
+the god, and there was no friendly deity to transform her into a
+flower to elude him. When she slept at last she was overtaken in the
+innocent passion of dreams, and when she awoke it was, to her angry
+sensitiveness, not alone.
+
+When she went down-stairs all her rosy radiance of the night before
+was eclipsed. She looked pale and nervous. She recoiled whenever her
+mother began to speak. It seemed to her that if she said anything,
+and especially anything congratulatory about Robert Lloyd, she would
+fly at her like a wild thing. Fanny kept looking at her with loving
+facetiousness, and Ellen winced indescribably; still, she did not
+say anything until after breakfast, when Andrew had gone to work.
+Andrew was unusually sober and preoccupied that morning. When he
+went out he passed close to Ellen, as she sat at the table, and
+tilted up her face and kissed her. "Father's blessin'," he
+whispered, hoarsely, in her ear. Ellen nestled against him. This
+natural affection, before which she need not fly nor be ashamed,
+which she had always known, seemed to come before her like a shield
+against all untried passion. She felt sheltered and comforted. But
+Andrew passed Eva Tenny coming to the house on his way out of the
+yard, and when she entered Fanny began at once:
+
+"Who do you s'pose came home with Ellen last night?" said she. She
+looked at Eva, then at Ellen, with a glance which seemed to uncover
+a raw surface of delicacy. Ellen flushed angrily.
+
+"Mother, I do wish--" she began; but Fanny cut her short.
+
+"She's pretendin' she don't like it," she said, almost hilariously,
+her face glowing with triumph, "but she does. You ought to have seen
+her when she came in last night."
+
+"I guess I know who it was," said Eva, but she echoed her sister's
+manner half-heartedly. She was looking very badly that morning, her
+face was stained, and her eye hard with a look as if tears had
+frozen in them. She had come in a soiled waist, too, without any
+collar.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Eva Tenny, what ails you?" Fanny cried.
+
+Eva flung herself for answer on the floor, and fairly writhed. Words
+were not enough expression for her violent temperament. She had to
+resort to physical manifestations or lose her reason. As she
+writhed, she groaned as one might do who was dying in extremity of
+pain.
+
+Ellen, when she heard her aunt's groans, stopped, and stood in the
+entry viewing it all. She thought at first that her aunt was ill,
+and was just about to call out to know if she should go for the
+doctor, all her grievances being forgotten in this evidently worse
+stress, when her mother fairly screamed again, stooping over her
+sister, and trying to raise her.
+
+"Eva Tenny, you tell me this minute what the matter is."
+
+Then Eva raised herself on one elbow, and disclosed a face distorted
+with wrath and woe, like a mask of tragedy.
+
+"He's gone! he's gone!" she shrieked out, in an awful, shrill voice,
+which was like the note of an angry bird. "He's gone!"
+
+"For God's sake, not--Jim?"
+
+"Yes, he's gone! he's gone! Oh, my God! my God! he's gone!"
+
+All at once the little Amabel appeared, slipping past Ellen
+silently. She stood watching her mother. She was vibrating from head
+to foot as if strung on wires. She was not crying, but she kept
+catching her breath audibly; her little hands were twitching in the
+folds of her frock; she winked rapidly, her lids obscuring and
+revealing her eyes until they seemed a series of blue sparks. She
+was no paler than usual--that was scarcely possible--but her skin
+looked transparent, pulses were evident all over her face and her
+little neck.
+
+"You don't mean he's gone with--?" gasped Fanny.
+
+Suddenly Eva raised herself with a convulsive jerk from the floor to
+her feet. She stood quite still. "Yes, he has gone," she said, and
+all the passion was gone from her voice, which was much more
+terrible in its calm.
+
+"You don't mean with--?"
+
+"Yes; he has gone with Aggie."  Eva spoke in a voice like a
+deaf-mute's, quite free from inflections. There was something
+dreadful about her rigid attitude. Little Amabel looked at her
+mother's eyes, then cowered down and began to cry aloud. Ellen came
+in and took her in her arms, whispering to her to soothe her. She
+tried to coax her away, but the child resisted violently, though she
+was usually so docile with Ellen.
+
+Eva did not seem to notice Amabel's crying. She stood in that
+horrible inflexibility, with eyes like black stones fixed on
+something unseeable.
+
+Fanny clutched her violently by the arm and shook her.
+
+"Eva Tenny," said she, "you behave yourself. What if he has run
+away? You ain't the first woman whose husband has run away. I'd have
+more pride. I wouldn't please him nor her enough. If he's as bad as
+that, you're better off rid of him."
+
+Eva turned on her sister, and her calm broke up like ice under her
+fire of passion.
+
+"Don't you say one word against him, not one word!" she shrieked,
+throwing off Fanny's hand. "I won't hear one word against my
+husband."
+
+Then little Amabel joined in. "Don't you say one word against my
+papa!" she cried, in her shrill, childish treble. Then she sobbed
+convulsively, and pushed Ellen away. "Go away!" she said, viciously,
+to her. She was half mad with terror and bewilderment.
+
+"Don't you say one word against Jim," said Eva again. "If ever I
+hear anybody say one word against him I'll--"
+
+"You don't mean you're goin' to stan' up for him, Eva Tenny?"
+
+"As long as I draw the breath of life, and after, if I know
+anything," declared Eva. Then she straightened herself to her full
+height, threw back her shoulders, and burst into a furious
+denunciation like some prophetess of wrath. The veins on her
+forehead grew turgid, her lips seemed to swell, her hair seemed to
+move as she talked. The others shrank back and looked at her; even
+little Amabel hushed her sobs and stared, fascinated. "Curses on the
+grinding tyranny that's brought it all about, and not on the poor,
+weak man that fell under it!" she cried. "Jim ain't to blame. He's
+had bigger burdens put on his shoulders than the Lord gave him
+strength to bear. He had to drop 'em. Jim has tried faithful ever
+since we were married. He worked hard, and it wa'n't never his fault
+that he lost his place, but he kept losin' it. They kept shuttin'
+down, or dischargin' him for no reason at all, without a minute's
+warnin'. An' it wa'n't because he drank. Jim never drank when he had
+a job. He was just taken up and put down by them over him as if he
+was a piece on a checker-board. He lost his good opinion of himself
+when he saw others didn't set any more by him than to shove him off
+or on the board as it suited their play. He began to think maybe he
+wa'n't a man, and then he began to act as if he wasn't a man. And he
+was ashamed of his life because he couldn't support me and Amabel,
+ashamed of his life because he had to live on my little earnin's. He
+was ashamed to look me in the face, and ashamed to look his own
+child in the face. It was only night before last he was talkin' to
+me, and I didn't know what he meant then, but I know now. I thought
+then he meant something else, but now I know what he meant. He sat a
+long time leanin' his head on his hands, whilst I was sewin' on
+wrappers, after Amabel had gone to bed, and finally he looks up and
+says, 'Eva, you was right and I was wrong.'
+
+"'What do you mean, Jim?' says I.
+
+"'I mean you was right when you thought we'd better not get married,
+and I was wrong,' says he; and he spoke terrible bitter and sad. I
+never heard him speak like it. He sounded like another man. I jest
+flung down my sewin' and went over to him, and leaned his poor head
+against my shoulder. 'Jim,' says I, 'I 'ain't never regretted it.'
+And God knows I spoke the truth, and I speak the truth when I say it
+now. I 'ain't never regretted it, and I don't regret it now."  Eva
+said the last with a look as if she were hurling defiance, then she
+went on in the same high, monotonous key above the ordinary key of
+life. "When I says that, he jest gives a great sigh and sort of
+pushes me away and gets up. 'Well, I have,' says he; 'I have, and
+sometimes I think the best thing I can do is to take myself out of
+the way, instead of sittin' here day after day and seein' you
+wearin' your fingers to the bone to support me, and seein' my child,
+an' bein' ashamed to look her in the face. Sometimes I think you an'
+Amabel would be a damned sight better off without me than with me,
+and I'm done for anyway, and it don't make much difference what I do
+next.'
+
+"'Jim Tenny, you jest quit talkin' in such a way as this,' says I,
+for I thought he meant to make away with himself, but that wa'n't
+what he meant. Aggie Bemis had been windin' her net round him, and
+he wa'n't nothin' but a man, and all discouraged, and he gave in.
+Any man would in his place. He ain't to blame. It's the tyrants
+that's over us all that's to blame."  Eva's voice shrilled higher.
+"Curse them!" she shrieked. "Curse them all!--every rich man in this
+gold-ridden country!"
+
+"Eva Tenny, you're beside yourself," said Fanny, who was herself
+white to her lips, yet she viewed her sister indignantly, as one
+violent nature will view another when it is overborne and carried
+away by a kindred passion.
+
+"Wonder if you'd be real calm in my place?" said Eva; and as she
+spoke the dreadful impassibility of desperation returned upon her.
+It was as if she suffered some chemical change before their eyes.
+She became silent and seemed as if she would never speak again.
+
+"You hadn't ought to talk so," said Fanny, weakly, she was so
+terrified. "You ought to think of poor little Amabel," she added.
+
+With that, Eva's dreadful, expressionless eyes turned towards
+Amabel, and she held out her hand to her, but the child fairly
+screamed with terror and clung to Ellen. "Oh, Aunt Eva, don't look
+at her so, you frighten her," Ellen said, trembling, and leaning her
+cheek against Amabel's little, cold, pale one. "Don't cry, darling,"
+she whispered. "It is just because poor mother feels so badly."
+
+"I am afraid of my mamma, and I want papa!" screamed Amabel,
+quivering, and stiffening her slender back.
+
+Eva continued to keep her eyes fixed upon her, and to hold out that
+commanding hand.
+
+Fanny went close to her, seized her by both shoulders, and shook her
+violently. "Eva Tenny, you behave yourself!" said she. "There ain't
+no need of your acting this way if your man has run away with
+another woman, and as for that child goin' with you, she sha'n't go
+one step with any woman that looks and acts as you do. Actin' this
+way over a good-for-nothin' fellow like Jim Tenny!"
+
+Again that scourge of the spirit aroused Eva to her normal state.
+She became a living, breathing, wrathful, loving woman once more.
+"Don't you dare say a word against Jim!" she cried out; "not one
+word, Fanny Brewster; I won't hear it. Don't you dare say a word!"
+
+"Don't you say a word against my papa!" shrilled Amabel. Then she
+left Ellen and ran to her mother, and clung to her. And Eva caught
+her up, and hugged the little, fragile thing against her breast, and
+pounced upon her with kisses, with a fury as of rage instead of
+love.
+
+"She always looked like Jim," she sobbed out; "she always did. Aggie
+Bemis shall never get her. I've got her in spite of all the awful
+wrong of life; it's the good that had to come out of it whether or
+no, and God couldn't help Himself. I've got this much. She always
+looked like Jim."
+
+Eva set Amabel down and began leading her out of the room.
+
+"You ain't goin'?" said Fanny, who had herself begun to weep. "Eva,
+you ain't goin'? Oh, you poor girl!"
+
+"Don't!--you said that like Jim," Eva cried, with a great groan of
+pain.
+
+"Eva, you ain't goin'? Wait a little while, and let me do somethin'
+for you."
+
+"You can't do anything. Come, Amabel."
+
+Eva and Amabel went away, the child rolling eyes of terror and
+interrogation at them, Eva impervious to all her sister's pleading.
+
+When Andrew heard what had happened, and Fanny repeated what Eva had
+said, his blame for Jim Tenny was unqualified. "I've had a hard time
+enough, knocked about from pillar to post, and I know what she means
+when she talks about a checker-board. God knows I feel myself
+sometimes as if I wasn't anything but a checker-piece instead of a
+man," he said, "but it's all nonsense blamin' the shoe-manufacturers
+for his runnin' away with that woman. A man has got to use what
+little freedom he's got right. It ain't any excuse for Jim
+Tenny that he's been out of work and got discouraged. He's a
+good-for-nothing cur, an' I'd like to tell him so."
+
+"It won't do for you to talk to Eva that way," said Fanny. They were
+all at the supper-table. Ellen was listening silently.
+
+"She does right to stand up for her husband, I suppose," said
+Andrew, "but anybody's got to use a little sense. It don't make it
+any better for Jim, tryin' to shove blame off his shoulders that
+belongs there. The manufacturers didn't make him run off with
+another woman and leave his child. That was a move he made himself."
+
+"But he wouldn't have made that move if the manufacturers hadn't
+made theirs," Ellen said, unexpectedly.
+
+"That's so," said Fanny.
+
+Andrew looked uneasily at Ellen, in whose cheeks two red spots were
+burning, and whose eyes upon his face seemed narrowed to two points
+of brightness. "There's nothing for you to worry about, child," he
+said.
+
+All this was before the dressmaker, who listened with no particular
+interest. Affairs which did not directly concern her did not awaken
+her to much sharpness of regard. She had been forced by
+circumstances into a very narrow groove of life, a little foot-path
+as it were, fenced in from destruction by three dollars a day. She
+could not, view it as keenly as she might, see that Jim Tenny's
+elopement had anything whatever to do with her three dollars per
+day. She, therefore, ate her supper. At first Andrew had looked
+warningly at Fanny when she began to discuss the subject before the
+dressmaker, but Fanny had replied, "Oh, land, Andrew, she knows all
+about it now. It's all over town."
+
+"Yes, I heard it this morning before I came," said the dressmaker.
+"I think a puff on the sleeves of the silk waist will be very
+pretty, don't you, Mrs. Brewster?"
+
+Ellen looked at the dressmaker with wonder; it seemed to her that
+the woman was going on a little especial side track of her own
+outside the interests of her kind. She looked at her pretty new
+things and tried them on, and felt guilty that she had them. What
+business had she having new clothes and going to Vassar College in
+the face of that misery? What was an education? What was anything
+compared with the sympathy which love demanded of love in the midst
+of sorrow? Should she not turn her back upon any purely personal
+advantage as she would upon a moral plague?
+
+When Ellen's father said that to her at the supper-table she looked
+at him with unchildlike eyes. "I think it is something for me to
+worry about, father," she said. "How can I help worrying if I love
+Aunt Eva and Amabel?"
+
+"It's a dreadful thing for Eva," said Fanny. "I don't see what she
+is going to do. Andrew, pass the biscuits to Miss Higgins."
+
+"It seems to me that the one that is the farthest behind anything
+that happens on this earth is the one to blame," said Ellen,
+reverting to her line of argument.
+
+"I don't know but you've got to go back to God, then," said Andrew,
+soberly, passing the biscuits. Miss Higgins took one.
+
+"No, you haven't," said Ellen--"you haven't, because men are free.
+You've got to stop before you get to God. When a man goes wrong, you
+have got to look and see if he is to blame, if he started himself,
+or other men have been pushing him into it. It seems to me that
+other men have been pushing Uncle Jim into it. I don't think
+factory-owners have any right to discharge a man without a good
+reason, any more than he has a right to run the shop."
+
+"I don't think so, either," said Fanny. "I think Ellen is right."
+
+"I don't know. It is all a puzzle," said Andrew. "Something's wrong
+somewhere. I don't know whether it's because we are pushed or
+because we pull. There's no use in your worrying about it, Ellen.
+You've got to study your books."  Andrew said this with a look of
+pride at Ellen and sidelong triumph at the dressmaker to see if she
+rightly understood the magnitude of it all, of the whole situation
+of making dresses for this wonderful young creature who was going to
+Vassar College.
+
+"I don't know but this is more important than books," said Ellen.
+
+"Oh, maybe you'll find out something in your books that will settle
+the whole matter," said Andrew. Ellen was not eating much supper,
+and that troubled him. Andrew always knew just how much Ellen ate.
+
+"I don't know what Aunt Eva and poor little Amabel will do," said
+she. Ellen's lip quivered.
+
+"Pass the cake to Miss Higgins," said Fanny, sharply, to Andrew. She
+gave him a significant wink as she did so, not to talk more about
+it.
+
+"Try some of that chocolate cake, Miss Higgins."
+
+"Thank you," said Miss Higgins, unexcitedly.
+
+Andrew had his own cause of worry, and finally reverted to it,
+eating his food with no more conception of the savor than if it were
+in another man's mouth. He was sorry enough for his wife's sister,
+and recognized it as an added weight to his own burden, but just at
+present all he could think of was the question if Miss Higgins would
+ask for her pay again that night. He had not a dollar in his pocket.
+He had been dunned that afternoon by the man who had lent the money
+to buy Ellen's watch, there were two new dunning letters in his
+pocket, and now if that keen little dressmaker, who fairly looked to
+him like a venomous insect, as she sat eating rather voraciously of
+the chocolate cake, should ask him again for the three dollars due
+her that night! He would not have cared so much, if it were not for
+the fact that she would ask him before his wife and Ellen, and the
+question about the money in the savings-bank, which was a species of
+nightmare to him, would be sure to come to the front.
+
+Suddenly it struck Andrew that he might run away, that he might slip
+out after supper, and either go into his mother's house or down the
+street. He finally decided on the former, since he reasoned, with a
+pitiful cunning, that if he went down the street he would have to
+take off his slippers and put on his shoes, and that would at once
+betray him and lead to the possible arrest of his flight.
+
+So after supper, while Miss Higgins was trying a waist on Ellen, and
+Fanny was clearing the table, Andrew, bareheaded and in his
+slippers, prepared to carry his plan into execution. He got out
+without being seen, and hurried around the rear of the house, out of
+view from the sitting-room windows, resolving on the way that in
+order to avert the danger of a possible following him to the
+sanctuary of his mother's house, he had perhaps better slip down
+into the orchard behind it and see if the porter apples were ripe.
+But when, stooping as if beneath some invisible shield, and moving
+with a low glide of secrecy, he had gained the yard between the two
+houses, the yard where the three cherry-trees stood, he heard
+Fanny's high, insistent voice calling him, and knew that it was all
+over. Fanny had her head thrust out of her bedroom window. "Andrew!
+Andrew!" she called.
+
+Andrew stopped. "What is it?" he asked, in a gruff voice. He felt at
+that moment savage with her and with fate. He felt like some
+badgered animal beneath the claws and teeth of petty enemies which
+were yet sufficient to do him to death. He felt that retreat and
+defence were alike impossible and inglorious. He was aware of a
+monstrous impatience with it all, which was fairly blasphemy. "What
+is it?" he said, and Fanny realized that something was wrong.
+
+"Come here, Andrew Brewster," she said, from the bedroom window, and
+Andrew pressed close to the window through a growth of sweetbrier
+which rasped his hands and sent up a sweet fragrance in his face.
+Andrew tore away the clinging vines angrily.
+
+"Well, what is it?" he said again.
+
+"Don't spoil that bush, Ellen sets a lot by it," said Fanny. "What
+makes you act so, Andrew Brewster?"  Then she lowered her voice.
+"She wants to know if she can have her pay to-night," she whispered.
+
+"I 'ain't got a cent," replied Andrew, in a dogged, breathless
+voice.
+
+"You 'ain't been to the bank to-day, then?"
+
+"No, I 'ain't."
+
+Fanny still suspected nothing. She was, in fact, angry with the
+dressmaker for insisting upon her pay in such a fashion. "I never
+heard of such a thing as her wantin' to be paid every night," she
+whispered, angrily, "and I'd tell her so, if I wasn't afraid she'd
+think we couldn't pay her. I'd never have had her; I'd had Miss
+Patch, if I'd know she'd do such a mean thing, but, as it is, I
+don't know what to do. I 'ain't got but a dollar and seventy-three
+cents by me. You 'ain't got enough to make it up?"
+
+"No, I 'ain't."
+
+"Well, all is, I've got to tell her that it ain't convenient for me
+to pay her to-night, and she shall have it all together to-morrow
+night, and to-morrow you'll have to go to the bank and take out the
+money, Andrew. Don't forget it."
+
+"Well," said Andrew.
+
+Fanny retreated, and he heard her high voice explaining to Miss
+Higgins. He tore his way through the clinging sweetbrier bushes and
+ran with an unsteady, desperate gait down to the orchard behind his
+mother's home, and flung himself at full length in the dewy grass
+under the trees with all the abandon, under stress of fate, of a
+child.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVIII
+
+
+Andrew Brewster, lying in the dewy grass under the apple-trees,
+giving way for almost the first time since his childhood to impulses
+which had hitherto, from his New England heredity, stiffened instead
+of relaxed his muscles of expression, felt as if he were being stung
+to death by ants. He was naturally a man of broad views, who felt
+the indignity of coping with such petty odds. "For God's sake, if I
+had to be done to death, why couldn't it have been for something?"
+he groaned, speaking with his lips close to the earth as if it were
+a listening ear. "Why need it all have been over so little? It's
+just the little fight for enough to eat and wear that's getting the
+better of me that was a man, and able to do a man's work in the
+world. Now it has come to this! Here I am runnin' away from a woman
+because she wants me to pay her three dollars, and I am afraid of
+another woman because--I've been and fooled away a few hundred
+dollars I had in the savings-bank. I'm afraid--yes, it has come to
+this. I am afraid, afraid, and I'd run away out of life if I knew
+where it would fetch me to. I'm afraid of things that ain't worth
+being afraid of, and it's all over things that's beneath me."  There
+came over Andrew, with his mouth to the moist earth, feeling the
+breath and the fragrance of it in his nostrils, a realization of the
+great motherhood of nature, and a contempt for himself which was
+scorching and scathing before it. He felt that he came from that
+mighty breast which should produce only sons of might, and was
+spending his whole life in an ignominy of fruitless climbing up
+mole-hills. "Why couldn't I have been more?" he asked himself. "Oh,
+my God, is it my fault?"  He said to himself that if he had not
+yielded to the universal law and longing of his kind for a home and
+a family, it might have been better. He asked himself that question
+which will never be answered with a surety of correctness, whether
+the advancement of the individual to his furthest compass is more to
+the glory of life than the blind following out of the laws of
+existence and the bringing others into the everlasting problem of
+advance. Then he thought of Ellen, and a great warmth of conviction
+came over the loving heart of the man; all his self-contempt
+vanished. He had her, this child who was above pearls and rubies, he
+had her, and in her the furthest reach of himself and progression of
+himself to greater distances than he could ever have accomplished in
+any other way, and it was a double progress, since it was not only
+for him, but also for the woman he had married. A great wave of love
+for Fanny came over him. He seemed to see that, after all, it was a
+shining road by which he had come, and he saw himself upon it like a
+figure of light. He saw that he lived and could never die. Then, as
+with a remorseless hurl of a high spirit upon needle-pricks of petty
+cares, he thought again of the dressmaker, of the money for Ellen's
+watch, of the butcher's bill, and the grocer's bills, and the money
+which he had taken from the bank, and again he cowered beneath and
+loathed his ignoble burden. He dug his hot head into the grass. "Oh,
+my God! oh, my God!" he groaned. He fairly sobbed. Then he felt a
+soft wind of feminine skirts caused by the sudden stoop of some one
+beside him, and Ellen's voice, shrill with alarm, rang in his ears.
+"Father, what is the matter? Father!"
+
+Such was the man's love for the girl that his first thought was for
+her alarm, and he pushed all his own troubles into the background
+with a lightning-like motion. He raised himself hastily, and smiled
+at her with his pitiful, stiff face. "It's nothing at all, Ellen,
+don't you worry," he said.
+
+But that was not enough to satisfy her. She caught hold of his arm
+and clung to it. "Father," she said, in a tone which had in it, to
+his wonder, a firm womanliness--his own daughter seemed to speak to
+him as if she were his mother--"you are not telling me the truth.
+Something is the matter, or you wouldn't do like this."
+
+"No, there's nothin', nothin' at all, dear child," said Andrew. He
+tried to loosen her little, clinging hand from his arm. "Come, let's
+go back to the house," he said. "Don't you mind anything about it.
+Sometimes father gets discouraged over nothin'."
+
+"It isn't over nothing," said Ellen. "What is it about, father?"
+
+Andrew tried to laugh. "Well, if it isn't over nothin', it's over
+nothin' in particular," said he; "it's over jest what's happened
+right along. Sometimes father feels as if he hadn't made as much as
+he'd ought to out of his life, and he's gettin' older, and he's
+feelin' kind of discouraged, that's all."
+
+"Over money matters?" said Ellen, looking at him steadily.
+
+"Over nothin'," said her father. "See here, child, father's ashamed
+that he gave way so, and you found him. Now don't you worry one mite
+about it--it's nothing at all. Come, let's go back to the house," he
+said.
+
+Ellen said no more, but she walked up from the field holding tightly
+to her father's poor, worn hand, and her heart was in a tumult. To
+behold any convulsion of nature is no light experience, and when it
+is a storm of the spirit in one beloved the beholder is swept along
+with it in greater or less measure. Ellen trembled as she walked.
+Her father kept looking at her anxiously and remorsefully. Once he
+reached around his other hand and chucked her playfully under the
+chin. "Scared most to death, was she?" he asked, with a shamefaced
+blush.
+
+"I know something is the matter, and I think it would be better for
+you to tell me, father," replied Ellen, soberly.
+
+"There's nothing to tell, child," said Andrew. "Don't you worry your
+little head about it."  Between his anxiety lest the girl should be
+troubled, and his intense humiliation that she should have
+discovered him in such an abandon of grief which was almost like a
+disclosure of the nakedness of his spirit, he was completely
+unnerved. Ellen felt him tremble, and heard his voice quiver when he
+spoke. She felt towards her father something she had never felt
+before--an impulse of protection. She felt the older and stronger of
+the two. Her grasp on his hand tightened, she seemed in a measure to
+be leading him along.
+
+When they reached the yard between the houses Andrew cast an
+apprehensive glance at the windows. "Has she gone?" he asked.
+
+"Who, the dressmaker?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She hadn't when I came out. I saw you come past the house, and I
+thought you walked as if you didn't feel well, so I thought I would
+run out and see."
+
+"I was all right," replied Andrew. "Have you got to try on anything
+more to-night?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, then, let's run into grandma's a minute."
+
+"All right," said Ellen.
+
+Mrs. Zelotes was sitting at her front window in the dusk, looking
+out on the street, as was her favorite custom. The old woman seldom
+lit a lamp in the summer evening, but sat there staring out at the
+lighted street and the people passing and repassing, with her mind
+as absolutely passive as regarded herself as if she were travelling
+and observing only that which passed without. At those times she
+became in a fashion sensible of the motion of the world, and lost
+her sense of individuality in the midst of it. When her son and
+granddaughter entered she looked away from the window with the
+expression of one returning from afar, and seemed dazed for a
+moment.
+
+"Hullo, mother!" said Andrew.
+
+The room was dusky, and they moved across between the chairs and
+tables like two shadows.
+
+"Oh, is it you, Andrew?" said his mother. "Who is that with
+you--Ellen?"
+
+"Yes," said Ellen. "How do you do, grandma?"
+
+Mrs. Zelotes became suddenly fully awake to the situation; she
+collected her scattered faculties; her keen old eyes gleamed in a
+shaft of electric-light from the street without, which fell full
+upon her face.
+
+"Set down," said she. "Has the dressmaker gone?"
+
+"No, she hadn't when I came out," replied Ellen, "but she's most
+through for to-night."
+
+"How do your things look?"
+
+"Real pretty, I guess."
+
+"Sometimes I think you'd better have had Miss Patch. I hope she
+'ain't got your sleeves too tight at the elbows."
+
+"They seem to fit very nicely, grandma."
+
+"Sleeves are very particular things; a sleeve wrong can spoil a
+whole dress."
+
+Suddenly the old woman turned on Ellen with a look of extremest
+facetiousness and intelligence, and the girl winced, for she knew
+what was coming. "I see you goin' past with a young man last night,
+didn't I?" said she.
+
+Ellen flushed. "Yes," she said, almost indignantly, for she had a
+feeling as if the veil of some inner sacredness of her nature were
+continually being torn aside. "I went over to Miss Lennox, to carry
+some sweet-peas, and Mr. Robert Lloyd was there, and he came home
+with me."
+
+"Oh!" replied her grandmother.
+
+Ellen's patience left her at the sound of that "Oh," which seemed to
+rasp her very soul. "You have none of you any right to talk and act
+as you do," said she. "You make me ashamed of you, you and mother;
+father has more sense. Just because a young man makes me a call to
+return something, and then walks home with me, because he happened
+to be at the house where I call in the evening! I think it's a
+shame. You make me feel as if I couldn't look him in the face."
+
+"Never mind, grandma didn't mean any harm," Andrew said, soothingly.
+
+"You needn't try to excuse me, Andrew Brewster," cried his mother,
+angrily. "I guess it's a pretty to-do, if I can't say a word in joke
+to my own granddaughter. If it had been a poor, good-for-nothing
+young feller workin' in a shoe-factory, I s'pose she'd been tickled
+to death to be joked about him, but now when it begins to look as if
+somebody that was worth while had come along--"
+
+"Grandma, if you say another word about it, I will never speak to
+Robert Lloyd again as long as I live," declared Ellen.
+
+"Never mind, child," whispered Andrew.
+
+"I do mind, and I mean what I say," Ellen cried. "I won't have it.
+Robert Lloyd is nothing to me, and I am nothing to him. He is no
+better than Granville Joy. There is nothing between us, and you make
+me too ashamed to think of him."
+
+Then the old woman cried out, in a tone of triumph, "Well, there he
+is, turnin' in at your gate now."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIX
+
+
+Ellen rose without a word, and fled out of the room and out of the
+house. It seemed to her, after what had happened, after what her
+mother and grandmother had said and insinuated, after what she
+herself had thought and felt, that she must. She longed to see
+Robert Lloyd, to hear him speak, as she had never longed for
+anything in the world, and yet she ran away as if she were driven to
+obey some law which was coeval with the first woman and beyond all
+volition of her individual self.
+
+When she reached the head of the little cross street on which the
+Atkinses lived, she turned into it with relief. The Atkins house was
+a tiny cottage, with a little kitchen ell, and a sagging piazza
+across the front. On this piazza were shadowy figures, and the dull,
+red gleam of pipes, and one fiery tip of a cigar. Joe Atkins, and
+Sargent, and two other men were sitting out there in the cool of the
+evening. Ellen hurried around the curve of the foot-path to the
+kitchen door. Abby was in there, working with the swift precision of
+a machine. She washed and wiped dishes as if in a sort of fury, her
+thin elbows jerking, her mouth compressed.
+
+When Ellen entered, Abby stared, then her whole face lighted up, as
+if from some internal lamp. "Why, Ellen, is that you?" she said, in
+a surprisingly sweet voice. Sometimes Abby's sharp American voice
+rang with the sweetness of a soft bell.
+
+"I thought I'd run over a minute," said Ellen.
+
+The other girl looked sharply at her. "Why, what's the matter?" she
+said.
+
+"Nothing is the matter. Why?"
+
+"Why, I thought you looked sort of queer. Maybe it's the light. Sit
+down; I'll have the dishes done in a minute, then we'll go into the
+sitting-room."
+
+"I'd rather stay out here with you," said Ellen.
+
+Abby looked at her again. "There is something the matter, Ellen
+Brewster," said she; "you can't cheat me. You would never have run
+over here this way in the world. What has happened?"
+
+"Let's go up to your room after the dishes are done, and then I'll
+tell you," whispered Ellen. The men's voices on the piazza could be
+heard quite distinctly, and it seemed possible that their own
+conversation might be overheard in return.
+
+"All right," said Abby. "Of course I have heard about your aunt,"
+she added, in a low voice.
+
+"Yes," said Ellen, and she felt shamed and remorseful that her own
+affairs had been uppermost in her mind, and that Abby had supposed
+that she might be disturbed over this great trouble of her poor
+aunt's.
+
+"I think it is dreadful," said Abby. "I wish I could get hold of
+that woman."  By "that woman" she meant the woman with whom poor Jim
+Tenny had eloped.
+
+"I do," said Ellen, bitterly.
+
+"But it's something besides that made you run over here," said Abby.
+
+"I'll tell you when we go up to your room," replied Ellen.
+
+When the dishes were finished, and the two girls in Abby's little
+chamber, seated side by side on the bed, Ellen still hesitated.
+
+"Now, Ellen Brewster, what is the matter? You said you would tell,
+and you've got to," said Abby.
+
+Ellen looked away from her, blushing. The electric-light from the
+street shone full in the room, which was wavering with grotesque
+shadows.
+
+"Well," said she, "I ran away."
+
+"You ran away! What for?"
+
+"Oh, because."
+
+"Because what?"
+
+"Because I saw somebody coming."
+
+"Saw who coming?"
+
+Ellen was silent.
+
+"Not Granville Joy?"
+
+Ellen shook her head.
+
+"Not--?"
+
+Ellen looked straight ahead.
+
+"Not young Mr. Lloyd?"
+
+Ellen was silent with the silence of assent.
+
+"Did he go into your house?"
+
+Ellen nodded.
+
+"Where were you?"
+
+"In grandma's."
+
+"And you ran away, over here?"
+
+Ellen nodded.
+
+"Why, Ellen Brewster, didn't you want to see him?"
+
+Ellen turned from Abby with an impatient gesture, buried her face in
+the bed, and began to weep.
+
+Abby leaned over her caressingly. "Ellen dear," she whispered, "what
+is the matter; what are you crying for? What made you run away?"
+
+Ellen sobbed harder.
+
+Abby looked at Ellen's prostrate figure sadly. "Ellen," she began;
+then she stopped, for her own voice quivered. Then she went on,
+quite steadily. "Ellen," she said, "you like him."
+
+"No, I don't," declared Ellen. "I won't. I never will. Nothing shall
+make me."
+
+But Abby continued to look at her sadly and jealously. "There's a
+power over us which is too strong for girls," said she, "and you've
+come under it, Ellen, and you can't help it."  Then she added, with
+a great, noble burst of utter unselfishness: "And I'm glad, I'm
+glad, Ellen. That man can lift you out of the grind."
+
+But Ellen sat up straight and faced her, with burning cheeks, and
+eyes shining through tears. "I will never be lifted out of the grind
+as long as those I love are in it," said she.
+
+"Do you suppose it would make it any better for your folks to see
+you in it all your life along with them?" said Abby. "Suppose you
+married a fellow like Granville Joy?"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXX
+
+
+Ellen looked at the other girl in a kind of rage of maidenly shame.
+"Why have I got to get married, anyway?" she demanded. "Isn't there
+anything in this world besides getting married? Why do you all talk
+so about me? You don't seem so bent on getting married yourself. If
+you think so much of marriage, why don't you get married yourself,
+and let me alone?"
+
+"Nobody wants to marry me that I know of," replied Abby, quite
+simply. Then she, too, blazed out. "Get married!" she cried. "Do you
+really think I would get married to the kind of man who would marry
+me? Do you think I could if I loved him?"  A great wave of red
+surged over the girl's thin face, her voice trembled with
+tenderness. Ellen knew at once, with a throb of sympathy and shame,
+that Abby did love some one.
+
+"Do you think I would marry him if I loved him?" demanded Abby,
+stiffening herself into a soldier-like straightness. "Do you think?
+I tell you what it is," she said, "I was lookin' only to-day at
+David Mendon at the cutting-bench, cutting away with his poor little
+knife. I'd like to know how many handles he's worn out since he
+began. There he was, putting the pattern on the leather, and cuttin'
+around it, standin' at his window, that's a hot place in summer and
+a cold one in winter, and there's where he's stood for I don't know
+how many years since before I was born. He's one of the few that
+Lloyd's has hung on to when he's got older, and I thought to myself,
+good Lord, how that poor man must have loved his wife, and how he
+must love his children, to be willin' to turn himself into a machine
+like that for them. He never takes a holiday unless he's forced into
+it; there he stands and cuts and cuts. If I were his wife, I would
+die of shame and pity that I ever led him into it. Do you think I
+would ever let a man turn himself into a machine for me, if I loved
+him? I guess I wouldn't! And that's why, when I see a man of another
+sort that you won't have to break your own heart over, whether you
+marry him or not, payin' attention to you, I am glad. It's a
+different thing, marriage with a man like Robert Lloyd, and a man
+like that would never think of me. I'm right in the ranks, and you
+ain't."
+
+"I am," said Ellen, stoutly.
+
+"No, you ain't; you don't belong there, and when I see a chance for
+you to get out where you belong--"
+
+"I don't intend to make marriage a stepping-stone," said Ellen.
+"Sometimes--"  She hesitated.
+
+"What?" asked the other girl.
+
+"Sometimes I think I would rather not go to college, after all."
+
+"Ellen Brewster, are you crazy? Of course, you will go to college
+unless you marry Robert Lloyd. Perhaps he won't want to wait."  Then
+Abby, dauntless as she was, shrank a little before Ellen's wrathful
+retort.
+
+"Abby Atkins, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!" she cried.
+"There he's been to see me just twice, the first time on an errand,
+and the next with his aunt, and he's walked home with me once
+because he couldn't help it; his aunt told him to!"
+
+"But here he is again to-night," said Abby, apologetically.
+
+"What of that? I suppose he has come on another errand."
+
+"Then what made you run away?"
+
+"Because you have all made me ashamed of my life to look at him,"
+said Ellen, hotly.
+
+Then down went her head on the bed again, and Abby was leaning over
+her, caressing her, whispering fond things to her like a lover.
+
+"There, there, Ellen," she whispered. "Don't be mad, don't feel bad.
+I didn't mean any harm. You are such a beauty--there's nobody like
+you in the world--that everybody thinks that any man who sees you
+must want you."
+
+"Robert Lloyd doesn't, and if he did I wouldn't have him," sobbed
+Ellen.
+
+"You sha'n't if you don't want him," said Abby, consolingly.
+
+After a while the two girls bathed their eyes with cold water, and
+went down-stairs into the sitting-room. Maria was making herself a
+blue muslin dress, and her mother was hemming the ruffles. There was
+a cheap blue shade on the lamp, and Maria herself was clad in a blue
+gingham. All the blue color and the shade on the lamp gave a curious
+pallor and unreality to the homely room and the two women. Mrs.
+Atkins's hair was strained back from her hollow temples, which had
+noble outlines.
+
+"I'm going to walk a little way with Ellen, she's going home," said
+Abby.
+
+"Very well," said her mother. Maria looked wistfully at them as they
+went out. She went on sewing on her blue muslin, rather sadly. She
+coughed a little.
+
+"Why don't you put up your sewing for to-night and go to bed,
+child?" said her mother.
+
+"I might as well sit here and sew as go to bed and lie there. I
+shouldn't sleep," replied Maria, with the gentlest sadness
+conceivable. There was in it no shadow of complaining. Of late years
+all the fire of resistance had seemed to die out in the girl. She
+was unfailingly sweet, but nerveless. Often when she raised a hand
+it seemed as if she could not even let it fall, as if it must remain
+poised by some curious inertia. Still, she went to the shop every
+day and did her work faithfully. She pasted linings in shoes, and
+her slender little fingers used to fly as if they were driven by
+some more subtle machine than any in the factory. Often Maria felt
+vaguely as if she were in the grasp of some mighty machine worked by
+a mighty operator; she felt, as she pasted the linings, as if she
+herself were also a part of some monstrous scheme of work under
+greater hands than hers, and there was never any getting back of it.
+And always with it all there was that ceaseless, helpless,
+bewildered longing for something, she was afraid to think what,
+which often saps the strength and life of a young girl. Maria had
+never had a lover in her life; she had not even good comrades among
+young men, as her sister had. No man at that time would have ever
+looked twice at her, unless he had fallen in love with her, and had
+been disposed to pick her up and carry her along on the hard road
+upon which they fared together. Maria was half fed in every sense;
+she had not enough nourishing food for her body, nor love for her
+heart, nor exercise for her brain. She had no time to read, as she
+was forced to sew when out of the shop if she would have anything to
+wear. When at last she went up-stairs to bed, before Abby returned,
+she sat down by her window, and leaned her little, peaked chin on
+the sill and looked out. The stars were unusually bright for a
+summer night; the whole sky seemed filled with a constantly
+augmenting host of them. The scent of tobacco came to her from
+below. To the lonely girl the stars and the scent of the tobacco
+served as stimulants; she formed a forcible wish. "I wish," she
+muttered to herself, "that I was either an angel or a man."  Then
+the next minute she chided herself for her wickedness. A great wave
+of love for God, and remorse for impatience and melancholy in her
+earthly lot, swept over her. She knelt down beside her bed and
+prayed. An exultation half-physical, half-spiritual, filled her.
+When she rose, her little, thin face was radiant. She seemed to
+measure the shortness of the work and woe of the world as between
+her thumb and finger. The joy of the divine filled all her longing.
+When Abby came home, who shared her chamber, she felt no jealousy.
+She only inquired whether she had gone quite home with Ellen. "Yes,
+I did," replied Abby. "I don't think it is safe for her to go past
+that lonely place below the Smiths'."
+
+"I'm glad you did," said Maria, with an angelic inflection in her
+voice.
+
+"Robert Lloyd came to see Ellen, and she ran away over here, and
+wouldn't see him, because they had all been plaguing her about him,"
+said Abby. "I wish she wouldn't do so. It would be a splendid thing
+for her to marry him, and I know he likes her, and his aunt is going
+to send her to college."
+
+"That won't make any difference to Ellen, and everything will be all
+right anyway, if only she loved God," said Maria, still with that
+rapt, angelic voice.
+
+"Shucks!" said Abby. Then she leaned over her sister, caught her by
+her little, thin shoulders and shook her tenderly. "There, I didn't
+mean to speak so," said she. "You're awful good, Maria. I'm glad
+you've got religion if it's so much comfort to you. I don't mean to
+make light of it, but I'm afraid you ain't well. I'm goin' to get
+you some more of that tonic to-morrow."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXI
+
+
+When Ellen reached home that night she found no one there except her
+father, who was sitting on the door-step in the north yard. Her
+mother had gone to see her aunt Eva as soon as the dressmaker had
+left. "Who was that with you?" Andrew asked, as she drew near.
+
+"Abby," replied Ellen.
+
+"So you went over there?"
+
+Ellen sat down on a lower step in front of her father. "Yes," said
+she. She half laughed up in his face, like a child who knows she has
+been naughty, yet knows she will not be blamed since she can count
+so surely on the indulgent love of the would-be blamer.
+
+"Ellen, your mother didn't like it."
+
+"They had said so many things to me about him that I didn't feel as
+if I could see him, father," she said.
+
+Andrew put a hand on her head. "I know what you mean," he replied,
+"but they didn't mean any harm; they're only looking out for your
+best good, Ellen. You can't always have us; it ain't in the course
+of nature, you know, Ellen."
+
+There was a tone of inexorable sadness, the sadness of fate itself
+in Andrew's voice. He had, as he spoke, the full realization of that
+stage of progress which is simply for the next, which passes to make
+room for it. He felt his own nothingness. It was the throe of the
+present before the future; it was the pang of anticipatory
+annihilation.
+
+"Don't talk that way, father," said Ellen. "Neither you nor mother
+are old people."
+
+"Oh, well, it's all right, don't you worry," said Andrew.
+
+"How long did he stay?" asked Ellen. She did not look at her father
+as she spoke.
+
+"Oh, he didn't stay at all, after they found out you had gone."
+
+Ellen sighed. After a second Andrew sighed also. "It's gettin'
+late," said he, heavily; "mebbe we'd better go in before your mother
+comes, Ellen. Mebbe you'll get cold out here."
+
+"Oh no, I shall not," said Ellen, "and I want to hear about poor
+Aunt Eva. I don't see what she is going to do."
+
+"It's a dreadful thing makin' a mistake in marriage," said Andrew.
+
+"Uncle Jim was a good man if he hadn't had such a hard time."
+
+Andrew looked at her, then he spoke impressively. "Look here,
+Ellen," he said, "you are a good scholar, and you are smarter in a
+good many ways than father has ever been, but there's one thing you
+want to remember; you want to be sure before you blame the Lord or
+other men for a man's goin' wrong, if it ain't his own fault at the
+bottom of things."
+
+"There's mother," cried Ellen; "there's mother and Amabel. Where's
+Aunt Eva? Oh, father, what do you suppose has happened? Why do you
+suppose mother is bringing Amabel home?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Andrew, in a troubled voice.
+
+He and Ellen rose and hastened forward to meet Fanny and Amabel. The
+child hung at her aunt's hand in a curious, limp, disjointed
+fashion; her little face, even in the half light, showed ghastly.
+When she saw Ellen she let go of Fanny's hand and ran to her and
+threw both her little arms around her in a fierce clutch as of
+terror, then she began to sob wildly, "Mamma, mamma, mamma!"
+
+Fanny leaned her drawn face forward, and whispered to Andrew and
+Ellen over Amabel's head, under cover of her sobs, "Hush, don't say
+anything. She's gone mad, and, and--she tried to--kill Amabel."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXII
+
+
+Amabel was a very nervous child, and she was in such terror from her
+really terrific experience that she threatened to go into
+convulsions. Andrew went over for his mother, whom he had always
+regarded as an incontestable authority about children. She, after
+one sharp splutter of wrath at the whole situation, went to work
+with the resolution of an old soldier.
+
+"Heat some water, quick," said she to Andrew, "and get me a
+wash-tub."
+
+Then she told Fanny to brew a mess of sage tea, and began stripping
+off Amabel's clothes.
+
+"Let me alone! Mamma, mamma, mamma!" shrieked the child. She fought
+and clawed like a little, wild animal, but the old woman, in whose
+arms great strength could still arise for emergencies, and in whose
+spirit great strength had never died, got the better of her.
+
+When Amabel's clothing was stripped off, and her little, spare body,
+which was brown rather than rosy, although she was a blonde, was
+revealed, she was as pitiful to see as a wound. Every nerve and
+pulse in that tiny frame, about which there was not an ounce of
+superfluous flesh, seemed visible. The terrible sensitiveness of the
+child appeared on the surface. She shrank, and wailed in a low,
+monotonous tone like a spent animal overtaken by pursuers. But Mrs.
+Zelotes put her in the tub of warm water, and held her down, though
+Amabel's face, emerging from it, had the expression of a wild thing.
+
+"There, you keep still!" said she, and her voice was tender enough,
+though the decision of it could have moved an army.
+
+When Amabel had had her hot bath, and had drunk her sage tea by
+compulsory gulps, and been tucked into Ellen's bed, her childhood
+reasserted itself. Gradually her body and her bodily needs gained
+the ascendancy over the unnatural strain of her mind. She fell
+asleep, and lay like one dead. Then Ellen crept down-stairs, though
+it was almost midnight, where her father and mother and grandmother
+were still talking over the matter. Fanny seemed almost as bad as
+her sister. It was evident that there was in the undisciplined Loud
+family a dangerous strain if too far pressed. She was lying down on
+the lounge, with Andrew holding her hand.
+
+"Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Poor Eva!" she kept repeating.
+
+Then she threw off Andrew's hand, sprang to her feet, and began to
+walk the room.
+
+"She'll be as bad as her sister if she keeps on," said Mrs. Zelotes,
+quite audibly, but Fanny paid no attention to that.
+
+"What is goin' to be done? Oh, my God, what is goin' to be done?"
+she wailed. "There she is locked up with two men watchin' her lest
+she do herself a harm, and it's got to cost eighteen dollars a week,
+unless she's put in with the State poor, and then nobody knows how
+she'll be treated. Oh, poor Eva, poor Eva! Albert Riggs told me
+there were awful things done with the State poor in the asylums.
+He's been an attendant in one. He says we've got to pay eighteen
+dollars a week if we want to have her cared for decently, and
+where's the money comin' from?" Fanny raised her voice higher still.
+
+"Where's the money comin' from?" she demanded, with an impious
+inflection. It was as if she questioned that which is outside of,
+and the source of, life. Everything with this woman, whose whole
+existence had been bound and tainted by the need of money, resolved
+itself into that fundamental question. All her woes hinged upon it;
+even her misery was deteriorated by mammon.
+
+"Where's the money comin' from?" she demanded again. "There's Jim
+gone, and all his mother's got is that little, mortgaged place, and
+she feeble, and there ain't a cent anywhere, unless--"  She turned
+fiercely to Andrew, clutching him hard by the arm.
+
+"You must take every cent of that money out of the savings-bank,"
+she cried, "every cent of it. I'm your wife, and I've been a good
+wife to you, you can't say I haven't."
+
+"Yes, of course you have, poor girl! Don't, don't!" said Andrew,
+soothingly. He was very pale, and shook from head to foot as he
+tried to calm Fanny.
+
+"Yes, I've been a good, faithful wife," Fanny went on, in her high,
+hysterical voice. "Even your mother can't say that I haven't; and
+Eva is my own sister, and you ought to help her. Every cent of that
+money will have to come out of the savings-bank, and the house here
+will have to be mortgaged; it's only my due. I would do as much for
+you if it was your sister. Eva ain't goin' to suffer."
+
+"I guess if you mortgage this house that you had from your father,
+to keep a woman whose husband has gone off and left her," said Mrs.
+Zelotes, "I guess if you don't go and get him back, and get the law
+to tackle him!"
+
+Then Fanny turned on her. "Don't you say a word," said she. "My
+sister ain't goin' to suffer, I don't care where the money comes
+from. It's mine as much as Andrew's. I've half supported the family
+myself sewin' on wrappers, and I've got a right to have my say. My
+sister ain't goin' to suffer! Oh, my God, what's goin' to become of
+her? Poor Eva, poor Eva! Eighteen dollars a week; that's as much as
+Andrew ever earned. Oh, it was awful, it was awful! There, when I
+got in there, she had a--knife, the--carving knife, and she had
+Amabel's hair all gathered up in one hand, and her head tipped back,
+and poor old mother Tenny was holding her arms, and screamin', and
+it was all I could do to get the knife away," and Fanny stripped up
+her sleeves, and showed a glancing cut on her arm.
+
+"She did that before I got it away from her," she said. "Think of
+it, my own sister! My own sister, who always thought so much of me,
+and would have had her own fingers cut to the bone before she would
+have let any one touch me or Ellen! Oh, poor Eva, poor Eva! What is
+goin' to become of her, what is goin' to become of her?"
+
+Mrs. Zelotes went out of the house with a jerk of angry decision,
+and presently returned with a bottle half full of whiskey.
+
+"Here," said she to Ellen, "you pour out a quarter of a tumbler of
+this, and fill it up with hot water. I ain't goin' to have the whole
+family in an asylum because Jim Tenny has run off with another
+woman, if I can help it!"
+
+The old woman's steady force of will asserted itself over the
+hysterical nature of her daughter-in-law. Fanny drank the whiskey
+and water and went to bed, half stupefied, and Mrs. Zelotes went
+home.
+
+"You ring the bell in the night if she's taken worse, and I'll come
+over," said she to her son.
+
+When Ellen and her father were left alone they looked at each other,
+each with pity for the other. Andrew laid a tender, trembling hand
+on the girl's shoulder. "Somehow it will all come out right," he
+whispered. "You go to bed and go to sleep, and if Amabel wakes up
+and makes any trouble you speak to father."
+
+"Don't worry about me, father," returned Ellen. "It's you who have
+the most to worry over."  Then she added--for the canker of need of
+money was eating her soul, too--"Father, what is going to be done?
+You can't pay all that for poor Aunt Eva. How much money have you
+got in the bank?"
+
+"Not much, not much, Ellen," replied Andrew, with a groan.
+
+"It wouldn't last very long at eighteen dollars a week?"
+
+"No, no."
+
+"It doesn't seem as if you ought to mortgage the house when you and
+mother are getting older. Father--"
+
+"What, Ellen?"
+
+"Nothing," said Ellen, after a little pause. It had been on her lips
+to tell him that she must go to work, then she refrained. There was
+something in her father's face which forbade her doing so.
+
+"Go to bed, Ellen, and get rested," said Andrew. Then he rubbed his
+head against hers with his curious, dog-like method of caress, and
+kissed her forehead.
+
+"You go to sleep and get rested yourself, father," said Ellen.
+
+"I guess I won't undress to-night, but I'll lay on the lounge," said
+Andrew.
+
+"Well, you speak to me if mother wakes up and takes on again. Maybe
+I can do something."
+
+"All right, dear child," said Andrew, lovingly and wearily. He had a
+look as if some mighty wind had passed over him and he were beaten
+down under it, except for that one single uprearing of love which no
+tempest could fairly down.
+
+Ellen went up-stairs, and lay down beside poor little Amabel without
+undressing herself. The child stirred, but not to awake, when she
+settled down beside her, and reached over her poor little claw of a
+hand to the girl, who clasped it fervently, and slipped a protecting
+arm under the tiny shoulders. Then the little thing nestled close to
+Ellen, with a movement of desperate seeking for protection. "There,
+there, darling, Ellen will take care of you," whispered Ellen. But
+Amabel did not hear.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIII
+
+
+The next afternoon poor Eva Tenny was carried away, and Andrew
+accompanied the doctor who had her in charge, as being the only
+available male relative. As he dressed himself in his Sunday suit,
+he was aware--to such pitiful passes had financial straits brought
+him--of a certain self-congratulation, that he would not be at home
+when the dressmaker asked for money that night, and that no one
+would expect him to go to the bank under such circumstances. But
+Andrew, in his petty consideration as to personal benefit from such
+dire calamity, reckoned without another narrow traveller. Miss
+Higgins stopped him as he was going out of the door, looking as if
+bound to a funeral in his shabby Sunday black, with his solemn, sad
+face under his well-brushed hat.
+
+"I hate to say anything when you're in such trouble, Mr. Brewster,"
+said she, "but I do need the money to pay a bill, and I was
+wondering if you could leave what was due me yesterday, and what
+will be due me to-day."
+
+But Fanny came with a rush to Andrew's relief. She was in that state
+of nervous tension that she was fairly dangerous if irritated. "Look
+here, Miss Higgins," said she. "We hesitated a good deal about
+havin' you come here to-day, anyway. Ellen wanted to send you word
+not to. We are in such awful trouble, that she said it didn't seem
+right for her to be thinkin' about new clothes, but I told her she'd
+got to have the things if she was going to college, and so we
+decided to have you come, but we 'ain't had any time nor any heart
+to think of money. We've got plenty to pay you in the bank, but my
+husband 'ain't had any time to go there this mornin', what with
+seein' the doctor, and gettin' the certificate for my poor sister,
+and all I've got to say is: if you're so dreadful afraid as all this
+comes to, that you have to lose all sense of decency, and dun folks
+so hard, in such trouble as we be, you can put on your things and go
+jest as quick as you have a mind to, and I'll get Miss Patch to
+finish the work. I've been more than half a mind to have her,
+anyway. I was very strongly advised to. Lots of folks have talked to
+me against your fittin', but I've always had you, and I thought I'd
+give you the chance. Now if you don't want it, you jest pack up and
+go, and the quicker the better. You shall have your pay as soon as
+Mr. Brewster can get round after he has carried my poor sister to
+the asylum. You needn't worry."  Fanny said the last with a sarcasm
+which seemed to reach out with a lash of bitterness like a whip. The
+other woman winced, her eyes were hard, but her voice was appeasing.
+
+"Now, I didn't think you'd take it so, Mrs. Brewster, or I wouldn't
+have said anything," she almost wheedled. "You know I ain't afraid
+of not gettin' my pay, I--"
+
+"You'd better not be," said Fanny.
+
+"Of course I ain't. I know Mr. Brewster has steady work, and I know
+your folks have got money."
+
+"We've got money enough not to be beholden to anybody," said Fanny.
+"Andrew, you'd better be goin' along or you'll be late."
+
+Andrew went out of the yard with his head bent miserably. He had
+felt ashamed of his fear, he felt still more ashamed of his relief.
+He wondered, going down the street, if it might not be a happier lot
+to lose one's wits like poor Eva, rather than have them to the full
+responsibility of steering one's self through such straits of
+misery.
+
+"I hope you won't think I meant any harm," the dressmaker said to
+Fanny, quite humbly.
+
+There was that about the sister of another woman who was being
+carried off to an insane asylum which was fairly intimidating.
+
+Miss Higgins sewed meekly during the remainder of the day, having
+all the time a wary eye upon Fanny. She went home before supper,
+urging a headache as an excuse. She was in reality afraid of Fanny.
+
+Andrew was inexpressibly relieved when he reached home to find that
+the dressmaker was gone, and Fanny, having sent Amabel to bed, was
+chiefly anxious to know how her sister had reached the asylum. It
+was not until the latter part of the evening that she brought up the
+subject of the bank. "Do look out to-morrow, Andrew Brewster, and be
+sure to take that money out of the bank to pay Miss Higgins," she
+said. "As for being dunned again by that woman, I won't! It's the
+last time I'll ever have her, anyway. As far as that is concerned,
+all the money will have to come out of the bank if poor Eva is to be
+kept where she is. How much money was there that she had?"
+
+"Just fifty-two dollars and seventy cents," replied Andrew. "Jim had
+left a little that he'd scraped together somehow, with the letter he
+wrote to her, and he told her if he had work he'd send her more."
+
+"I'd die before I'd touch it," said Fanny, fiercely. Then she looked
+at Andrew with sudden pity. "Poor old man," she said; "it's mighty
+hard on you when you're gettin' older, and you never say a word to
+complain. But I don't see any other way than to take that money, do
+you?"
+
+"No," said Andrew.
+
+"And you don't think I'm hard to ask it, Andrew?"
+
+"No."
+
+"God knows if it was your sister and my money, I would take every
+dollar. You know I would, Andrew."
+
+"Yes, I know," replied Andrew, hoarsely.
+
+"Mebbe she'll get better before it's quite gone," said Fanny. "You
+say the doctor gave some hope?"
+
+"Yes, he did, if she was taken proper care of."
+
+"Well, she shall be. I'll go out and steal before she sha'n't have
+proper care. Poor Eva!"  Fanny burst into the hysterical wailing
+which had shaken her from head to foot at intervals during the last
+twenty-four hours. Andrew shuddered, thinking that he detected in
+her cries a resemblance to her sister's ravings. "Don't, don't,
+Fanny," he pleaded. "Don't, poor girl."  He put his arm around her,
+and she wept on his shoulder, but with less abandon. "After all,
+we've got each other, and we've got Ellen, haven't we, Andrew?" she
+sobbed.
+
+"Yes, thank God," said Andrew. "Don't, Fanny."
+
+"That--that's more than money, more than all the wages for all the
+labor in the world, and that we've got, haven't we, Andrew? We've
+got what comes to us direct from God, haven't we? Don't think I'm
+silly, Andrew--haven't we?"
+
+"Yes, yes, we have--you are right, Fanny," replied Andrew.
+
+"I guess I am, too," she assented, looking up in Andrew's poor, worn
+face with eyes of sudden bravery. "We'll get along somehow--don't
+you worry, old man. I guess we'll come out all right, somehow. We'll
+use that money in the bank as far as it goes, and then I guess some
+way will be opened."
+
+Then there came over Andrew's exaltation, to which Fanny's words had
+spurred his flagging spirit, a damper of utter mortification and
+guilt. He felt that he could bear this no longer. He opened his
+mouth to tell her what he had done with the money in the bank, when
+there came a knock on the door, and Fanny fled into the bedroom. She
+had unfastened her dress, and her face was stained with tears. She
+shut the bedroom door tightly as Andrew opened the outer one.
+
+The man who had loaned him the money to buy Ellen's watch stood
+there. His name was William Evarts, and he worked in the
+stitching-room of McGuire's factory, in which Andrew was employed.
+He was reported well-to-do, and to have amassed considerable money
+from judicious expenditures of his savings, and to be strictly
+honest, but hard in his dealings. He was regarded with a covert
+disfavor by his fellow-workmen, as if he were one of themselves who
+had somehow elevated himself to a superior height by virtue of their
+backs. If William Evarts had acquired prosperity through gambling in
+mines, they would have had none of that feeling; they would have
+recognized the legitimacy of luck in the conduct of affairs. He was
+in a way a reproach to them. "Why can't you get along and save as
+well as William Evarts?" many a man's monitor asked of him. "He
+doesn't earn any more than you do, and has had as many expenses in
+his family."  The man not being able to answer the question to his
+own credit, disliked William Evarts who had instigated it.
+
+Andrew, who had in his character a vein of sterling justice, yet
+felt that he almost hated William Evarts as he stood there before
+him, small and spare, snapping as it were with energy like electric
+wires, the strong lines in his clean-shaven face evident in the
+glare of the street-lamp.
+
+"Good-evening," Andrew said, and he spoke like a criminal before a
+judge, and at that moment he felt like one.
+
+"Good-evening," responded the other man. Then he added, in a hushed
+voice at first, for he had fineness to appreciate a sort of
+indecency in dunning, in asking a man for even his rightful due, and
+he had a regard for possible listening ears of femininity, "I was
+passing by, and I thought I'd call and see if it was convenient for
+you to pay me that money."
+
+"I'm sorry," Andrew responded, with utter subjection. He looked and
+felt ignoble. "I haven't got it, Evarts."
+
+"When are you going to have it?" asked the other, in a slightly
+raised, ominous voice.
+
+"Just as soon as I can possibly get it," replied Andrew, softly and
+piteously. Ellen's chamber was directly overhead. He thought of the
+possibility of her overhearing.
+
+"Look at here, Andrew Brewster," said the other man, and this time
+with brutal, pitiless force. When it came to the prospect of losing
+money he became as merciless as a machine. Something diabolical in
+remorselessness seemed to come to the surface, and reveal wheels of
+grinding for his fellow-men. "Look at here," he said, "I want to
+know right out, and no dodging. Have you got the money to pay
+me--yes or no?"
+
+"No," said Andrew then, with a manliness born of desperation.
+He had the feeling of one who will die fighting. He wished that
+Evarts would speak lower on account of Ellen, but he was prepared
+to face even that. The man's speech came with the gliddering
+rush of an electric car; it was a concentration of words into
+one intensity of meaning; he elided everything possible, he
+ran all his words together. He spoke something in this wise:
+"GoddamnyouAndrewBrewster, for comin'to borrow money to buy
+your girl a watch when you had nothin' to pay for't with,
+whatbusinesshadyourgirlwithawatchanyhow,I'dliket'know? My
+girl'ain'tgotno watch. I'veputmymoneyinthebank. It'srobbery.
+I'llhavethelawonye. I'llsueyou. I'll--"
+
+At that moment something happened. The man, William Evarts, who was
+talking with a vociferousness which seemed cutting and lacerating to
+the ear, who was brandishing an arm for emphasis in a circle of
+frenzy, fairly jumped to one side. The girl, Ellen Brewster, in a
+light wrapper, which she had thrown over her night-gown, came with
+such a speed down the stairs which led to the entry directly before
+the door, that she seemed to be flying. White ruffles eddied around
+her little feet, her golden hair was floating out like a flag. She
+came close to William Evarts. "Will you please not speak so loud,"
+said she, in a voice which her father had never heard from her lips
+before. It was a voice of pure command, and of command which carried
+with it the consciousness of power to enforce. She stood before
+William Evarts, and her fine smallness seemed intensified by her
+spirit to magnificence. The man shrank back a little, he had the
+impression as of some one overtowering him, and yet the girl came
+scarcely to his shoulder. "Please do not speak so loud, you will
+wake Amabel," she said, and Evarts muttered, like a dog under a
+whip, that he didn't want to wake her up.
+
+"You must not," said Ellen. "Now here is the watch and chain. I
+suppose that will do as well as your money if you cannot afford to
+wait for my father to pay you. My father will pay you in time. He
+has never borrowed anything of any man which he has not meant to pay
+back, and will not pay back. If you cannot afford to wait, take the
+watch and chain."
+
+The man looked at her stupefied.
+
+"Here," said Ellen; "take it."
+
+"I don't want your watch an' chain," muttered Evarts.
+
+"You have either got to take them or wait for your money," said
+Ellen.
+
+"I'll wait," said Evarts. He was looking at the girl's face with
+mingled sentiments of pity, admiration, and terror.
+
+"Very well, then," said Ellen. "I will promise you, and my father
+will, that you shall have your money in time, but how long do you
+want to wait?"
+
+"I'll wait any time. I ain't in any straits for the money, if I get
+it in the end," said Evarts.
+
+"You will get it in the end," said Ellen. Evarts turned to Andrew.
+
+"Look here, give me your note for six months," said he, "and we'll
+call it all right."
+
+"All right," said Andrew, again.
+
+"If you are not satisfied with that," said Ellen, with a tone as if
+she were conferring inestimable benefits, so proud it was, "you can
+take the watch and chain. It is not hurt in the least. Here."  She
+was fairly insolent. Evarts regarded her with a mixture of
+admiration and terror. He told somebody the next day that Andrew
+Brewster had a stepper of a daughter, but he did not give his
+reasons for the statement. He had a sense of honor, and he had been
+in love with a girl as young before he married his wife, who had
+been a widow older than he, worth ten thousand dollars from her
+first husband. He could no more have taken the girl's watch and
+chain than he would have killed her.
+
+"I'm quite satisfied," he replied to her, making a repellant
+motion towards the watch and dangling chain glittering in the
+electric-light.
+
+"Very well, then," said Ellen, and she threw the chain over her
+neck.
+
+"You just bring that I O U to the shop to-mor-mor," said Evarts to
+Andrew; then, with a "Good-evening," he was off. They heard him hail
+an electric-car passing, and that, although he never took a car, but
+walked to save the fare. He had been often heard to say that he for
+one did not support the street railroad.
+
+After he had gone, Ellen turned to her father, and flung a silent
+white arm slipping from her sleeve loose around his neck, and pulled
+his head to her shoulder. "Now look here, father," she said, "you've
+been through lots to-day, and you'd better go to bed and go to
+sleep. I don't think mother was waked up--if she had been, she would
+have been out here."
+
+"Look here, Ellen, I want to tell you," Andrew began, pitifully. He
+was catching his breath like a child with sobs.
+
+"I don't want to hear anything," replied Ellen, firmly. "Whatever
+you did was right, father."
+
+"I ought to tell you, Ellen!"
+
+"You ought to tell me nothing," said Ellen. "You are all tired out,
+father. You can't do anything that isn't right for me. Now go to bed
+and go to sleep."
+
+Ellen stroked her father's thin gray hair with exactly the same
+tender touch with which he had so often stroked her golden locks. It
+was an inheritance of love reverting to its original source. She
+kissed him on his lined forehead with her flower-like lips, then she
+pushed him gently away. "Go softly, and don't wake mother,"
+whispered she; "and, father, there's no need to trouble her with
+this. Good-night."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIV
+
+
+Ellen's deepest emotion was pity for her father, so intense that it
+was actual physical pain.
+
+"Poor father! Poor father! He had to borrow the money to buy me my
+watch and chain," she kept repeating to herself. "Poor father!"
+
+To her New England mind, borrowing seemed almost like robbing. She
+actually felt as if her father had committed a crime for love of
+her, but all she looked at was the love, not the guilt. Suddenly a
+conviction which fairly benumbed her came over her--the money in the
+savings-bank; that little hoard, which had been to the imagination
+of herself and her mother a sheet-anchor against poverty, must be
+gone. "Father must have used if for something unbeknown to mother,"
+she said to herself--"he must, else he would not have told Mr.
+Evarts that he could not pay him."  It was a hot night, but the girl
+shivered as she realized for the first time the meaning of the wolf
+at the door. "All we've got left is this house--this house
+and--and--our hands," thought Ellen. She saw before her her father's
+poor, worn hands, her mother's thin, tired hands, jerking the thread
+in and out of those shameful wrappers; then she looked at her own,
+as yet untouched by toil, as white and small and fair as flowers.
+She thought of the four years before her at college, four years
+before she could earn anything--and in the mean time? She looked at
+the pile of her school-books on the table. She had been studying
+hard all summer. The thirst for knowledge was as intense in her as
+the thirst for stimulants in a drunkard.
+
+"I ought to give up going to college, and go to work in the shop,"
+Ellen said to herself, and she said it as one might drive a
+probing-knife into a sore. "I ought to," she repeated. And yet she
+was far from resolving to give up college. She began to argue with
+herself the expediancy, supposing that the money in the bank was
+gone, of putting a mortgage on the house. If her father continued to
+have work, they might get along and pay for her aunt, who might, as
+the doctor had said, not be obliged to remain long in the asylum if
+properly cared for. Would it not, after all, be better, since by a
+course at college she would be fitted to command a larger salary
+than she could in any other way. "I can support them all," reflected
+Ellen. At that time the thought of Robert Lloyd, and that awakening
+of heart which he had brought to pass, were in abeyance. Old powers
+had asserted themselves. This love for her own blood and their need
+came between her and this new love, half of the senses, half of the
+spirit.
+
+Amabel waked up in the early sultry dawn of the summer day with the
+bewilderment of one in a new world. She stared at the walls of the
+room, at the shaft of sunlight streaming in the window, then at
+Ellen.
+
+"Where am I?" she inquired, in a loud, querulous plaint. Then she
+remembered, but she did not cry; instead, her little face took on a
+painfully old look.
+
+"You are here with cousin Ellen, darling, don't you know?" Ellen
+replied, leaning over her, and kissing her.
+
+Amabel wriggled impatiently away, and faced to the wall. "Yes, I
+know," said she.
+
+That morning Amabel would not eat any breakfast, and Fanny suggested
+that Ellen take her for a ride on the street-cars. "We can get along
+without you for an hour," she whispered, "and I am afraid that child
+will be sick."
+
+So Ellen and Amabel set out, leaving Fanny and the dressmaker at
+work, and when they were returning past the factories the noon
+whistles were blowing and the operatives were streaming forth.
+
+Ellen was surprised to see her father among them as the car swept
+past. He walked down the street towards home, his dinner-bag
+dangling at his side, his back more bent than ever.
+
+She wondered uneasily if her father was ill, for he never went home
+to dinner. She looked back at him as the car swept past, but he did
+not seem to see her. He walked with an air of seeing nothing,
+covering the ground like an old dog with some patient, dumb end in
+view, heeding nothing by the way. It puzzled her also that her
+father had come out of Lloyd's instead of McGuire's, where he had
+been employed all summer. Ellen, after she reached home, watched
+anxiously for her father to come into the yard, but she did not see
+him. She assisted about the dinner, which was a little extra on
+account of the dressmaker, and all the time she glanced with covert
+anxiety at the window, but her father did not pass it. Finally, when
+she went out to the pump for a pitcher of water, she set the pitcher
+down, and sped to the orchard like a wild thing. A suspicion had
+seized her that her father was there.
+
+Sure enough, there he was, but instead of lying face down on the
+grass, as he had done before, he was sitting back against a tree. He
+had the air of having settled into such a long lease of despair that
+he had sought the most comfortable position for it. His face was
+ghastly. He looked at Ellen as she drew near, and opened his mouth
+as if to speak, but instead he only caught his breath. He stared
+hard at her, then he closed his eyes as if not to see her, and
+motioned her away with one hand with an inarticulate noise in his
+throat.
+
+But Ellen sat down beside him. She caught his two hands and looked
+at him. "Father, look at me," said she, and Andrew opened his eyes.
+The expression in them was dreadful, compounded of shame and despair
+and dread, but the girl's met them with a sort of glad triumph and
+strength of love. "Now look here, father," she said, "you tell me
+all about it. I didn't want to know last night. Now I want to know.
+What is the matter?"
+
+Andrew continued to look at her, then all at once he spoke with a
+kind of hoarse shout. "I'm discharged! I'm discharged," he said,
+"from McGuire's; they've got a boy who can move faster in my
+place--a boy for less pay, who can move faster. I hurried over to
+Lloyd's to see if they would take me on again; I've always thought I
+should get back into Lloyd's, and I saw the foreman, and he told me
+to my face that I was too old, that they wanted younger men. And I
+went into the office to see Lloyd, pushed past the foreman, with him
+damning me, and I saw Lloyd."
+
+"Was young Mr. Lloyd there?" asked Ellen, with white lips.
+
+"No; I guess he had gone to dinner. And Lloyd looked at me, and I
+believe he counted every gray hair in my head, and he saw my back,
+and he saw my hands, and he said--he said I was too old."
+
+Andrew snatched his hands from Ellen's grasp, pressed them to his
+face, and broke into weeping. "Oh, my God, I'm too old, I'm too
+old!" he sobbed; "I'm out of it! I'm too old!"
+
+Ellen regarded him, and her face had developed lines of strength
+hitherto unrevealed. There was no pity in it, hardly love; she
+looked angry and powerful. "Father, stop doing so, and look at me,"
+she said. She dragged her father's hands from his face, and he
+stared at her with his inflamed eyes, half terrified, half
+sustained. At that moment he realized a strength of support as from
+his own lost youth, a strength as of eternal progress which was more
+to be relied upon than other human strength. For the first time he
+leaned on his child, and realized with wonder the surety of the
+stay.
+
+"Now, father, you stop doing so," said Ellen. "You can get work
+somewhere; you are not old. Call yourself old! It is nonsense. Are
+you going to give in and be old because two men tell you that you
+are? What if your hair is gray! Ever so many young men have gray
+hair. You are not old, and you can get work somewhere. McGuire's and
+Lloyd's are not the only factories in the country."
+
+"That ain't all," said Andrew, with eyes like a beseeching dog's on
+her face.
+
+"I know that isn't all," said Ellen. "You needn't be afraid to tell
+me, father. You have taken the money out of the savings-bank for
+something."
+
+Again Andrew would have snatched his hands from the girl's and
+hidden his face, but she held them fast. "Yes, I have," he admitted,
+in a croaking voice.
+
+"Well, what if you have?" asked Ellen. "You had a right to take it
+out, didn't you? You put it in. I don't know of anybody who had a
+better right to take it out than you, if you wanted to."
+
+Andrew stared at her, as if he did not hear rightly. "You don't know
+what I did with it, Ellen," he stammered.
+
+"It is nobody's business," replied Ellen. She had an unexplained
+sensation as if she were holding fast to her father's slipping
+self-respect which was dragging hard at her restraining love.
+
+"I put it in a worthless gold-mine out in Colorado--the same one
+your uncle Jim lost his money in," groaned Andrew.
+
+"Well, it was your money, and you had a perfect right to," said
+Ellen. "Of course you thought the mine was all right or you wouldn't
+have put the money into it."
+
+"God knows I did."
+
+"Well, the best business men in the world make mistakes. It is
+nobody's business whether you took the money out or not, or what you
+used it for, father."
+
+"I don't see how the bills are going to be paid, and there's your
+poor aunt," said Andrew. He was leaning more and more heavily upon
+this new tower of strength, this tender little girl whom he had
+hitherto shielded and supported. The beautiful law of reverse of
+nature had come into force.
+
+Ellen set her mouth firmly. "Don't you worry, father," said she. "We
+will think of some way out of it. There's a little money to pay for
+Aunt Eva, and maybe she won't be sick long. Does mother know,
+father?"
+
+"She don't know about anything, Ellen," replied Andrew, wretchedly.
+
+"I know she doesn't know about your getting thrown out of work--but
+about the bank?"
+
+"No, Ellen."
+
+Ellen rose. "You stay here, where it is cool, till I ring the
+dinner-bell, father," she said.
+
+"I don't want any dinner, child."
+
+"Yes, you do, father. If you don't eat your dinner you will be sick.
+You come when the bell rings."
+
+Andrew knew that he should obey, as he saw the girl's light dress
+disappear among the trees.
+
+Ellen went back to the pump, and carried her pitcher of water into
+the house. Her mother met her at the door. "Where have you been all
+this time, Ellen Brewster?" she asked, in a high voice. "Everything
+is getting as cold as a stone."
+
+Ellen caught her mother's arm and drew her into the kitchen, and
+closed the door. Fanny turned pale as death and looked at her.
+"Well, what has happened now?" she said. "Is your father killed?"
+
+"No," said Ellen, "but he is out of work, and he can't get a job at
+Lloyd's, and he took all that money out of the savings-bank a long
+time ago, and put it into that gold-mine that Uncle Jim lost in."
+
+Fanny clutched the girl's arm in a grasp so hard that it left a blue
+mark on the tender flesh. She looked at her, but did not speak one
+word.
+
+"Now, mother," said Ellen, "you must not say one word to father to
+scold him. He's got enough to bear as it is."
+
+Fanny pushed her away with sudden fierceness. "I guess I don't need
+to have my own daughter teach me my duty to my husband," said she.
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Down in the orchard."
+
+"Well, ring the bell for dinner loud, so he can hear it."
+
+When Andrew came shuffling wearily up from the orchard, Fanny met
+him at the corner of the house, out of sight from the windows. She
+was flushed and perspiring, clad in a coarse cotton wrapper,
+revealing all her unkempt curves. She went close to him, and thrust
+one large arm through his. "Look here, Andrew," said she, in the
+tenderest voice he had ever heard from her, a voice so tender that
+it was furious, "you needn't say one word. What's done's done. We
+shall get along somehow. I ain't afraid. Come in and eat your
+dinner!"
+
+The dressmaking work went on as usual after dinner. Andrew had
+disappeared, going down the road towards the shop. He tried for a
+job at Briggs's, with no success, then drifted to the corner
+grocery.
+
+Ellen sat until nearly three o'clock sewing. Then she went up-stairs
+and got her hat, and went secretly out of the back door, through the
+west yard, that her mother should not see her. However, her
+grandmother called after her, and wanted to know where she was
+going.
+
+"Down street, on an errand," answered Ellen.
+
+"Well, keep on the shady side," called her grandmother, thinking the
+girl was bound to the stores for some dressmaking supplies.
+
+That night Miss Higgins did not ask for her pay; she had made up her
+mind to wait until her week was finished. She went away after
+supper, and Ellen followed her to the door. "We won't want you
+to-morrow, Miss Higgins," said she, "and here is your pay."  With
+that she handed a roll of bills to the woman, who stared at her in
+amazement and growing resentment.
+
+"If my work ain't satisfactory," said she--
+
+"Your work is satisfactory," said Ellen, "but I don't want any more
+work done. I am not going to college."
+
+There was something conclusive and intimidating about Ellen's look
+and tone. The dressmaker, who had been accustomed to regard her as a
+child, stared at her with awe, as before a sudden revelation of
+force. Then she took her money, and went down the walk.
+
+When Ellen re-entered the sitting-room her father and mother, who
+had overheard every word, confronted her.
+
+"Ellen Brewster, what does this mean?"
+
+Andrew looked as if he would presently fall to the floor.
+
+"It means," said Ellen--and she looked at her parents with the brave
+enthusiasm of a soldier on her beautiful face--she even laughed--"it
+means that I am going to work--I have got a job in Lloyd's."
+
+When Ellen made that announcement, her mother did a strange thing.
+She ran swiftly to a corner of the room, and stood there, staring at
+the girl, with back hugged close to the intersection of the walls,
+as if she would withdraw as far as possible from some threatening
+ill. At that moment she looked alarmingly like her sister; there was
+something about Fanny in her corner, calculated, when all
+circumstances were taken into consideration, to make one's blood
+chill, but Andrew did not look at her. He was intent upon Ellen, and
+the facing of the worst agony of his life, and Ellen was intent upon
+him. She loved her mother, but the fear as to her father's suffering
+moved her more than her mother's. She was more like her father, and
+could better estimate his pain under stress. Andrew rose to his feet
+and stood looking at Ellen, and she at him. She tried to meet the
+drawn misery and incredulousness of his face with a laugh of
+reassurance.
+
+"Yes, I've got a job in Lloyd's," said she. "What's the matter,
+father?"
+
+Then Andrew made an almost inarticulate response; it sounded like a
+croak in an unknown tongue.
+
+Ellen continued to look at him, and to laugh.
+
+"Now look here, father," said she. "There is no need for you and
+mother to feel bad over this. I have thought it all over, and I have
+made up my mind. I have got a good high-school education now, and
+the four years I should have to spend at Vassar I could do nothing
+at all. There is awful need of money here, and not only for us, but
+for Aunt Eva and Amabel."
+
+"You sha'n't do it!" Andrew burst out then, in a great shout of
+rage. "I'll mortgage the house--that'll last awhile. You sha'n't, I
+say! You are my child, and you've got to listen. You sha'n't, I
+say!"
+
+"Now, father," responded Ellen's voice, which seemed to have in it a
+wonderful tone of firmness against which his agonized vociferousness
+broke as against a rock, "this is nonsense. You must not mortgage
+the house. The house is all you have got for your and mother's old
+age. Do you think I could go to college, and let you give up the
+house in order to keep me there? And as for grandma Brewster, you
+know what's hers is hers as long as she lives--we don't want to
+think of that. I have got this job now, which is only three dollars
+a week, but in a year the foreman said I might earn fifteen or
+eighteen, if I was quick and smart, and I will be quick and smart.
+It is the best thing for us all, father."
+
+"You sha'n't!" shouted Andrew. "I say you sha'n't!"
+
+Suddenly Andrew sank into a chair, his head lopped, he kept moving a
+hand before his eyes, as if he were brushing away cobwebs. Then
+Fanny came out of her corner.
+
+"Get the camphor, quick!" she said to Ellen. "I dun'no' but you've
+killed your father."
+
+Fanny held her husband's head against her shoulder, and rubbed his
+hands frantically. The awful strained look had gone from her face.
+Ellen came with the camphor, and then went for water. Fanny rubbed
+Andrew's forehead with the camphor, and held the bottle to his nose.
+"Smell it, Andrew," she said, in a voice of ineffable tenderness and
+pity. Ellen returned with a glass of water, and Andrew swallowed a
+little obediently. Finally he made out to stagger into the bedroom
+with Fanny's and Ellen's assistance. He sat down weakly on the bed,
+and Fanny lifted his legs up. Then he sank and closed his eyes as if
+he were spent. In fact, he was. At that moment of Ellen's
+announcement some vital energy in him suddenly relaxed like
+overstrained rubber. His face, sunken in the pillow, was both
+ghastly and meek. It was the face of a man who could fight no more.
+Ellen knelt down beside him, sobbing.
+
+"Oh, father!" she sobbed, "I think it is for the best. Dear father,
+you won't feel bad."
+
+"No," said Andrew, faintly. There was a slight twitching in his
+hand, as if he wished to put it on her head, then it lay thin and
+inert on the coverlid. He tried to smile, but his face settled into
+that look of utter acquiescence of fate.
+
+"I s'pose it's the best you can do," he muttered.
+
+"Have you told Miss Lennox?" gasped Fanny.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"She was sorry, but she made no objection," replied Ellen,
+evasively.
+
+Fanny came forward abruptly, caught up the camphor-bottle, and began
+bathing Andrew's forehead again.
+
+"We won't say any more about it," said she, in a harsh voice. "You'd
+better go over to your grandma Brewster's and see if she has got any
+whiskey. I think your father needs to take something."
+
+"I don't want anything," said Andrew, feebly.
+
+"Yes, you do, too, you are as white as a sheet. Go over and ask her,
+Ellen."
+
+Ellen ran across the yard to her grandmother's, and the old woman
+met her at the door. She seemed to have an instinctive knowledge of
+trouble.
+
+"What's the matter?" she asked.
+
+"Father's a little faint, and mother wants me to borrow the
+whiskey," said Ellen. She had not at that time the courage to tell
+her grandmother what she had done.
+
+Mrs. Zelotes ran into the house, and came out with the bottle.
+
+"I'm comin' over," she announced. "I'm kind of worried about your
+father; he 'ain't looked well for some time. I wonder what made him
+faint. Maybe he ate something which hurt him."
+
+Ellen said nothing. She fled up-stairs to her chamber, as her
+grandmother entered the bedroom. She felt cowardly, but she thought
+that she would let her mother tell the news.
+
+She sat down and waited. She knew that presently she would hear the
+old woman's voice at the foot of the stairs. She was resolved upon
+her course, and knew that she could not be shaken in it, yet she
+dreaded unspeakably the outburst of grief and anger which she knew
+would come from her grandmother. She felt as if she had faced two
+fires, and now before the third she quailed a little.
+
+It was not long before the expected summons came.
+
+"Ellen--Ellen Brewster, come down here!"
+
+Ellen went down. Her grandmother met her at the foot of the stairs.
+She was trembling from head to foot; her mouth twisted and wavered
+as if she had the palsy.
+
+"Look here, Ellen Brewster, this ain't true?" she stammered.
+
+"Yes, grandma," answered Ellen. "I have thought it all over, and it
+is the only thing for me to do."
+
+Her grandmother clutched her arm, and the girl felt as if she were
+in the grasp of another will, which was more conclusive than steel.
+
+"You sha'n't!" she said, whispering, lest Andrew should hear, but
+with intense force.
+
+"I've got to, grandma. We've got to have the money."
+
+"The money," said the old woman, with an inflection of voice and a
+twist of her features indicative of the most superb scorn--"the
+money! I guess you ain't goin' to lose such a chance as that for
+money. I guess I've got two hundred and ten dollars a year income,
+and I'll give up a half of that, and Andrew can put a mortgage on
+the house, if that Tenny woman has got to be supported because her
+husband has run off and left her and her young one. You sha'n't go
+to work in a shop."
+
+"I've got to, grandma," said Ellen.
+
+The old woman looked at her. It was like a duel between two strong
+wills of an old race. "You sha'n't," she said.
+
+"Yes, I shall, grandma."
+
+Then the old woman turned upon her in a fury of rage.
+
+"You're a Loud all over, Ellen Brewster," said she. "You 'ain't got
+a mite of Brewster about you. You 'ain't got any pride! You'd just
+as soon settle down and work in a shop as do anything else."
+
+Fanny pushed before her. "Look here, Mother Brewster," said she,
+"you can just stop! Ellen is my daughter, and you 'ain't any right
+to talk to her this way. I won't have it. If anybody is goin' to
+blame her, it's me."
+
+"Who be you?" said Mrs. Zelotes, sniffing.
+
+Then she looked at them both, at Ellen and at her mother.
+
+"If you go an' do what you've planned," said she to Ellen, "an' if
+you uphold her in it," to Fanny, "I've done with you."
+
+"Good riddance," said Fanny, coarsely.
+
+"I ain't goin' to forget that you said that," cried Mrs. Zelotes.
+She held up her dress high in front and went out of the door. "I
+ain't comin' over here again, an' I'll thank you to stay at home,"
+said she. Then she went away.
+
+Soon after Fanny heard Ellen in the dining-room setting the table
+for supper, and went out.
+
+"Where did you get that money you paid the dressmaker with?" she
+asked, abruptly.
+
+"I borrowed it of Abby," replied Ellen.
+
+"Then she knows?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Fanny continued to look at Ellen with the look of one who is
+settling down with resignation under some knife of agony.
+
+"Well," said she, "there's no need to talk any more about it before
+your father. Now I guess you had better toast him some bread for his
+supper."
+
+"Yes, I will," replied Ellen. She looked at her mother pitifully,
+and yet with that firmness which had seemed to suddenly develop in
+her. "You know it is the best thing for me to do, mother?" she said,
+and although she put it in the form of a question, the statement was
+commanding in its assertiveness.
+
+"When are you--goin' to work?" asked Fanny.
+
+"Next Monday," replied Ellen.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXV
+
+
+When Ellen had gone to the factory to apply for work neither of the
+Lloyds were in the office, only a girl at the desk, whom she knew
+slightly. Ellen had hesitated a little as she approached the girl,
+who looked around with a friendly smile.
+
+"I want to see--" Ellen began, then she stopped, for she did not
+exactly know for whom she should ask. The girl, who was blond and
+trim, clad coquettishly in a blue shirt-waist and a duck skirt, with
+a large, cheap rhinestone pin confining the loop of her yellow
+braids, looked at her in some bewilderment. She had heard of Ellen's
+good-fortune, and knew she was to be sent to Vassar by Cynthia
+Lennox. She did not dream that she had come to ask for employment.
+
+"You want to see Mr. Lloyd?" she asked.
+
+"Oh no!" replied Ellen.
+
+"Mr. Robert Lloyd?"  The girl, whose name was Nellie Stone, laughed
+a little meaningly as she said that.
+
+Ellen blushed. "No," she said. "I think I want to see the foreman."
+
+"Which foreman?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Ellen. "I want to get work if I can. I don't
+know which foreman I ought to see."
+
+"To get work?" repeated the girl, with a subtle change in her
+manner.
+
+"Yes," said Ellen. She could hear her heart beat, but she looked at
+the other girl's pretty, common face with the most perfect calmness.
+
+"Mr. Flynn is the one you want to see, then," said the girl. "You
+know Ed Flynn, don't you?"
+
+"A little," replied Ellen. He had been a big boy when she entered
+the high-school, and had left the next spring.
+
+"Well, he's the one you want," said Nellie Stone. Then she raised
+her voice to a shrill peal as a boy passed the office door.
+
+"Here, you, Jack," said she, "ask Mr. Flynn to come here a minute,
+will you?"
+
+"He don't want to see you," replied the boy, who was small and
+spare, laden heavily with a great roll of wrapping paper borne
+bayonet fashion over his shoulder. His round, impish face grinned
+back at the girl at the desk.
+
+"Quit your impudence," she returned, half laughing herself. "I don't
+want to see him; it is this young lady here; hurry up."
+
+The boy gave a comprehensive glance at Ellen. "Guess he'll come," he
+called back.
+
+Flynn appeared soon. He was handsome, well shaven and shorn, and he
+held himself smartly. He also dressed well in a business suit which
+would not have disgraced the Lloyds. His face lit up with
+astonishment and pleasure when he saw Ellen. He bowed and greeted
+her in a rich voice. He was of Irish descent but American born. Both
+his motions and his speech were adorned with flourishes of grace
+which betrayed his race. He placed a chair for Ellen with a sweep
+which would have been a credit to the stage. All his actions had a
+slight exaggeration as of fresco painting, which seemed to fit them
+for a stage rather than a room, and for an audience rather than
+chance spectators.
+
+"No, thank you," replied Ellen. Then she went straight to the matter
+in hand. "I have called to see if I could get a job here?" she said.
+She had been formulating her speech all the way thither. Her first
+impulse was to ask for employment, but she was sure as to the manner
+in which a girl would ordinarily couch such a request. So she asked
+for a job.
+
+Flynn stared at her. "A job?" he repeated.
+
+"Yes, I want very much to get one," replied Ellen. "I thought there
+might be a vacancy."
+
+"Why, I thought--" said the young man. He was very much astonished,
+but his natural polish could rise above astonishment. Instead of
+blurting out what was in his mind as to her change of prospects, he
+reasoned with incredible swiftness that the change must be a hard
+thing to this girl, and that she was to be handled the more tenderly
+and delicately because she was such a pretty girl. He became twice
+as polite as before. He moved the chair nearer to her.
+
+"Please sit down," he said. He handed to her the wooden arm-chair as
+if it had been a throne. Nellie Stone bent frowning over her
+day-book.
+
+"Now let me see," said the young man, seriously, with perfect
+deference of manner, only belied by the rollicking admiration in his
+eyes. "You have never held a position in a factory before, I think?"
+
+"No," replied Ellen.
+
+"There is at present only one vacancy that I can think of," said
+Flynn, "and that does not pay very much, but there is always a
+chance to rise for a smart hand. I am sure you will be that," he
+added, smiling at her.
+
+Ellen did not return the smile. "I shall be contented to begin for a
+little, if there is a chance to rise," she said.
+
+"There's a chance to rise to eighteen dollars a week," said Flynn.
+He smiled again, but it was like smiling at seriousness itself.
+Ellen's downright, searching eyes upon his face seemed almost to
+forbid the fact of her own girlish identity.
+
+"What is the job you have for me?" said she.
+
+"Tying strings in shoes," answered Flynn. "Easy enough, only child's
+play, but you won't earn more than three dollars a week to begin
+with."
+
+"I shall be quite satisfied with that," said Ellen. "When shall I
+come?"
+
+"Why, to-morrow morning; no, to-morrow is Friday. Better come next
+Monday and begin the week. That will give you one day more off, and
+the hot wave a chance to get past."  Flynn spoke facetiously. It was
+a very hot day, and the air in the office like a furnace. He wiped
+his forehead, to which the dark rings of hair clung. The girl at the
+desk glanced around adoringly at him.
+
+"I would rather not stop for that if you want me to begin at once,"
+said Ellen.
+
+Flynn looked abashed. "Oh, we'd rather have you begin on the even
+week--it makes less bother over the account," he said. "Monday
+morning at seven sharp, then."
+
+"Yes," said Ellen.
+
+Flynn walked off with an abrupt duck of his head. He somehow felt
+that he had been rebuffed, and Ellen rose.
+
+"I told you you'd get one," said the girl at the desk. "Catch Ed
+Flynn not giving a pretty girl a job."  She said it with an accent
+of pain as well as malice. Ellen looked at her with large, indignant
+eyes. She had not the least idea what she meant, at least she
+realized only the surface meaning, and that angered her.
+
+"I suppose he gave me the job because there was a vacancy," she
+returned, with dignity.
+
+The other girl laughed. "Mebbe," said she.
+
+Ellen continued to look at her, and there was something in her look
+not only indignant, but appealing. Nellie Stone's expression changed
+again. She laughed uneasily. "Land, I didn't mean anything," said
+she. "I'm glad for you that you got the job. Of course you wouldn't
+have got it if there hadn't been a chance. One of the girls got
+married last week, Maud Millet. I guess it's her place you've got.
+I'm real glad you've got it."
+
+"Thank you," said Ellen.
+
+"Good-bye," said the girl.
+
+"Good-bye," replied Ellen.
+
+On Monday morning the heat had broken, and an east wind with the
+breath of the sea in it was blowing. Ellen started for her work at
+half-past six. She held her father's little, worn leather-bag, in
+which he had carried his dinner for so many years. The walk was so
+long that it would scarcely give her time to come home at noon, and
+as for taking a car, that was not to be thought of for a moment on
+account of the fare.
+
+Ellen walked along briskly, the east wind blew in her face, she
+smelled the salt sea, and somehow it at once soothed and stimulated
+her. Without seeing the mighty waste of waters, she seemed to
+realize its presence; she gazed at the sky hanging low with a scud
+of gray clouds, which did not look unlike the ocean, and the sense
+of irresponsibility in the midst of infinity comforted her.
+
+"I am not Ellen Brewster after all," she thought. "I am not anything
+separate enough to be worried about what comes to me. I am only a
+part of greatness which cannot fail of reaching its end."  She
+thought this all vaguely. She had no language for it, for she was
+very young; it was formless as music, but as true to her.
+
+When she reached the cross-street where the Atkinses lived Abby and
+Maria came running out.
+
+"My land, Ellen Brewster," said Abby, half angrily, "if you don't
+look real happy! I believe you are glad to go to work in a
+shoe-shop!"
+
+Ellen laughed. Maria said nothing, but she pressed close to her as
+she walked along. She was coughing a little in the east wind. There
+had been a drop of twenty degrees in the night, and these drops of
+temperature in New England mean steps to the tomb.
+
+"You make me mad," said Abby. Her voice broke a little. She dashed
+her hand across her eyes angrily. "Here's Granville Joy," said she;
+"you'll be in the same room with him, Ellen."  She said it
+maliciously. Distress over her friend made her fairly malicious.
+
+Ellen colored. "You are hard to talk to," said she, in a low voice,
+for Granville was coming nearer, gaining on them from behind.
+
+"She don't mean it," whispered Maria.
+
+When Granville caught up with them, Ellen pressed so close to Maria
+that he was forced to walk with Abby or pass on. She returned his
+"Good-morning," then did not look at him again. Presently Willy
+Jones appeared, coming so imperceptibly that he seemed almost
+impossible.
+
+"Where did he come from?" whispered Ellen to Maria.
+
+"Hush," replied Maria; "it's this way 'most every morning. All at
+once he comes, and he generally walks with me, because he's afraid
+Abby won't want him, but it's Abby."
+
+This morning, Willy Jones, aroused, perhaps, to self-assertion by
+the presence of another man, walked three abreast with Abby and
+Granville, but on the other side of Granville. Now and then he
+peered around the other man at the girl, with soft, wistful blue
+eyes, but Abby never seemed to see him. She talked fast, in a harsh,
+rather loud voice. She uttered bitter witticisms which made her
+companions laugh.
+
+"Abby is so bright," whispered Maria to Ellen, "but I wish she
+wouldn't talk so. Abby doesn't feel the way I wish she did. She
+rebels. She would be happier if she gave up rebelling and believed."
+ Maria coughed as she spoke.
+
+"You had better keep your mouth shut in this east wind, Maria," her
+sister called out sharply to her.
+
+"I'm not talking much, Abby," replied Maria.
+
+Presently Maria looked at Ellen lovingly. "Do you feel very badly
+about going to work?" she asked, in a low voice.
+
+"No, not now. I have made up my mind," replied Ellen. The east wind
+was bringing a splendid color to her cheeks. She held up her head as
+she marched along, like one leading a charge of battle. Her eyes
+gleamed as with blue fire, her yellow hair sprung and curled around
+her temples.
+
+They were now in the midst of a great, hurrying procession bound for
+the factories. Some of the men walked silently, with a dogged stoop
+of shoulders and shambling hitch of hips; some of the women moved
+droopingly, with an indescribable effect of hanging back from the
+leading of some imperious hand of fate. Many of them, both men and
+women, walked alertly and chattered like a flock of sparrows. Ellen
+moved with this rank and file of the army of labor, and all at once
+a sense of comradeship seized her. She began to feel humanity as she
+had never felt it before. The sense of her own littleness aroused
+her to a power of comprehension of the grandeur of the mass of which
+she was a part. She began to lose herself and sense humanity.
+
+When the people reached the factories, two on one side of the road,
+one, Lloyd's, on the other, they began streaming up the outside
+stairs and disappearing like swarms of bees in hives. Two flights of
+stairs, one on each side, led to a platform in front of the entrance
+of Lloyd's.
+
+When Ellen set her foot on one of these stairs the seven-o'clock
+steam-whistle blew, and a mighty thrill shot through the vast
+building. Ellen caught her breath. Abby came close to her.
+
+"Don't get scared," said she, with ungracious tenderness; "there's
+nothing to be scared at."
+
+Ellen laughed. "I'm not scared," said she. Then they entered the
+factory, humming with machinery, and a sensation which she had not
+anticipated was over her. Scared she was not; she was fairly
+exultant. All at once she entered a vast room in which eager men
+were already at the machines with frantic zeal, as if they were
+driving labor herself. When she felt the vibration of the floor
+under her feet, when she saw people spring to their stations of
+toil, as if springing to guns in a battle, she realized the might
+and grandeur of it all. Suddenly it seemed to her that the greatest
+thing in the whole world was work and that this was one of the
+greatest forms of work--to cover the feet of progress of the
+travellers of the earth from the cradle to the grave. She saw that
+these great factories, and the strength of this army of the sons and
+daughters of toil, made possible the advance of civilization itself,
+which cannot go barefoot. She realized all at once and forever the
+dignity of labor, this girl of the people, with a brain which
+enabled her to overlook the heads of the rank and file of which she
+herself formed a part. She never again, whatever her regret might
+have been for another life for which she was better fitted, which
+her taste preferred, had any sense of ignominy in this. She never
+again felt that she was too good for her labor, for labor had
+revealed itself to her like a goddess behind a sordid veil. Abby and
+Maria looked at her wonderingly. No other girl had ever entered
+Lloyd's with such a look on her face.
+
+"Are you sick?" whispered Abby, catching her arm.
+
+"No," said Ellen. "No, don't worry me, Abby. I think I shall like
+it."
+
+"I declare you make me mad," said Abby, but she looked at her
+adoringly. "Here's Ed Flynn," she added. "He'll look out for you.
+Good-bye, I'll see you at noon."  Abby went away to her machine. She
+was stitching vamps by the piece, and earning a considerable amount.
+The Atkinses were not so distressed as they had been, and Abby was
+paying off a mortgage.
+
+When the foreman came towards Ellen she experienced a shock. His
+gay, admiring eyes on her face seemed to dispel all her exaltation.
+She felt as if her feet touched earth, and yet the young man
+was entirely respectful, and even thoughtful. He bade her
+"Good-morning," and conducted her to the scene of her labor. One
+other girl was already there at work. She gave a sidewise glance at
+Ellen, and went on, making her fingers fly. Mr. Flynn showed Ellen
+what to do. She had to tie the shoes together with bits of twine,
+laced through eyelet holes. Ellen took a piece of twine and tied it
+in as Flynn watched her. He laughed pleasantly.
+
+"You'll do," he said, approvingly. "I've been in here five years,
+and you are the first girl I ever saw who tied a square knot at the
+first trial. Here's Mamie Brady here, she worked a solid month
+before she got the hang of the square knot."
+
+"You go along," admonished the girl spoken of as "Mamie Brady."  Her
+words were flippant, even impudent, but her tone was both dejected
+and childish. She continued to work without a glance at either of
+them. Her fingers flew, tying the knots with swift jerks.
+
+"Well, you help Miss Brewster, if she needs any help," said Flynn,
+as he went away.
+
+"We don't have any misses in this shop," said the girl to Ellen,
+with sarcastic emphasis.
+
+"I don't care anything about being called miss," replied Ellen,
+picking up another piece of string.
+
+"What's your first name?"
+
+"Ellen."
+
+"Oh, land! I know who you be. You read that essay at the high-school
+graduation. I was there. Well, I shouldn't think you would want to
+be called miss if you feel the way you said you did in that."
+
+"I don't want to," said Ellen.
+
+The girl gave a swift, comprehensive glance at her as her fingers
+manipulated the knots.
+
+"You won't earn twenty cents a week at the rate you're workin'," she
+said; "look at me."
+
+"I don't believe you worked any faster than I do when you hadn't
+been here any longer," retorted Ellen.
+
+"I did, too; you can't depend on a thing Ed Flynn says. You're awful
+slow. He praises you because you are good-lookin'."
+
+Ellen turned and faced her. "Look here," said she.
+
+The other girl looked at her with unspeakable impudence, and yet
+under it was that shadow of dejection and that irresponsible
+childishness.
+
+"Well, I am lookin'," said she, "what is it?"
+
+"You need not speak to me again in that way," said Ellen, "and I
+want you to understand it. I will not have it."
+
+"My, ain't you awful smart," said the other girl, sneeringly, but
+she went on with her work without another word. Presently she said
+to Ellen, kindly enough: "If you lay the shoes the way I do, so, you
+can get them faster. You'll find it pays. Every little saving of
+time counts when you are workin' by the piece."
+
+"Thank you," said Ellen, and did as she was instructed. She began to
+work with exceeding swiftness for a beginner. Her fingers were
+supple, her nervous energy great. Flynn came and stood beside her,
+watching her.
+
+"If you work at that rate, you'll make it pretty profitable," he
+said.
+
+"Thank you," said Ellen.
+
+"And a square knot every time," he added, with almost a caressing
+inflection. Mamie Brady tied in the twine with compressed lips.
+Granville Joy passed them, pushing a rack full of shoes to another
+department, and he glanced at them jealously. Still he was not
+seriously alarmed as to Flynn, who, although he was good-looking,
+was a Catholic. Mrs. Zelotes seemed an effectual barrier to that.
+
+"Ed Flynn talks that way to everybody," Mamie Brady said to Ellen,
+after the foreman had passed on. She said it this time quite
+inoffensively. Ellen laughed.
+
+"If I _do_ tie the knots square, that is the main thing," she said.
+
+"Then you don't like him?"
+
+"I never spoke two words to him before the day I applied for work,"
+Ellen replied, haughtily. She was beginning to feel that perhaps the
+worst feature of her going to work in a factory would be this girl.
+
+"I've known girls who would be willing to go down on their knees and
+tie his shoes when they hadn't seen more of him than that," said the
+girl. "Ed Flynn is an awful masher."
+
+Ellen went on with her work. The girl, after a side glance at her,
+went on with hers.
+
+Gradually Ellen's work began to seem mechanical. At first she had
+felt as if she were tying all her problems of life in square knots.
+She had to use all her brain upon it; after a while her brain had so
+informed her fingers that they had learned their lesson well enough
+to leave her free to think, if only the girl at her side would let
+her alone. The girl had a certain harsh beauty, coarsely curling red
+hair, a great mass of it, gathered in an untidy knot, and a
+brilliant complexion. Her hands were large and red. Ellen's
+contrasted with them looked like a baby's.
+
+"You 'ain't got hands for workin' in a shoe-shop," said Mamie Brady,
+presently, and it was impossible to tell from her tone whether she
+envied or admired Ellen's hands, or was proud of the superior
+strength of her own.
+
+"Well, they've got to work in a shoe-shop," said Ellen, with a short
+laugh.
+
+"You won't find it so easy to work with such little mites of hands
+when it comes to some things," said the girl.
+
+It began to be clear that she exulted in her large, coarse hands as
+being fitted for her work.
+
+"Maybe mine will grow larger," said Ellen.
+
+"No, they won't. They'll grow all bony and knotty, but they won't
+grow any bigger."
+
+"Well, I shall have to get along with them the best way I can,"
+replied Ellen, rather impatiently. This girl was irritating to a
+degree, and yet there was all the time that vague dejection about
+her, and withal a certain childishness, which seemed to insist upon
+patience. The girl was really older than Ellen, but she was
+curiously unformed. Some of the other girls said openly that she was
+"lacking."
+
+"You act stuck up. Are you stuck up?" asked Mamie Brady, suddenly,
+after another pause.
+
+Ellen laughed in spite of herself. "No," said she, "I am not. I know
+of no reason that I have for being stuck up."
+
+"Well, I don't know of any either," said the other girl, "but I
+didn't know. You sort of acted as if you felt stuck up."
+
+"Well, I don't."
+
+"You talk stuck up. Why don't you talk the way the rest of us do?
+Why do you say 'am not,' and 'ar'n't'; why don't you say 'ain't'?"
+
+The girl mimicked Ellen's voice impishly.
+
+Ellen colored. "I am going to talk the way I think best, the way I
+have been taught is right, and if that makes you think I am stuck
+up, I can't help it."
+
+"My, don't get mad. I didn't mean anything," said the other girl.
+
+All the time while Ellen was working, and even while the exultation
+and enthusiasm of her first charge in the battle of labor was upon
+her, she had had, since her feminine instincts were, after all,
+strong with her, a sense that Robert Lloyd was under the same great
+factory roof, in the same human hive, that he might at any moment
+pass through the room. That, however, she did not think very likely.
+She fancied the Lloyds seldom went through the departments, which
+were in charge of foremen. Mr. Norman Lloyd was at the mountains
+with his wife, she knew. They left Robert in charge, and he would
+have enough to do in the office. She looked at the grimy men working
+around her, and she thought of the elegant young fellow, and the
+utter incongruity of her being among them seemed so great as to
+preclude the possibility of it. She had said to herself when she
+thought of obtaining work in Lloyd's that she need not hesitate
+about it on account of Robert. She had heard her father say that the
+elder Lloyd almost never came in contact with the men, that
+everything was done through the foremen. She reasoned that it would
+be the same with the younger Lloyd. But all at once the girl at her
+side gave her a violent nudge, which did not interrupt for a second
+her own flying fingers.
+
+"Say," she said, "ain't he handsome?"
+
+Ellen glanced over her shoulder and saw Robert Lloyd coming down
+between the lines of workmen. Then she turned to her work, and her
+fingers slipped and bungled, her ears rang. He passed without
+speaking.
+
+Mamie Brady openly stared after him. "He's awful handsome, and an
+awful swell, but he's awful stuck up, just like the old boss," said
+she. "He never notices any of us, and acts as if he was afraid we'd
+poison him. My, what's the matter with you?"
+
+"Nothing," said Ellen.
+
+"You look white as a sheet; ain't you well?"
+
+Ellen turned upon her with sudden fury. She had something of the
+blood of the violent Louds and of her hot-tempered grandmother. She
+had stood everything from this petty, insistent tormentor.
+
+"Yes, I am well," she replied, "and I will thank you to let me
+alone, and let me do my work, and do your own."
+
+The other girl stared at her a minute with curiously expressive,
+uplifted eyebrows.
+
+"Whew!" she said, in a half whistle then, and went on with her work,
+and did not speak again.
+
+Ellen was thankful that Robert Lloyd had not spoken to her in the
+factory, and yet she was cut to the quick by it. It fulfilled her
+anticipations to the letter. "I was right," she said to herself; "he
+can never think of me again. He is showing it."  Somehow, after he
+had passed, her enthusiasm, born of a strong imagination, and her
+breadth of nature failed her somewhat. The individual began to press
+too closely upon the aggregate. Suddenly Ellen Brewster and her own
+heartache and longing came to the front. She had put herself out of
+his life as completely as if she had gone to another planet. Still,
+feeling this, she realized no degradation of herself as a cause of
+it. She realized that from his point of view she had gone into a
+valley, but from hers she was rather on an opposite height. She on
+the height of labor, of skilled handiwork, which is the
+manifestation in action of brain-work, he on the height of pure
+brain-work unpressed by physical action.
+
+At noon, when she was eating her dinner with Abby and Maria, Abby
+turned to her and inquired if young Mr. Lloyd had spoken to her when
+he came through the room.
+
+"No, he didn't," replied Ellen.
+
+Abby said nothing, but she compressed her lips and gave her head a
+hard jerk. A girl who ran a machine next to Abby's came up, munching
+a large piece of pie, taking clean semicircular bites with her
+large, white teeth.
+
+"Say," she said, "did you see the young boss's new suit? Got up
+fine, wasn't he?"
+
+"I'd like to see him working where I be for an hour," said a young
+fellow, strolling up, dipping into his dinner-bag. He was black and
+greasy as to face and hands and clothing. "Guess his light pants and
+vest would look rather different," said he, and everybody laughed
+except the Atkins girls and Ellen.
+
+"I guess he washed his hands, anyway, before he ate his dinner,"
+said Abby, sharply, looking at the young man's hands with meaning.
+
+The young fellow colored, though he laughed. "There ain't a knife in
+this shop so sharp as some women's tongues," said he. "I pity the
+man that gets you."
+
+"There won't be any man get me," retorted Abby. "I've seen all I
+want to see of men, working with 'em every day."
+
+"Mebbe they have of you," called back the young fellow, going away.
+
+"The saucy thing!" said the girl who stitched next to Abby.
+
+"There isn't any excuse for a man's eating his dinner with hands
+like that," said Abby. "It's worse to poison yourself with your own
+dirt than with other folks'. It hurts your own self more."
+
+"He ain't worth minding," said the girl.
+
+"Do you suppose I do mind him?" returned Abby. Maria looked at her
+meaningly. The young man, whose name was Edison Bartlett, had once
+tried to court Abby, but neither she nor Maria had ever told of it.
+
+"His clothes were a pearl gray," said the girl at the
+stitching-machine, reverting to the original subject.
+
+"Good gracious, who cares what color they were?" cried Abby,
+impatiently.
+
+"He looked awful handsome in 'em," said the girl. "He's awful
+handsome."
+
+"You'd better look at handsome fellows in your own set, Sadie Peel,"
+said Abby, roughly.
+
+The girl, who was extremely pretty, carried herself well, and
+dressed with cheap fastidiousness, colored.
+
+"I don't see what we have to think about sets for," said she. "I
+guess way back the Peels were as good as the Lloyds. We're in a free
+country, where one is as good as another, ain't we?"
+
+"No one is as good as another, except in the sight of the Lord, in
+any country on the face of this earth," said Abby.
+
+"If you are as good in your own sight, I don't see that it makes
+much difference about the sight of other human beings," said Ellen.
+"I guess that's what makes a republic, anyway."
+
+Sadie Peel gave a long, bewildered look at her, then she turned to
+Abby.
+
+"Do you know where I can get somebody to do accordion-plaiting for
+me?" she asked.
+
+"No," said Abby. "I never expect to get to the height of
+accordion-plaiting."
+
+"I know where you can," said another girl, coming up. She had light
+hair, falling in a harsh, uncurled bristle over her forehead; her
+black gown was smeared with paste, and even her face and hands were
+sticky with it.
+
+"There's a great splash of paste on your nose, Hattie Wright," said
+Abby.
+
+The girl took out a crumpled handkerchief and began rubbing her nose
+absently while she went on talking about the accordion-plaiting.
+
+"There's a woman on Joy Street does it," said she. "She lives just
+opposite the school-house, and she does it awful cheap, only three
+cents a yard."  She thrust the handkerchief into her pocket.
+
+"You haven't got it half off," said Abby.
+
+"Let it stay there, then," said the girl, indifferently. "If you
+work pasting linings in a shoe-shop you've got to get pasted
+yourself."
+
+Ellen looked at the girl with a curious reflection that she spoke
+the truth, that she really was pasted herself, that the soil and the
+grind of her labor were wearing on her soul. She had seen this girl
+out of the shop--in fact, only the day before--and no one would have
+known her for the same person. When her light hair was curled, and
+she was prettily dressed, she was quite a beauty. In the shop she
+was a slattern, and seemed to go down under the wheels of her toil.
+
+"On Joy Street, you said?" said Sadie Peel.
+
+"Yes. Right opposite the school-house. Her name is Brackett."
+
+Then the one-o'clock whistle blew, and everybody, Ellen with the
+rest, went back to their stations. Robert Lloyd did not come into
+the room again that afternoon. Ellen worked on steadily, and gained
+swiftness. Every now and then the foreman came and spoke
+encouragingly to her.
+
+"Look out, Mamie," he said to the girl at her side, "or she'll get
+ahead of you."
+
+"I don't want to get ahead of her," said Ellen, unexpectedly.
+
+Flynn laughed. "If you don't, you ain't much like the other girls in
+this shop," said he, passing on with his urbane, slightly important
+swing of shoulders.
+
+"Did you mean that?" asked Mamie Brady.
+
+"Yes, I did. It seems to me you work fast enough for any girl. A
+girl isn't a machine."
+
+"You're a queer thing," said Mamie Brady. "If I were you, I would
+just as soon get ahead as not, especially if Ed Flynn was goin' to
+come and praise me for it."
+
+Ellen shrugged her shoulders and tied another knot.
+
+"You're a queer thing," said Mamie Brady, while her fingers flew
+like live wires.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVI
+
+
+That night, when Ellen went down the street towards home with the
+stream of factory operatives, she computed that she must have earned
+about fifty cents, perhaps not quite that. She was horribly tired.
+Although the work in itself was not laborious, she had been all day
+under a severe nervous tension.
+
+"You look tired to death, Ellen Brewster," Abby said, in a
+half-resentful, half-compassionate tone. "You can never stand this
+in the world."
+
+"I am no more tired than any one would be the first day," Ellen
+returned, stoutly, "and I'm going to stand it."
+
+"You act to me as if you liked it," said Abby, with an angry switch
+like a cat.
+
+"I do," Ellen returned, almost as angrily. Then she turned to Abby.
+"Look here, Abby Atkins, why can't you treat me half-way decent?"
+said she. "You know I've got to do it, and I'm making the best of
+it. If anybody else treated me the way you are doing, I don't know
+what you would do."
+
+"I would kill them," said Abby, fiercely; "but it's different with
+me. I'm mad to have you go to work in the shop, and act as if you
+liked it, because I think so much of you."  Abby and Ellen were
+walking side by side, and Maria followed with Sadie Peel.
+
+"Well, I can't help it if you are mad at me," said Ellen. "I've had
+everything to contend against, my father and mother, and my
+grandmother won't even speak to me, and now if you--"  Ellen's voice
+broke.
+
+Abby caught her arm in a hard grip.
+
+"I ain't," said she; "you can depend on me. You know you can, in
+spite of everything. You know why I talk so. If you've set your
+heart on doing it, I won't say another word. I'll do all I can to
+help you, and I'd like to hear anybody say a word against you for
+going to work in the shop, that's all."
+
+Ellen and Abby almost never kissed each other; Abby was not given to
+endearments of that kind. Maria was more profuse with her caresses.
+That night when they reached the corner of the cross street where
+the Atkinses lived, Maria went close to Ellen and put up her face.
+
+"Good-night," said she. Then she withdrew her lips suddenly, before
+Ellen could touch them.
+
+"I forgot," said she. "You mustn't kiss me. I forgot my cough. They
+say it's catching."
+
+Ellen caught hold of her little, thin shoulders, held her firmly,
+and kissed her full on her lips.
+
+"Good-night," said she.
+
+"Good-night, Ellen," called Abby, and her sharp voice rang as sweet
+as a bird's.
+
+When Ellen came in sight of her grandmother's house, she saw a
+window-shade go down with a jerk, and knew that Mrs. Zelotes had
+been watching for her, and was determined not to let her know it.
+Mrs. Pointdexter came out of her grand house as Ellen passed, and
+took up her station on the corner to wait for a car. She bowed to
+Ellen with an evasive, little, sidewise bow. Her natural amiability
+prompted her to shake hands with her, call her "my dear," and
+inquire how she had got on during her first day in the factory, but
+she was afraid of her friend, whose eye she felt upon her around the
+edge of the drawn curtain.
+
+It was unusually dark that night for early fall, and the rain came
+down in a steady drizzle, as it had come all day, and the wind blew
+from the ocean on the east. The lamp was lighted in the kitchen when
+Ellen turned into her own door-yard, and home had never looked so
+pleasant and desirable to her. For the first time in her life she
+knew what it was to come home for rest and shelter after a day of
+toil, and she seemed to sense the full meaning of home as a refuge
+for weary labor.
+
+When she opened the door, she smelled at once a particular kind of
+stew of which she was very fond, and knew that her mother had been
+making it for her supper. There was a rush of warm air from the
+kitchen which felt grateful after the damp chill outside.
+
+Ellen went into the kitchen, and her mother stood there over the
+stove, stirring the stew. She looked up at the girl with an
+expression of intense motherliness which was beyond a smile.
+
+"Well, so you've got home?" she said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How did you get along?"
+
+"All right. It isn't hard work. Not a bit hard, mother."
+
+"Ain't you tired?"
+
+"Oh, a little. But no more than anybody would be at first. I don't
+look very tired, do I?" Ellen laughed.
+
+"No, you don't," said Fanny, looking at her cheeks, reddened with
+the damp wind. The mother's look was admiring and piteous and brave.
+No one knew how the woman had suffered that day, but she had kept
+her head and heart above it. The stew for Ellen's supper was a proof
+of that.
+
+"Where's father?" asked Ellen, taking off her hat and cape, and
+going to the sink to wash her face and hands. Fanny saw her do that
+with a qualm. Ellen had always used a dainty little set in her own
+room. Now she was doing exactly as her father had always done on his
+return from the shop--washing off the stains of leather at the
+kitchen sink. She felt instinctively that Ellen did it purposely,
+that she was striving to bring herself into accord with her new life
+in all the details.
+
+Little Amabel came running out of the dining-room, and threw her
+arms around Ellen's knees as she was bending over the sink. "I've
+set the table!" she cried.
+
+"Look out or you'll get all splashed," laughed Ellen.
+
+"And I dusted," said Amabel.
+
+"She's been as good as a kitten all day, and a sight of help," said
+Fanny.
+
+"She's a good girl," said Ellen. "Cousin Ellen will kiss her as soon
+as she gets her face washed."
+
+She caught hold of a fold of the roller towel, and turned her
+beautiful, dripping face to her mother as she did so.
+
+"That stew does smell so good," said she. "Where did you say father
+was?"
+
+"I thought we'd just have some bread and milk for dinner, and
+somethin' hearty to-night, when you came home," said Fanny. "I
+thought maybe a stew would taste good."
+
+"I guess it will," said Ellen, stooping down to kiss Amabel. "Where
+did you say father was?"
+
+"Uncle Andrew has been lyin' down all day most," whispered Amabel.
+
+"Isn't he well?" Ellen asked her mother, in quick alarm.
+
+"Oh yes, he's well enough."  Fanny moved close to the girl with a
+motion of secrecy. "If I were you I wouldn't say one word about the
+shop, nor what you did, before father to-night; let him kind of get
+used to it. Amabel mustn't talk about it, either."
+
+"I won't," said Amabel, with a wise air.
+
+"You know father had set his heart on somethin' pretty different for
+you," said Fanny.
+
+Fanny hushed her voice as Andrew came out of the dining-room,
+staggering a little as if the light blinded him. His nervous
+strength of the morning had passed and left him exhausted. He moved
+and stood with a downward lope of every muscle, expressing
+unutterable patience, which had passed beyond rebellion and
+questioning.
+
+He stood before Ellen like some old, spent horse. He was expecting
+to hear something about the shop--expecting, as it were, a touch on
+a sore, and he waited for it meekly.
+
+Ellen turned her lovely, glowing face towards him.
+
+"Father," she said, as if nothing out of the common had happened,
+"are you going down-town to-night?"
+
+Andrew brightened a little. "I can if you want anything, Ellen," he
+said.
+
+"Well, I don't want you to go on purpose, but I do want a book from
+the library."
+
+"I'd just as soon go as not, Ellen," said Andrew.
+
+"It'll do him good," whispered Fanny, as she passed Ellen, carrying
+the dish of stew to the dining-room.
+
+"Well, then, I'll give you my card after supper," said Ellen.
+"Supper is ready now, isn't it, mother? I'm as hungry as a bear."
+
+Andrew, when he was seated at the table and was ladling out the
+stew, had still that air of hopeless and defenceless apology towards
+life, but he held his head higher, and his frown of patient gloom
+had relaxed.
+
+Then Ellen said something else. "Maybe I can write a book some
+time," said she.
+
+A sudden flash illumined Andrew's face. It was like the visible
+awakening of hope and ambition.
+
+"I don't see why you can't," he said, eagerly.
+
+"Maybe she can," said Fanny. "Give her some more of the potatoes,
+Andrew."
+
+"I'll have plenty of time after--evenings," said Ellen.
+
+"I guess lots of folks write books that sell, and sell well, that
+don't have any more talent than you," said Andrew. "Only think how
+they praised your valedictory."
+
+"Well, it can't do any harm to try," said Ellen, "and you could copy
+it for me, couldn't you, father? Your writing is so fine, it would
+be as good as a typewriter."
+
+"Of course I can," said Andrew.
+
+When Andrew went down to the library, passing along the drenched
+streets, seeing the lamps through shifting veils of heavy mist, he
+was as full of enthusiasm over Ellen's book as he had been over the
+gold-mine. The heart of a man is always ready to admit a ray of
+sunshine, and it takes only a small one to dispel the shadows when
+love dwells therein.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVII
+
+
+Ellen actually went to work, with sheets of foolscap and a new
+bottle of ink, on a novel, which was not worth the writing; but no
+one could estimate the comfort and encouragement it was to Andrew.
+Ellen worked an hour or two every evening on the novel, and next day
+Andrew copied it in a hand like copperplate--large, with ornate
+flourishes. Andrew's handwriting had always been greatly admired,
+and, strangely enough, it was not in the least indicative of his
+character, being wholly acquired. He had probably some ability for
+drawing, but this had been his only outlet.
+
+At the head of every chapter of Ellen's novel were birds and flowers
+done in colored inks, and every chapter had a tail-piece of elegant
+quirls and flourishes. Fanny admired it intensely. She was not quite
+so sure of Ellen's work as she was of her husband's. She felt
+herself a judge of one, but not of the other.
+
+"If Ellen could only write as well as you copy, it will do," she
+often said to Andrew.
+
+"What she is writing is beautiful," said Andrew, fervently. He was
+quite sure in his own mind that such a book had never been written,
+and his pride in his decorations was a minor one.
+
+Ellen, although she was not versed in the ways of books, yet had
+enough of a sense of the fitness of things, and of the ridiculous,
+to know that the manuscript, with its impossible pen-and-ink birds
+and flowers heading and finishing every chapter, was grotesque in
+the extreme. She felt divided between a desire to laugh and a desire
+to cry whenever she looked at it. About her own work she felt more
+than doubtful; still, she was somewhat hopeful, since her taste and
+judgment, as well as her style, were alike crude. She told Abby and
+Maria what she was doing, under promise of strict secrecy, and after
+a while read them a few chapters.
+
+"It's beautiful," said Maria--"perfectly beautiful. I had a
+Sunday-school book this week which I know wasn't half as good."
+
+Ellen looked at Abby, who was silent. The three girls were up in
+Ellen's room. It was midwinter, some months after she had gone to
+work in the shop, and she had a fire in her little, air-tight stove.
+
+"Well, what do you think of it, Abby?" asked Ellen. Ellen's cheeks
+were flushed as if with fever. She looked eagerly at the other girl.
+
+"Do you want me to tell you the truth?" asked Abby, bluntly.
+
+"Yes, of course I do."
+
+"Well, then, I don't know a thing about books, and I'd knock anybody
+else down that said it, but it seems to me it's trash."
+
+"Oh, Abby," murmured Maria.
+
+"Never mind," said Ellen, though she quivered a little, "I want to
+know just how it looks to her."
+
+"It looks to me just like that," said Abby--"like trash. It sounds
+as if, when you began to write it, you had mounted upon stilts, and
+didn't see things and people the way they really were. It ain't
+natural."
+
+"Do you think I had better give it up, then?" asked Ellen.
+
+"No, I don't, on account of your father."
+
+"I believe it would about break father's heart," said Ellen.
+
+"I don't know but it's worth as much to write a book for your
+father, to please him, and keep his spirits up, as it is to write
+one for the whole world," said Abby.
+
+"Only, of course, she can't get any money for it," said Maria. "But
+I don't believe Abby is right, and don't you get discouraged, Ellen.
+It sounds beautiful to me."
+
+"Well, I suppose it is worth keeping on with for father's sake,"
+said Ellen; but she had a discouraged air. She never again wrote
+with any hope or heart; she had faith in Abby's opinion, for she
+knew that she was always predisposed to admiration in her case.
+
+Ellen at that time was earning more, for she had advanced, and had
+long ago left her station beside Mamie Brady; and now in a month or
+two she would have a machine. The girls, many of them, said openly
+that her rapid promotion was due to favoritism, and that Ed Flynn
+wouldn't do as much for anybody but Ellen Brewster. Flynn hung about
+her in the shop a good deal, but he had made no efforts to pay her
+decided attention. His religion was the prime factor for his
+hesitation. He could not see his way clear towards open addresses
+with a view to marriage. Still, he had a sharp eye for other
+admirers, and Ellen had not been in the factory two months before
+Granville Joy was sent into another room. Robert Lloyd, to whom the
+foreman appealed for confirmation of the plan, coincided with
+readiness.
+
+"That fellow ain't strong enough to run that machine he's doing
+now," said Flynn.
+
+"Then put him on another," Robert said, coloring. It was not quite
+like setting his rival in the front of the battle; still, he felt
+ashamed of himself. Quicker than lightning it had flashed through
+his mind that young Joy could thus be sent into a separate room from
+Ellen Brewster.
+
+"I think he had better take one of the heel-shaving machines below,"
+said Flynn, "and let that big Swede, that's as strong as an ox, and
+never jumped at anything in his life, take his place here."
+
+"All right," said Lloyd, assuming a nonchalant air. "Make the change
+if you think it advisable, Flynn."
+
+While such benevolence towards a possible rival had its suspicious
+points, yet there was, after all, some reason for it. Granville Joy,
+who was delicately organized as to his nerves, was running a machine
+for cutting linings, and this came down with sharp thuds which shook
+the factory, and it was fairly torture to him. Every time the knife
+fell he cringed as if at a cannon report. He had never grown
+accustomed to it. His face had acquired a fixed expression of being
+screwed to meet a shock of sound. He was manifestly unfit for his
+job, but he received the order to leave with dismay.
+
+"Hasn't my work been satisfactory?" he asked Flynn.
+
+"Satisfactory enough," replied the foreman, genially, "but it's too
+hard for you, man."
+
+"I 'ain't complained," said Joy, with a flash of his eyes. He
+thought he knew why this solicitude was shown him.
+
+"I know you 'ain't," said Flynn, "but you 'ain't got the muscle and
+nerve for it. That's plain enough to see."
+
+"I 'ain't complained, and I'd rather stay where I be," said Joy,
+angrily.
+
+"You'll go where you are sent in this factory, or be damned," cried
+Flynn, walking off.
+
+Joy looked after him with an expression which transformed his face.
+But the next morning the stolid Swede, who would not have started at
+a bomb, was at his place, and he was below, where he could not see
+Ellen.
+
+Robert never spoke to Ellen in the factory, and had never called
+upon her since she entered. Now and then he met her on the street
+and raised his hat, that was all. Still, he began to wonder more and
+more if his aunt had not been mistaken in her view of the girl's
+motive for giving up college and going to work. Then, later on, he
+learned from Lyman Risley that a small mortgage had been put on the
+Brewster house some time before. In fact, Andrew, not knowing to
+whom to go, and remembering his kindness when Ellen was a child, had
+applied to him for advice concerning it. "He had to do it to keep
+his wife's sister in the asylum," he told Robert; "and that poor
+girl went to work because she was forced into it, not because she
+preferred it, you may be sure of that."
+
+The two men were walking down the street one wind-swept day in
+December, when the pavement showed ridges of dust as from a mighty
+broom, and travellers walked bending before it with backward-flying
+garments.
+
+"You may be right," said Robert; "still, as Aunt Cynthia says, so
+many girls have that idea of earning money instead of going to
+school."
+
+"I know the pitiful need of money has tainted many poor girls with a
+monstrous and morbid overvalue of it," said Risley, "and for that I
+cannot see they are to blame; but in this case I am sure it was not
+so. That poor child gave up Vassar College and went to work because
+she was fairly forced into it by circumstances. The aunt's husband
+ran away with another woman, and left her destitute, so that the
+support of her and her child came upon the Brewsters; and Brewster
+has been out of work a long time now, I know. He told me so. That
+mortgage had to be raised, and the girl had to go to work; there was
+no other way out of it."
+
+"Why didn't she tell Aunt Cynthia so?" asked Robert.
+
+"Because she is Ellen Brewster, the outgrowth of the child who would
+not--"  Risley checked himself abruptly.
+
+"I know," said Robert, shortly.
+
+The other man started. "How long have you known--she did not tell?"
+
+Robert laughed a little. "Oh no," he replied. "Nobody told. I went
+there to call, and saw my own old doll sitting in a little chair in
+a corner of the parlor. She did not tell, but she knew that I knew.
+That child was a trump."
+
+"Well, what can you expect of a girl who was a child like that?"
+said Risley. "Mind you, in a way I don't like it. This power for
+secretiveness and this rigidity of pride in a girl of that age
+strike me rather unpleasantly. Of course she was too proud to tell
+Cynthia the true reason, and very likely thought they would blame
+her father, or Cynthia might feel that she was in a measure hinting
+to her to do more."
+
+"It would have looked like that," said Robert, reflecting.
+
+"Without any doubt that was what she thought; still, I don't like
+this strength in so young a girl. She will make a more harmonious
+woman than girl, for she has not yet grown up to her own character.
+But depend upon it, that girl never went to work of her own free
+choice."
+
+"You say the father is out of work?" Robert said.
+
+"Yes, he has not had work for six months. He said, with the most
+dejected dignity and appeal that I ever saw in my life, that they
+begin to think him too old, that the younger men are preferred."
+
+"I wonder," Robert began, then he stopped confusedly. It had been on
+his tongue to say that he wondered if he could not get some
+employment for him at Lloyd's; then he remembered his uncle, and
+stopped. Robert had begun to understand the older man's methods, and
+also to understand that they were not to be cavilled at or disputed,
+even by a nephew for whom he had undoubtedly considerable affection.
+
+"It is nonsense, of course," said Risley. "The man is not by any
+means old or past his usefulness, although I must admit he has that
+look. He cannot be any older than your uncle. Speaking of your
+uncle, how is Mrs. Lloyd?"
+
+"I fear Aunt Lizzie is very far from well," replied Robert, "but she
+tries to keep it from Uncle Norman."
+
+"I don't see how she can. She looked ghastly when I met her the
+other day."
+
+"That was when Uncle Norman was in New York," said Robert. "It is
+different when he is at home."  As he spoke, an expression of
+intensest pity came over the young man's face. "I wonder what a
+woman who loves her husband will not do to shield him from any
+annoyance or suffering," he said.
+
+"I believe some women are born fixed to a sort of spiritual rack for
+the sake of love, and remain there through life," said Risley. "But
+I have always liked Mrs. Lloyd. She ought to have good advice. What
+is it, has she told you?"
+
+"Yes," said Robert.
+
+"It will be quite safe with me."
+
+Robert whispered one word in his ear.
+
+"My God!" said Risley, "that? And do you mean to say that she has
+had no advice except Dr. Story?"
+
+"Yes, I took her to New York to a specialist some time ago. Uncle
+Norman never knew it."
+
+"And nothing can be done?"
+
+"She could have an operation, but the success would be very
+doubtful."
+
+"And that she will not consent to?"
+
+"She has not yet."
+
+"How long?"
+
+"Oh, she may live for years, but she suffers horribly, and she will
+suffer more."
+
+"And you say he does not know?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why, look here, Robert, dare you assume the responsibility? What
+will he say when he finds out that you have kept it from him?"
+
+"I don't care," said Robert. "I will not break an oath exacted by a
+woman in such straits as that, and I don't see what good it could do
+to tell him."
+
+"He might persuade her to have the operation."
+
+"His mere existence is persuasion enough, if she is to be persuaded.
+And I hope she may consent before long. She has seemed a little more
+comfortable lately, too."
+
+"I suppose sometimes those hideous things go away as mysteriously as
+they come," said Risley.
+
+"Yes," replied Robert. "Going back to our first subject--"
+
+Risley laughed. "Here she is coming," he said.
+
+In fact, at that moment they came abreast the street that led to the
+factories, and the six-o'clock whistle was just dying away in a long
+reverberation, and the workmen pouring out of the doors and down the
+stairs. Ellen had moved quickly, for she had an errand at the
+grocery-store before she went home. She was going to get some
+oysters for a hot stew for supper, of which her father was very
+fond. She had a little oyster-can in her hand when she met the two
+gentlemen. She had grown undeniably thinner since summer, but she
+was charming. Her short black skirt and her coarse gray jacket
+fitted her as well as if they had been tailor-made. There was
+nothing tawdry or slatternly about her. She looked every inch a
+lady, even with the drawback of an oyster-can, and mittens instead
+of gloves.
+
+Both Risley and Robert raised their hats, and Ellen bowed. She did
+not smile, but her face contracted curiously, and her color
+obviously paled. Risley looked at Robert after they had passed.
+
+"I have called on her twice," said Robert, as if answering a
+question. His relations with the older man had become very close,
+almost like those of father and son, though Risley was hardly old
+enough for that relation.
+
+"And you haven't been since she went to work?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But you would have, had she gone to college instead of going to
+work in a shoe-factory?"  Risley's voice had a tone of the gentlest
+conceivable sarcasm.
+
+Robert colored. "Yes, I suppose so," he said. Then he turned to
+Risley with a burst of utter frankness. "Hang it! old fellow," he
+said, "you know how I have been brought up; you know how she--you
+know all about it. What is a fellow to do?"
+
+"Do what he pleases. If it would please me to call on that splendid
+young thing, I should call if I were the Czar of all the Russias."
+
+"Well, I will call," said Robert.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVIII
+
+
+The very next evening Robert Lloyd went to call on Ellen. As he
+started out he was conscious of a strange sensation of shock, as if
+his feet had suddenly touched firm ground. All these months since
+Ellen had been working in the factory he had been vacillating. He
+was undoubtedly in love with her; he did not for a moment cheat
+himself as to that. When he caught a glimpse of her fair head among
+the other girls, he realized how unspeakably dear she was to him.
+Ellen never entered nor left the factory that he did not know it.
+Without actually seeing her, he was conscious of her presence
+always. He acknowledged to himself that there was no one like her
+for him, and never would be. He tried to interest himself in other
+young women, but always there was Ellen, like the constant refrain
+of a song. All other women meant to him not themselves, but Ellen.
+Womanhood itself was Ellen for his manhood. He knew it, and yet that
+strain of utterly impassionate judgment and worldly wisdom which was
+born in him kept him from making any advances to her. Now, however,
+the radicalism of Risley had acted like a spur to his own
+inclination. His judgment was in abeyance. He said to himself that
+he would give it up; he would go to see the girl--that he would win
+her if he could. He said to himself that she had been wronged, that
+Risley was right about her, that she was good and noble.
+
+As the car drew near the Brewsters, his tenderness seemed to
+outspeed the electricity. The girl's fair face was plain before his
+eyes, as if she were actually there, and it was idealized and haloed
+as with the light of gold and precious stones. All at once, since he
+had given himself loose rein, he overtook, as it were, the true
+meaning of her. "The dear child," he thought, with a rush of
+tenderness like pain--"the dear child. There she gave up everything
+and went to work, and let us blame her, rather than have her father
+blamed. The dear, proud child. She did that rather than seem to beg
+for more help."
+
+When Robert got off the car he was ready to fall at her feet, to
+push between her and the roughness of life, between her and the
+whole world.
+
+He went up the little walk between the dry shrubs and rang the bell.
+There was no light in the front windows nor in the hall. Presently
+he heard footsteps, and saw a glimmer of light advancing towards him
+through the length of the hall. There were muslin-curtained
+side-lights to the door. Then the door opened, and little Amabel
+Tenny stood there holding a small kerosene lamp carefully in both
+hands. She held it in such a manner that the light streamed up in
+Robert's face and nearly blinded him. He was dimly conscious of a
+little face full of a certain chary innocence and pathos regarding
+him.
+
+"Is Miss Ellen Brewster at home?" asked Robert, smiling down at the
+little thing.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Amabel.
+
+Then she remained perfectly still, holding the lamp, as if she had
+been some little sculptured light-bearer. She did not return his
+smile, and she did not ask him in. She simply regarded him with her
+sharp, innocent, illuminated face. Robert felt ridiculously
+nonplussed.
+
+"Did you say she was in, my dear?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Amabel, then relapsed into silence.
+
+"Can I see her?" asked Robert, desperately.
+
+"I don't know," replied Amabel. Then she stood still, as before,
+holding the lamp.
+
+Robert began to wonder what he was to do, when he heard a woman's
+voice calling from the sitting-room at the end of the hall, the door
+of which had been left ajar:
+
+"Amabel Tenny, what are you doin'? You are coldin' the house all
+off! Who is it?"
+
+"It's a man, Aunt Fanny," called Amabel.
+
+"Who is the man?" asked the voice. Then, much to Robert's relief,
+Fanny herself appeared.
+
+She colored a flaming red when she saw him. She looked at Amabel as
+if she had an impulse to shake her.
+
+"Why, Mr. Lloyd, is it you?" she cried.
+
+"Good-evening, Mrs. Brewster; is--is your daughter at home?" asked
+Robert. He felt inclined to roar with laughter, and yet a curious
+dismay was beginning to take possession of him.
+
+"Yes, Ellen is at home," replied Fanny, with alacrity. "Walk in, Mr.
+Lloyd."  She was blushing and smiling as if she had been her own
+daughter. It was foolish, yet pathetic. Although Fanny asked the
+young man to walk in, and snatched the lamp peremptorily from
+Amabel's hand, she still hesitated. Robert began to wonder if he
+should ever be admitted. He did not dream of the true reason for the
+hesitation. There was no fire in the parlor, and in the sitting-room
+were Andrew, John Sargent, and Mrs. Wetherhed. It seemed to her
+highly important that Ellen should see her caller by herself, but
+how to take him into that cold parlor?
+
+Finally, however, she made up her mind to do so. She opened the
+parlor door.
+
+"Please walk in this way, Mr. Lloyd," said she, and Robert followed
+her in.
+
+It was a bitter night outside, and the temperature in the unused
+room was freezing. The windows behind the cheap curtains were
+thickly furred with frost.
+
+"Please be seated," said Fanny.
+
+She indicated the large easy-chair, and Robert seated himself
+without removing his outer coat, yet the icy cold of the cushions
+struck through him.
+
+Fanny ignited a match to light the best lamp with its painted globe.
+Her fingers trembled. She had to use three matches before she was
+successful.
+
+"Can't I assist you?" asked Robert.
+
+"No, thank you," replied Fanny; "I guess the matches are damp. I've
+got it now."  Her voice shook. She turned to Robert when the lamp
+was lighted, still holding the small one, which she had set for the
+moment on the table. The strong double light revealed her face of
+abashed delight, although the young man did not understand it. It
+was the solicitude of the mother for the child which dignified all
+coarseness and folly.
+
+"I guess you had better keep on your overcoat a little while till I
+get the fire built," said she. "This room ain't very warm."
+
+Robert tried to say something polite about not feeling cold, but the
+lie was too obvious. Instead, he remarked that his coat was very
+warm, as it was, indeed, being lined with fur.
+
+"I'll have the fire kindled in a minute," Fanny said.
+
+"Now don't trouble yourself, Mrs. Brewster," said Robert. "I am
+quite warm in this coat, unless," he added, lamely, "I could go out
+where you were sitting."
+
+"There's company out there," said Fanny, with embarrassed
+significance. She blushed as she spoke, and Robert blushed also,
+without knowing why.
+
+"It's no trouble at all to start a fire," said Fanny; "this chimney
+draws fine. I'll speak to Ellen."
+
+Robert, left alone in the freezing room, felt his dismay deepen.
+Barriers of tragedy are nothing to those of comedy. He began to
+wonder if he were not, after all, doing a foolish thing. The hall
+door had been left ajar, and he presently became aware of Amabel's
+little face and luminous eyes set therein.
+
+Robert smiled, and to his intense astonishment the child made a
+little run to him and snuggled close to his side. He lifted her up
+on his knee, and wrapped his fur coat around her. Amabel thrust out
+one tiny hand and began to stroke the sable collar.
+
+"It's fur," said she, with a bright, wise look into Robert's face.
+
+"Yes, it's fur," said he. "Do you know what kind?"
+
+She shook her head, with bright eyes still on his.
+
+"It is sable," said Robert, "and it is the coat of a little animal
+that lives very far north, where it is as cold and colder than this
+all the time, and the ice and snow never melts."
+
+Suddenly Amabel slipped off his knee, pushing aside his caressing
+arm with a violent motion. Then she stood aloof, eying him with
+unmistakable reproof and hostility. Robert laughed.
+
+"What is the matter?" he said.
+
+"What does he do without his coat if it is as cold as that where he
+lives?" asked Amabel, severely. There was almost an accent of horror
+in her childish voice.
+
+"Why, my dear child," said Robert, "the little animal is dead. He
+isn't running around without his coat. He was shot for his fur."
+
+"To make you a coat?" Amabel's voice was full of judicial severity.
+
+"Well, in one way," replied Robert, laughing. "It was shot to get
+the fur to make somebody a coat, and I bought it. Come back here and
+have it wrapped round you; you'll freeze if you don't."
+
+Amabel came back and sat on his knee, and let him wrap the fur-lined
+garment around her. A strange sensation of tenderness and protection
+came over the young man as he felt the little, slender body of the
+child nestle against his own. He had begun to surmise who she was.
+However, Amabel herself told him in a moment.
+
+"My mamma's sick, and they took her to an asylum. And my papa has
+gone away," she said.
+
+"You poor little soul," said Robert, tenderly. Amabel continued to
+look at him with eyes of keenest intelligence, while one little
+cheek was flattened against his breast.
+
+"I live with Uncle Andrew and Aunt Fanny now," said she, "and I
+sleep with Ellen."
+
+"But you like living here, don't you, you dear?" asked Robert.
+
+"Yes," said Amabel, "and I like to stay with Ellen, but--but--I want
+to see my mamma and papa," she wailed, suddenly, in the lowest and
+most pitiful wail imaginable.
+
+"Poor little darling," said Robert, stroking her flaxen hair. Amabel
+looked up at him with her little face all distorted with grief.
+
+"If you had been my papa, would you have gone away and left Amabel?"
+she asked, quiveringly. Robert gathered her to him in a strong clasp
+of protection.
+
+"No, you little darling, I never should," he cried, fervently.
+
+At that moment he wished devoutly that he had the handling of the
+man who had deserted this child.
+
+"I like you most as well as my own papa," said Amabel. "You ain't so
+big as my papa."  She said that in a tone of evident disparagement.
+
+Then the sitting-room door opened, and Fanny and Ellen and Andrew
+appeared, the last with a great basket of wood and kindlings.
+
+Robert set down Amabel, and sprang to his feet to greet Andrew and
+Ellen. Andrew, after depositing his basket beside the stove, shook
+hands with a sort of sad awkwardness. Robert saw that the man had
+aged immeasurably since he had last seen him.
+
+"It is a cold night, Mr. Brewster," he said, and knew the moment he
+said it that it was not a happy remark.
+
+"It is pretty cold," agreed Andrew, "and it's cold here in this
+room."
+
+"Oh, it'll be warm in a minute; this stove heats up quick," cried
+Fanny, with agitated briskness. She began pulling the kindlings out
+of the basket.
+
+"Here, you let me do that," said Andrew, and was down on his knees
+beside her. The two were cramming the fuel into the little,
+air-tight stove, while Robert was greeting Ellen. The awkwardness of
+the situation was evidently overcoming her. She was quite pale, and
+her voice trembled as she returned his good-evening. Amabel left the
+young man, and clung tightly to Ellen's hand, drawing her skirt
+around her until only her little face was visible above the folds.
+
+[Illustration: The awkwardness of the situation was evidently overcoming
+her]
+
+The fumes from a match filled the room, and the fire began to roar.
+
+"It'll be warm in a minute," said Fanny, rising. "You leave the
+register open till it's real good and hot, Ellen, and there's plenty
+more wood in the basket. Here, Amabel, you come out in the other
+room with Aunt Fanny."
+
+But Amabel, instead of obeying, made a dart towards Robert, who
+caught her up, laughing, and smuggled her into the depths of his
+fur-lined coat.
+
+"Come right along, Amabel," said Fanny.
+
+But Amabel clung fast to Robert, with a mischievous roll of an eye
+at her aunt.
+
+"Amabel," said Fanny, authoritatively.
+
+"Come, Amabel," said Andrew.
+
+"Oh, let her stay," Robert said, laughing. "I'll keep her in my coat
+until it is warm."
+
+"I'm afraid she'll bother you," said Fanny.
+
+"Not a bit," replied Robert.
+
+"You are a naughty girl, Amabel," said Fanny; but she went out of
+the room, with Andrew at her heels. She did not know what else to
+do, since the young man had expressed a desire to keep the child.
+She had thought he would have preferred a _tete-a-tete_ with Ellen.
+Ellen sat down on the sofa covered with olive-green plush, beyond
+the table, and the light of the hideous lamp fell full upon her
+face. She was thin, and much of her lovely bloom was missing between
+her agitation and the cold; but Robert, looking at her, realized how
+dear she was to him. There was something about that small figure,
+and that fair head held with such firmness of pride, and that soul
+outlooking from steady blue eyes, which filled all his need of life.
+His love for the pearl quite ignored its setting of the common and
+the ridiculous. He looked at her and smiled. Ellen smiled back
+tremulously, then she cast down her eyes. The fire was roaring, but
+the room was freezing. The sitting-room door was opened a crack, and
+remained so for a second, then it was widened, and Andrew peeped in.
+Then he entered, tiptoeing gingerly, as if he were afraid of
+disturbing a meeting. He brought a blue knitted shawl, which he put
+over Ellen's shoulders.
+
+"Mother thinks you had better keep this on till the room gets warm,"
+he whispered. Then he withdrew, shutting the door softly.
+
+Robert, left alone with Ellen in this solemnly important fashion,
+felt utterly at a loss. He had never considered himself especially
+shy, but an embarrassment which was almost ridiculous was over him.
+Ellen sat with her eyes cast down. He felt that the child on his
+knee was regarding them both curiously.
+
+"If you have come to see Ellen, why don't you speak to her?"
+demanded Amabel, suddenly. Then both Robert and Ellen laughed.
+
+"This is your aunt's little girl, isn't she?" asked Robert.
+
+Amabel answered before Ellen was able. "My mamma is sick, and they
+carried her away to the asylum," she told Robert. "She--she tried to
+hurt Amabel; she tried to"--Amabel made that hideous gesture with
+her tiny forefinger across her throat. "Mamma was sick or she
+wouldn't," she added, challengingly, to Robert.
+
+"Of course she wouldn't, you poor little soul," said Robert.
+
+Suddenly Amabel burst into tears, and began to wriggle herself free
+from his arms. "Let me go," she demanded; "let me go. I want Ellen."
+
+When Robert loosened his grasp she fled to Ellen, and was in her lap
+with a bound.
+
+"I want my mamma--I want my mamma," she moaned.
+
+Ellen leaned her cheek against the poor little flaxen head. "There,
+there, darling," she whispered, "don't. Mamma will come home as soon
+as she gets better."
+
+"How long will that be, Ellen?"
+
+"Pretty soon, I hope, darling. Don't."
+
+Poor Eva Tenny had been in the asylum some four months, and the
+reports as to her condition were no more favorable. Ellen's voice,
+in spite of herself, had a hopeless tone, which the child was quick
+to detect.
+
+"I want my mamma," she repeated. "I want her, Ellen. It has been
+to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow after that, and the
+to-morrows are yesterdays, and she hasn't come."
+
+"She will come some time, darling."
+
+Robert sat eying the two with intensest pity. "Do you like
+chocolates, Amabel?" he asked.
+
+The child repeated that she wanted her mother still, as with a sort
+of mechanical regularity of grief, but she fastened her eyes on him.
+
+"Because I am going to send you a big box of them to-morrow," said
+Robert.
+
+Amabel turned to Ellen. "Does he mean it?" she asked.
+
+"I guess so," replied Ellen, laughing.
+
+Amabel, looking from one to the other, also began to laugh
+unwillingly.
+
+Then the sitting-room door opened, and Fanny called sharply and
+imperatively, "Amabel, Amabel; come!"
+
+Amabel clung more tightly to Ellen, who began to gently loosen her
+arms.
+
+"Amabel Tenny, come this minute. It is your bed-time," said Fanny.
+
+"I guess you had better go, darling," whispered Ellen.
+
+"I don't want to go to bed till you do, Ellen," whispered the child.
+
+Ellen gently but firmly unclasped the clinging arms. "Run along,
+dear," she whispered.
+
+"I will send those chocolates to-morrow," suggested Robert.
+
+Amabel seemed to do everything by sudden and violent impulses. All
+at once she ceased resisting. She slid down from Ellen's lap as
+quickly as she had gotten into it. She clutched her neck with two
+little wiry arms, kissed her hard on the mouth, darted across the
+room to Robert, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, then
+flew out of the room.
+
+"She is an interesting child," said Robert, who felt, like most
+people, the delicate flattery of a child's unsolicited caresses.
+
+"I am very fond of her," replied Ellen.
+
+Then the two were silent. Robert suddenly realized that there was
+little to say unless he ventured on debatable ground. It would be
+too absurd of him to commence making love at once, and as for asking
+Ellen about her work, that seemed a subject better let alone.
+
+Ellen herself opened the conversation by inquiring for his aunt.
+
+"Aunt Cynthia is very well," replied Robert. "I was in there last
+evening. You have not been to see her lately, Miss Brewster."
+
+Robert realized as soon as he had said that that he had made a
+mistake.
+
+"No," replied Ellen. She obviously paled a little, and looked at him
+wistfully. The young man could not stand it any longer, so straight
+into the heart of the matter he lunged.
+
+"Look here, Miss Brewster," he said, "why on earth didn't you tell
+Aunt Cynthia?"
+
+"Tell her?" repeated Ellen, vaguely.
+
+"Yes; make a clean breast of it to her. Tell her just why you went
+to work, and gave up college?"
+
+Ellen colored, and looked at him half defiantly, half piteously. "I
+told her all I ought to," she said.
+
+"But you did not; pardon me," said Robert, "you did not tell her
+half enough. You let her think that you actually of your own free
+choice went to work in the factory rather than go to college."
+
+"So I did," replied Ellen, looking at him proudly.
+
+"Of course you did, in one sense, but in another you did not. You
+deliberately chose to make a sacrifice; but it was a sacrifice. You
+cannot deny that it was a sacrifice."
+
+Ellen was silent.
+
+"But you gave Aunt Cynthia the impression that it was not a
+sacrifice," said Robert, almost severely.
+
+Ellen's face quivered a little. "I saw no other way to do," she
+said, faintly. The authoritative tone which this young man was
+taking with her stirred her as nothing had ever stirred her in her
+life before. She felt like a child before him.
+
+"You have no right to give such a false impression of your own
+character," said Robert.
+
+"It was either that or a false impression of another," returned
+Ellen, tremulously.
+
+"You mean that she might have blamed your parents, and thought that
+they were forcing you into this?"
+
+Ellen nodded.
+
+"And I suppose you thought, too, that maybe Aunt Cynthia would
+suspect, if you told her all the difficulties, that you were hinting
+for more assistance."
+
+Ellen nodded, and her lip was quivering. Suddenly all her force of
+character seemed to have deserted her, and she looked more like a
+child than Amabel. She actually put both her little fists to her
+eyes. After all, the girl was very young, a child forced by the
+stress of circumstances to premature development, but she could
+relapse before the insistence of another nature.
+
+Robert looked at her, his own face working, then he could bear it no
+longer. He was over on the sofa beside Ellen and had her in his
+arms. "You poor little thing," he whispered. "Don't. I have loved
+you ever since the first time I saw you. I ought to have told you so
+before. Don't you love me a little, Ellen?"
+
+But Ellen released herself with a motion of firm elusiveness and
+looked at him. The tears still stood in her eyes, but her face was
+steady. "I have been putting you out of my mind," said she.
+
+"But could you?" whispered Robert, leaning over her.
+
+Ellen did not reply, but looked down and trembled.
+
+"Could you?" repeated Robert, and there was in his voice that
+masculine insistence which is a true note of nature, and means the
+subjugation of the feminine into harmony.
+
+Ellen did not speak, but every line in her body betrayed helpless
+yielding.
+
+"You know you could not," said Robert with triumph, and took her in
+his arms again.
+
+But he reckoned without the girl, who was, after all, stronger than
+her natural instincts, and able to rise above and subjugate them.
+She freed herself from him resolutely, rose, and stood before him,
+looking at him quite unfalteringly and accusingly.
+
+"Why do you come now?" she asked. "You say you have loved me from
+the first. You came to see me, you walked home with me, and said
+things to me that made me think--"  She stopped.
+
+"Made you think what, dear?" asked Robert. He was pale and
+indescribably anxious and appealing. It was suddenly revealed to him
+that this plum was so firmly attached to its bough of individuality
+that possibly love itself could not loosen it.
+
+"You made me think that perhaps you did care a little," said Ellen,
+in a low but unfaltering voice.
+
+"You thought quite right, only not a little, but a great deal," said
+Robert, firmly.
+
+"Then," said Ellen, "the moment I gave up going to college and went
+to work you never came to see me again; you never even spoke to me
+in the shop; you went right past me without a look."
+
+"Good God! child," Robert interposed, "don't you know why I did
+that?"
+
+Ellen looked at him bewildered, then a burning red overspread her
+face. "Yes," she replied. "I didn't. But I do now. They would have
+talked."
+
+"I thought you would understand that," said Robert. "I had only the
+best motives for that. I cannot speak to you in the factory any more
+than I have done. I cannot expose you to remark; but as for my not
+calling, I believed what you said to my aunt and to me. I thought
+that you had deliberately preferred a lower life to a higher
+one--that you preferred earning money to something better. I
+thought--"
+
+Robert fairly started as Ellen began talking with a fire which
+seemed to make her scintillate before his eyes.
+
+"You talk about a lower and a higher life," said she. "Is it true?
+Is Vassar College any higher than a shoe-factory? Is any labor which
+is honest, and done with the best strength of man, for the best
+motives, to support the lives of those he loves, or to supply the
+needs of his race, any higher than another? Where would even books
+be without this very labor which you despise--the books which I
+should have learned at college? Instead of being benefited by the
+results of labor, I have become part of labor. Why is that lower?"
+
+Robert stared at her.
+
+"I have come to feel all this since I went to work," said Ellen,
+speaking in a high, rapid voice. "When I went to work, it was, as
+you thought, for my folks, to help them, for my father was out of
+work, and there was no other way. But since I have been at work I
+have realized what work really is. There is a glory over it, as
+there is over anything which is done faithfully on this earth for
+good motives, and I have seen the glory, and I am not ashamed of it;
+and while it was a sacrifice at first, now, while I should like the
+other better, I do not think it is. I am proud of my work."
+
+The girl spoke with a sort of rapt enthusiasm. The young man stared,
+bewildered.
+
+Robert caught Ellen's little hands, which hung, tightly clinched, in
+the folds of her dress, and drew her down to his side again. "See
+here, dear," he said, "maybe you are right. I never looked at it in
+this way before, but you do not understand. I love you; I want to
+marry you. I want to make you my wife, and lift you out of this
+forever."
+
+Then again Ellen freed herself, and straightened her head and faced
+him. "There is nothing for me to be lifted out of," said she. "You
+speak as if I were in a pit. I am on a height."
+
+"My God! child, how many others feel as you, do you think, out of
+the whole lot?" cried Robert.
+
+"I don't know," replied Ellen, "but it is true. What I feel is
+true."
+
+Robert caught up her little hand and kissed it. Then he looked at
+its delicate outlines. "Well, it may be true," he said, "but look at
+yourself. Can't you see that you are not fashioned for manual labor?
+Look at this little hand."
+
+"That little hand can do the work," Ellen replied, proudly.
+
+"But, dear," said Robert, "admitting all this, admitting that you
+are not in a position to be lifted--admitting everything--let us
+come back to our original starting-point. Dear, I love you, and I
+want you for my wife. Will you marry me?"
+
+"No, I never can," replied Ellen, with a long, sobbing breath of
+renunciation.
+
+"Why not? Don't you love me?"
+
+"Yes. I think it must be true that I do. I said I wouldn't; I have
+tried not to, but I think it must be true that I do."
+
+"Then why not marry me?"
+
+"Because it will be impossible for my father and mother to get along
+and support Amabel and Aunt Eva without my help," said Ellen,
+directly.
+
+"But I--" began Robert.
+
+"Do you think I will burden you with the support of a whole family?"
+said Ellen.
+
+"Ellen, you don't know what I would be willing to do if I could have
+you," cried the young man, fervently. And he was quite in earnest.
+At that moment it seemed to him that he could even come and live
+there in that house, with the hideous lamp, and the crushed-plush
+furniture, and the eager mother; that he could go without anything
+and everything to support them if only he could have this girl who
+was fairly storming his heart.
+
+"I wouldn't be willing to have you," said Ellen, firmly. "As things
+are now I cannot marry you, Mr. Lloyd. Then, too," she added, "you
+asked me just now how many people looked at all this labor as I do,
+and I dare say not very many. I know not many of your kind of
+people. I know how your uncle looks at it. It would hurt you
+socially to marry a girl from a shoe-shop. Whether it is just or
+not, it would hurt you. It cannot be, as matters are now, Mr.
+Lloyd."
+
+"But you love me?"
+
+Ellen suddenly, as if pushed by some mighty force outside herself,
+leaned towards him, and he caught her in his arms. He tipped back
+her face and kissed her, and looked down at her masterfully.
+
+"We will wait a little," he said. "I will never give you up as long
+as I live if you love me, Ellen."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIX
+
+
+When Ellen went out into the sitting-room that evening, after Robert
+Lloyd had taken leave, her father and mother were still there,
+although the callers had gone. Both of them looked furtively at her
+as she went through the room to the kitchen to get a lamp, then they
+looked at each other. Fanny was glowing with half shamefaced
+triumph; Andrew was pale. Ellen did not re-enter the room, but
+simply paused at the door, before going up-stairs, and they had a
+vision of a face in a tumult of emotions, with eyes and hair
+illuminated to excess of brilliancy by the lamp which she held.
+
+"Good-night," she called, and her voice did not sound like her own.
+
+"Something has happened," Fanny whispered to Andrew, when Ellen's
+chamber door had closed.
+
+"Do you suppose she's goin' to?" whispered Andrew, in a sort of
+breathless fashion. His eyes on his wife's face were sad and
+wistful.
+
+"Hush! How do I know?" asked Fanny. "I always told you he liked
+her."
+
+However, Fanny looked disturbed. Presently she went out in the
+kitchen to mix up some bread, and she wept a little, standing in a
+corner, with her face hidden in the folds of an old shawl which hung
+there on a peg. Dictatorial towards circumstances as she was when
+her beloved daughter came in question, and proud as she was at the
+prospect of an advantageous marriage for her, she remembered her
+sister in the asylum, she remembered how Andrew was out of work, and
+she could not understand how it was to be managed. And all this was
+aside from the grief which she would have felt in any case at losing
+Ellen.
+
+As for Andrew, the next morning he put on his best clothes and went
+by trolley-cars to the next manufacturing town, not a city like
+Rowe, but a busy little place with two large factories, and tried in
+vain to get a job there. As he came home on the crowded car, his
+face was so despairing that the people looked curiously at him.
+Andrew had always been mild and peaceable, but at that moment
+anarchistic principles began to ferment in him. When a portly man,
+swelling ostentatiously with broadcloth and fine linen, wearing a
+silk hat, and carrying a gold-headed cane like a wand of office, got
+into the car, Andrew looked at him with a sidelong glance which was
+almost murderous. The spiritual bomb, which is in all our souls for
+our fellow-men, began to swell towards explosion. This man was the
+proprietor of one of the great factories in Leavitt, the town where
+Andrew had vainly sought a job. He had been in the office when
+Andrew entered, and the latter had heard his low voice of
+instruction to the foreman that the man was too old. The
+manufacturer, who weighed heavily, and described a vast curve of
+opulence from silk hat to his patent-leathers, sat opposite, his
+gold-headed cane planted in the aisle, his countenance a blank of
+complacent power. Andrew felt that he hated him.
+
+The man's face was not intellectual, not as intellectual as
+Andrew's. He gave the impression of the force of matter oncoming and
+irresistible, some inertia which had started Heaven knew how. This
+man had inherited great wealth, as Andrew knew. He had capital with
+which to begin, and he had strength to roll the accumulating ball.
+Andrew felt more and more how he hated this man. He had told his
+foreman that Andrew was too old, and Andrew knew that he was no
+older, if as old, as the man himself.
+
+"If I had been born under the Czar, and done with it, I should have
+felt differently," he told himself. "But who is this man? What right
+has he to say that his fellow-men shall or shall not? Does even his
+own property give him the right of dictation over others? What is
+property? Is it anything but a temporary lease while he draws the
+breath of life? What of it in the tomb, to which he shall surely
+come? Shall a temporary possession give a man the right to wield
+eternal power? For the power of giving or withholding the means of
+life may produce eternal results."
+
+When the man rose and moved down the car, oscillating heavily,
+steadying himself with his gold-headed cane, and got out in front of
+a portentous mansion, Andrew would scarcely have recognized the look
+in his own eyes had he seen himself in a mirror.
+
+"That chap is pretty well fixed," said a man next him, to one on the
+other side.
+
+"A cool half-million," replied the other.
+
+"More than that," said the first speaker. "His father left him half
+a million to start with, besides the business, and he's been piling
+up ever since."
+
+"Do you work there?"
+
+"Did, but I had what was mighty nigh a sunstroke last summer; had to
+quit. It was damned hot up there under the roof. It's the same old
+factory his father had."
+
+"Goin' to work again?"
+
+"Next week, if I'm able, but I dun'no' whether I can stay there
+longer than till spring. It's damned hot up there under the roof."
+
+The man who spoke had a leaden hue of face, something ghastly, as if
+the deadly heat had begun a work of decomposition. Andrew looked at
+him, and his hatred against the rich man who had built himself a
+stately mansion, and kept his fellow-creatures at work for him in an
+unhealthy factory in tropical heat, and had condemned him for being
+too old, was redoubled.
+
+"Andrew Brewster, where have you been?" Fanny asked, when he got
+home.
+
+"I've been to Leavitt," answered Andrew, shortly.
+
+"To see if you could get a job there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Fanny did not ask if he had been successful. She sighed, and took
+another stitch in the wrapper which she was making. That sigh almost
+drove Andrew mad.
+
+"I don't see what has got you into such a habit of sighing," he
+said, brutally.
+
+Fanny looked at him with reproachful anger. "Andrew Brewster, you
+ain't like yourself," said she.
+
+"I can't help it."
+
+"There's no need for you to pitch into me because you can't get
+work; I ain't to blame. I'm doing all I can. I won't stand it, and
+you might as well know it first as last."
+
+Fanny glared angrily at her husband, then the tears sprang to her
+eyes.
+
+Andrew hesitated a moment, then he leaned over her and put his thin
+cheek against her rough black hair. "The Lord knows I don't mean to
+be harsh to you, you poor girl," said he, "but I wish I was dead."
+
+Fanny seemed to spring into resistance like a wire. "Then you are a
+coward, Andrew Brewster," said she, hotly. "Talk about wishin' you
+was dead. I 'ain't got time to die. You'd 'nough sight better go out
+into the yard and split up some of that wood."
+
+"I didn't mean to speak so, Fanny," said Andrew, "but sometimes I
+get desperate, and I've been thinking of Ellen."
+
+"Don't you suppose I have?" asked Fanny, angrily.
+
+"Well, there's one thing about it; we won't stand in her way," said
+Andrew.
+
+"No, we won't," replied Fanny. "I'll go out washing first."
+
+"She hasn't said anything?"
+
+"No."
+
+As time went on Ellen still said nothing. She had made a curious
+compact for a young girl with her lover. She had stipulated that no
+engagement was to exist, that she should be perfectly free--when she
+said that she thought of Maud Hemingway, but she said it without a
+tremor--and if years hence both were free and of the same mind they
+might talk of it again.
+
+Robert had rebelled strenuously. "You know this will shut me off
+from seeing much of you," he said. "You know I told you how it will
+be about my even talking much to you in the factory."
+
+"Yes, I understand that now," replied Ellen, blushing; "and I
+understand, too, that you cannot come to see me very often under
+such circumstances without making talk."
+
+"How often?" Robert asked, impetuously.
+
+Ellen hesitated, her lip quivered a little, but her voice was firm.
+"Not oftener than two or three times a year, I am afraid," said she.
+
+"Great Scott!" cried Robert. Then he caught her in his arms again.
+"Do you suppose I can stand that?" he whispered. "Ellen, I cannot
+consent to this!"
+
+"It is the only way," said she. She freed herself from him enough to
+look into his eyes with a brave, fearless gaze of comradeship, which
+somehow seemed to make her dearer than anything else.
+
+"But to see you to speak to only two or three times a year!" groaned
+Robert. "You are cruel, Ellen. You don't know how I love you."
+
+"There isn't any other way," said Ellen. Then she looked up into his
+face with a brave innocence of confession like a child. "It hurts
+me, too," said she.
+
+Robert had her in his arms, and was covering her face with kisses.
+"You darling," he whispered. "It shall not be long. Something will
+happen. We cannot live so. We will let it go so a little while, but
+something will turn up. I shall have a more responsible place and a
+larger salary, then--"
+
+"Do you think I will let you?" asked Ellen, with a great blush.
+
+"I will, whether you will let me or not," cried Robert; and at that
+moment he felt inclined to marry the entire Brewster family rather
+than give up this girl.
+
+However, as he went home, walking that he might think the better, he
+had to confess to himself that the girl was right; that, as matters
+were, anything definite was out of the question. He had to admit
+that it might be a matter of years.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XL
+
+
+When Ellen had been at work in the factory a year, she was running a
+machine and working by the piece, and earning on an average eighteen
+dollars a week. Of course that was an unusual advance for a girl,
+but Ellen was herself unusual. She came to work in those days with
+such swiftness and unswerving accuracy that she seemed fairly a part
+of the great system of labor itself. While she was at her machine,
+her very individuality seemed lost; she became an integral part of a
+system.
+
+"She's one of the best hands we ever had," Flynn told Norman Lloyd
+one day.
+
+"I am glad to hear that," Lloyd responded, smiling with that
+peculiar smile of his which was like a cold flash of steel.
+
+"Curse him, he thinks no more of anybody in this shop than he does
+of the machine they work," Flynn thought as he watched the
+proprietor walking with his stately descent down the stairs. The
+noon whistle was blowing, and the younger Lloyd went leaping down
+the stairs and joined his uncle, then the two walked down the
+street, away from the factory. The factory at that time of year
+began to present, in spite of its crude architecture, quite a
+charming appearance, from the luxuriant vines which covered it and
+were beginning to get autumnal tints of red and russet. All the
+front of Lloyd's was covered with vines, which had grown with
+amazing swiftness. Mrs. Lloyd often used to look at them and reflect
+upon them with complacency.
+
+"I should think it would make it pleasanter for the men to work in
+the factory, when it looks so pretty and green," she told her
+husband one of the hottest days of the preceding summer. As she
+spoke she compressed her lips in a way which was becoming habitual
+to her. It meant the endurance of a sharp stab of vital pain. There
+was a terrible pathos in the poor woman's appearance at that time.
+She still kept about. Her malady did not seem to be on the increase,
+but it endured. Her form had changed indescribably. She had not lost
+flesh, but she had a curious, distorted look, and one on seeing her
+had a bewildered feeling, and looked again to be sure that he had
+seen aright. Her ghastly pallor she concealed in a manner which she
+thought distinctly sinful. She painted and powdered. She did not
+dare purchase openly the concoctions which were used for improving
+her complexion, but she went to a manicure and invested in a colored
+salve for her finger-nails. This, with rather surprising skill for
+such a conscience-pricked tyro, she applied to the pale curves of
+her cheeks and her blue lips. She took more pains than ever before
+with her dress, and it was all to deceive her husband, that he
+should not be annoyed. She felt a desperate shame because of her
+illness; she felt it to be a direct personal injury to this
+masculine power which had been set over her gentle femininity. It
+was not so much because she was afraid of losing his affection that
+she concealed her affliction from him, as because she felt that the
+affliction itself was somehow an act of disloyalty. Her terrible
+malady had in a way affected her reasoning powers, so that they had
+become distorted by a monstrous growth of suffering, like her body.
+She would not give up going about as usual, and was never absent
+from church. She drove about with her husband in his smart trap.
+Twice she had gone with Robert to consult the New York specialist,
+taking times when Norman was away on business. She still would not
+consent to an operation, and lately the specialist had been lukewarm
+in advising it. He had indeed been doubtful from the first.
+
+Mrs. Lloyd treated Robert with a soft affection which was almost
+like that of a mother. One night, when he returned late from a call
+on Ellen, she sat up waiting for him. He had not called on Ellen
+before for several months, and it was nearly midnight when he
+returned.
+
+"Why, Aunt Lizzie, are you up?" he cried, as he entered the library
+door and saw his aunt's figure, clad in shining black satin,
+gleaming with jet, in the depths of an easy-chair.
+
+Mrs. Lloyd looked up at him with an expression of patient suffering.
+"I couldn't go to sleep if I went to bed, Robert," she replied, in a
+hushed voice. She found it a comfort sometimes to confess her pain
+to him. Robert went over to her, and drew her large, crinkled, blond
+head to his shoulder as if she had been a child.
+
+"Poor thing," he whispered, stroking her face pitifully. "Is it very
+terrible?" he asked, with his lips close to her ear.
+
+"Terrible," she whispered back. "Oh, Robert, you do not know; pray
+God you may never know."
+
+"I wish to God I could bear it for you, Aunt Lizzie," Robert said,
+fervently.
+
+"Oh, hush! If you or Norman had to bear anything like this, I should
+curse God and die," she answered, and she shut her mouth hard, and
+her whole face was indicative of a repressed shriek.
+
+"Aunt Lizzie, don't you think you ought to go to New York, that you
+ought--" Robert began, but she stopped him with an almost fierce
+peremptoriness. "Robert Lloyd, I have trusted you," she said. "For
+God's sake, don't forsake me. Don't say a word to me about that;
+when I can I will. It means my death, anyhow. Dr. Evarts thought so;
+you can't deny it."
+
+"I think he thought there was a chance, Aunt Lizzie," Robert
+returned, but he said it faintly.
+
+"You can't cheat me," replied Mrs. Lloyd. "I know."  She had a lapse
+from pain, and her features began to assume their natural
+expression. She looked at him almost smiling, and as if she turned
+her back upon her own misery. "Where have you been, Robert?" she
+asked.
+
+Robert colored a little, but he answered directly enough. "I have
+been to make a call on Miss Brewster," he said.
+
+"You don't go there very often," said Mrs. Lloyd.
+
+"No, not very often."
+
+"She's a beautiful girl, as beautiful a girl as I ever laid eyes on,
+if she does work in the shop," said Mrs. Lloyd, "and she's a good
+girl, too; I know she is. She was the sweetest little thing when she
+was a child, and she 'ain't altered a mite!"  Then Mrs. Lloyd looked
+with a sort of wistful curiosity at Robert.
+
+"I think it is all true, what you say, Aunt Lizzie," replied Robert.
+
+Mrs. Lloyd continued to look at him with that wistful scrutiny.
+
+"Robert," she began, then she hesitated.
+
+"What, Aunt Lizzie?"
+
+"If--ever you wanted to marry that girl, I don't see any reason why
+you shouldn't, for my part."
+
+Robert pulled a chair close to his aunt, and sat down beside her,
+still holding her hand.
+
+"I've a good mind to tell you the whole story, Aunt Lizzie," he
+said.
+
+"I wish you would, Robert. You know I think as much of you as if you
+were my own son, and I won't tell anybody, not even your uncle, if
+you don't want me to."
+
+"Well, then, it is all in a nutshell," said Robert. "I like her, you
+know, and I think I have ever since I saw her in her little white
+gown at the high-school exhibition."
+
+"Wasn't she sweet?" said his aunt.
+
+"And she likes me, too, I think."
+
+"Of course she does."
+
+"But you know what my salary is, and her whole family is in a
+measure dependent upon her."
+
+"Hasn't her father got work?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I'll speak to Norman," cried Mrs. Lloyd, quickly. "I know he would
+do it for me."
+
+"But even then, Aunt Lizzie, there is the aunt in the asylum, and
+the child, and--"
+
+"Your uncle will pay you more."
+
+"It isn't altogether that; in fact, it isn't that at all which is at
+the bottom of the difficulty. The difficulty is with Ellen herself.
+She will never consent to my marrying her, and having to support her
+family, while matters are as now. You don't know how proud she is,
+Aunt Lizzie."
+
+"She is a splendid girl."
+
+"As far as I am concerned I would marry the whole lot on a little
+more than I have now, but she would not let me do it. There's
+nothing to do but to wait."
+
+"Perhaps the aunt will get well and her husband will come back; and
+I will see, anyway, if Norman won't give her father work," said Mrs.
+Lloyd.
+
+"I think you had better not, Aunt Lizzie."
+
+"Why not, Robert?"
+
+"There are reasons why I think you had better not."  Robert would
+not tell her that Ellen had begged him not to use any influence of
+his to get her father work.
+
+"After the way father has been turned off, I can't stand it," she
+had said, with a sort of angry dignity which was unusual to her. In
+fact, her father himself had begged her not to make use of Robert in
+any way for his own advancement.
+
+"If they don't want me for my work, I don't want to crawl in because
+the nephew of the boss likes my daughter," he had said. This speech
+was fairly rough for him, but Ellen had understood.
+
+"I know what you mean, father," she said.
+
+"I'd rather work in the road," said Andrew. That autumn he was
+getting jobs of clearing up yards of fallen leaves, and gathering
+feed-corn and pumpkins, and earning a pittance. Fanny continued to
+work on her wrappers. "It's a mercy wrappers don't go out of
+fashion," she often said.
+
+"I suppose things that folks can get for nothing ain't so apt to go
+out of fashion," Andrew retorted, bitterly. He hated the wrappers
+with a deadly hatred. He hated the sight of the limp row of them on
+his bedroom wall. Nobody knew how the family pinched and screwed in
+those days.
+
+They were using the small fund which they secured from the house
+mortgage, Ellen's earnings, and Fanny's and Andrew's, and every cent
+had to be counted, but there was something splendid in their loyalty
+to poor Eva in the asylum. The thought of deserting her in her
+extremity never occurred to them.
+
+Mrs. Lloyd spoke of her that night, when she and Robert were talking
+together in the library.
+
+"They are good folks, to keep on doing for that poor woman in the
+asylum," she said.
+
+"They would never desert a dog that belonged to them," Robert
+answered, fervently. "I tell you that trait is worth a good many
+others, Aunt Lizzie."
+
+"I guess it is," said his aunt. Then another paroxysm of pain seized
+her. She looked at Robert with a convulsed, speechless face. He held
+her hands more tightly, his own face contracting in sympathy, and
+watched his aunt with a sort of angry helplessness. But he felt as
+if he wanted to fight something for the sake of this poor,
+oppressed, innocent creature; indeed, he felt fairly blasphemous.
+But this time the pain passed quickly, and Mrs. Lloyd looked at her
+nephew with an expression of relief and gentleness which was almost
+angelic. When the pain was over she thought again of the Brewsters,
+and how they would not have forsaken her in her misery, had she
+belonged to them, any more than they had forsaken the insane aunt.
+
+"They are good folks," said she, "and that is the main thing. That
+is the main thing to consider when you are marrying into a family,
+Robert. It is more than riches and position. The power they've got
+of loving and standing by each other is worth more than anything
+else."
+
+"You are right, Aunt Lizzie, I guess there's no doubt of that," said
+Robert.
+
+"And that girl's beautiful," said Mrs. Lloyd. She gazed at the young
+man with a delicate understanding and sympathy which was almost
+beyond that of a sweetheart. Robert felt as if a soft hand of
+tenderness and blessing were laid on his inmost heart. He looked at
+her like a grateful child.
+
+"There isn't anybody like her, is there, Aunt Lizzie?" he asked.
+
+"No, I don't think there is, dear boy," said Mrs. Lloyd. "I do think
+she is the sweetest little thing I ever saw in my life."
+
+Robert brought his aunt's hand to his lips and kissed it. It seemed
+to him for a minute as if the love and sympathy of this martyr were
+almost more precious than the love of Ellen herself.
+
+He realized when he was in his own room, and the house was quiet,
+how much he loved his aunt, and how hard her pain and probably
+inevitable doom were for him to bear. Then something came to him
+which he had never felt before--a great, burning anxiety and
+tenderness and terror over Ellen, because she was of the weaker half
+of creation, which is born to the larger share of pain in the world.
+He felt that he would almost have given her up, yielded up forever
+all his delight in her, to spare her; for the pain of knighthood,
+which is in every true lover, awoke in his heart.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLI
+
+
+Nahum Beals was a laster in Lloyd's. Late in the autumn, when Ellen
+had been in the factory a little over a year, there began to be a
+subtle condition of discontent and insubordination. Men gathered in
+muttering groups, of which Nahum Beals seemed always to be the
+nucleus. His high, rampant voice, restrained by no fear of
+consequences, always served as the key-note to the chorus of
+rebellion. Ellen paid little attention to it. She was earning good
+wages, and personally she had nothing of which to complain. She had
+come to regard Beals as something of a chronic fanatic, but as she
+knew that the lasters were fairly paid, she had not supposed it
+meant anything. However, one night, going home from the factory, her
+eyes were opened. Abby and Maria Atkins and Mamie Brady were with
+her, and shortly after they had left the shop Abby stopped Granville
+Joy, Frank Dixon, and Willy Jones, who with another young man were
+swinging past without noticing the girls, strange to say. Abby
+caught Joy by the arm.
+
+"Hold on a minute, Granville Joy," said she. "I want to know what's
+up with the lasters."
+
+Granville laughed, with an uneasy, sidelong, deprecating glance at
+Ellen. "Oh, nothing much," said he.
+
+Willy Jones stood still, coloring, gazing at Abby with a
+half-terrified expression. Dixon walked on, and the other young man,
+Amos Lee, who was dark and slight and sinewy, stared from one to the
+other with quick flashes of black eyes. He looked almost as if he
+had gypsy blood in him, and he came of a family which was further on
+the outskirts of society than the Louds had been.
+
+When Granville replied "nothing much" to Abby's question, Amos Lee
+frowned with a swift contraction of dissent, but did not speak until
+Abby had retorted. "You needn't talk that way to me, Granville Joy,"
+said she. "You can't cheat me. I know something's up."
+
+"It ain't nothin', Abby," said Granville, but it was quite evident
+that he was lying.
+
+Then Lee spoke up, in a sudden fury of enthusiasm. "There is
+somethin' up," said he, "and I don't care if you do know it.
+There's--" he stopped as Granville clutched his arm violently and
+whispered something.
+
+"Well, maybe you're right," said Lee to Joy. "Look here," he
+continued to Abby, "you and Ellen come along here a little ways, and
+I'll tell you."
+
+After Maria and Mamie had passed on, Joy and Jones and Lee, standing
+close to the two girls, began to talk, Lee leading.
+
+"Well, look here," he said, in a hushed voice. "We've found out--no
+matter how, but we've found out--that the boss is goin' to dock the
+lasters' pay."
+
+"How much?" asked Abby.
+
+"Fifteen per cent."
+
+"Good Lord!" said Abby.
+
+"We ain't going to stand it," said Lee.
+
+"I don't see how we can stand it," said Willy Jones, with a slightly
+interrogative tone directed towards Abby. Granville looked at Ellen.
+
+"Are you sure?" she asked.
+
+"Perfectly sure," replied Granville. "What do you think about it,
+Ellen?"
+
+"What are you going to do?" asked Ellen, thoughtfully.
+
+"Strike for fifteen per cent. more before he has a chance to dock
+us," cried Lee, with a hushed vehemence, looking about warily to
+make sure that no one overheard.
+
+"The worst of it is, I know it all comes from Nahum Beals, and he's
+half cracked," said Abby, bluntly.
+
+"He's got the right of it, anyhow," said Lee.
+
+The two girls walked on, while the men lingered behind to talk.
+
+"Do you suppose it is true, Abby?" asked Ellen.
+
+"I don't know. I should, if it wasn't for that Lee fellow. I can't
+bear him. And that Nahum Beals, I believe he's half mad."
+
+"I feel the same way about him," said Ellen; "but think what it
+would mean, fifteen per cent. less on their wages."
+
+"It doesn't mean so much for those young fellows, except Willy
+Jones; he's got enough on his shoulders."
+
+"No, but ever so many of the lasters have large families."
+
+"I hope they don't drag Willy Jones into it," said Abby. She looked
+back as she spoke. Willy, in the little knot of men, was looking
+after her, and their eyes met. Abby colored.
+
+"It's a shame to dock his wages," she said.
+
+"Whose--Willy Jones's?"
+
+"Yes. I hope he won't get into any trouble. I can't bear that Lee."
+
+"Still, to dock their wages fifteen per cent.," said Ellen,
+thoughtfully.
+
+"What right has Mr. Lloyd?"
+
+"I suppose he'd say he has the right because he has the capital."
+
+"I don't see why that gives him the right."
+
+"You'd better go and talk to him," said Abby. "As for me, I made up
+my mind when I went to work in the shop that I'd got to be a
+bond-slave, all but my soul. That can kick free, thank the Lord."
+
+"I didn't make up my mind to it," said Ellen. "I am not going to be
+a slave in any way, and I am not going to approve of others being
+slaves."
+
+"You think they ought to strike?"
+
+"Yes, if it is true that Mr. Lloyd is going to dock their wages, but
+I don't feel sure that it is true. Mr. Beals is a queer man.
+Sometimes I have thought he was dangerous."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLII
+
+
+Tuesday evening was one of those marvellously clear atmospheres of
+autumn which seem to be clearer from the contrast to the mists of
+the recent summer. The stars swarmed out in unnumbered hosts.
+
+"Seems to me I never saw so many stars," one would say to another.
+The air had the sharp cleave of the frost in it. Everything was
+glittering with a white rime--the house roofs, and the levels of
+fields on the outskirts of the little city.
+
+Ellen had an errand down-town that evening, and she wrapped herself
+up warmly, putting on a fur collar which she had not worn since the
+winter before. She felt strangely nervous and disturbed as she set
+out.
+
+"Don't you want your father to go with you?" asked Fanny, for in
+some occult fashion the girl's perturbation seemed to be
+communicated to her. She followed her to the door.
+
+"Seems kind of lonesome for you to go alone," she said, anxiously.
+
+"As if I minded! Why, it is as bright as day with the
+electric-lights, and there are houses almost all the way," laughed
+Ellen.
+
+"Your father could go with you, or he could go for you."
+
+"No, he couldn't go for me. I want to get one of the new catalogues
+at the library and pick out a book, and there is no sense in
+dragging father out. He has a cold, too. Why, there is nothing in
+the world to be afraid of, mother."
+
+"Well, don't be any longer than you can help," said Fanny.
+
+Ellen, as she passed her grandmother's house, saw a curtain drawn
+with a quick motion. That happened nearly every time she passed. She
+knew that the old woman was always on the lookout for her, and
+always bent on concealing it. Mrs. Zelotes never went into her son's
+house, and never spoke to Ellen in those days. She had aged rapidly
+during the past year, and even her erect carriage had failed her.
+She stooped rigidly when she walked. She was fairly racked with love
+and hatred of Ellen. She adored her, she could have kissed the
+ground she walked on, and yet she was so full of wrath against her
+for thwarting her hopes for her own advancement that she was
+conscious of cruel impulses in her direction.
+
+Ellen walked along rapidly under the vast canopy of stars, about
+which she presently began to have a singular impression. She felt as
+if they were being augmented, swelled as if by constantly oncoming
+legions of light from the space beyond space, and as if her little
+space of individuality, her tiny foothold of creation, was being
+constantly narrowed by them.
+
+"I never saw so many stars," she said to herself. She looked with
+wonder at the Milky Way, which was like a zone of diamond dust.
+Suddenly a mighty conviction of God, which was like the blazing
+forth of a new star, was in her soul. Ellen was not in a sense
+religious, and had never united with the Congregational Church,
+which she had always attended with her parents; she had never been
+responsive to efforts made towards her so-called conversion, but all
+at once, under the stars that night, she told herself with an
+absolute certainty of the truth of it. "There is something beyond
+everything, beyond the stars, and beyond all poor men, and beyond
+me, which is enough for all needs. We shall have our portion in the
+end."
+
+She had been feeling discouraged lately, although she would not own
+it even to herself. She saw Robert but seldom, and her aunt was no
+better. She often wondered if there could be anything before her but
+that one track of drudgery for daily bread upon which she had set
+out. She wondered if she ought not to say positively to Robert that
+there must be no thought of anything between them in the future. She
+wondered if she were not wronging him. Once or twice she had seen
+him riding with Miss Hemingway, and thought that, after all, that
+was a girl better suited to him, and perhaps if he had no hope
+whatever of her he might turn to the other to his own advantage. But
+to-night, with the clear stimulus of the frost in her lungs, and her
+eyes and soul dazzled with the multiplicity of stars, she began to
+have a great impetus of courage, like a soldier on the morning of
+battle. She felt as if she could fight for her joy and the joy of
+others, and victory would in the end be certain; that the chances of
+victory ran to infinity, and could not be measured.
+
+However, all the while, in spite of her stimulation of spirits,
+there was that vague sense of excitement, as over some impending
+crisis. That she could not throw off. Suddenly she found herself
+searching the road ahead of her, and often turning at the fancied
+sound of a footstep. She began to wish that her father had come with
+her; then she told herself how foolish she was, for he had a cold,
+and this keen air would have been sure to give him more. The
+electric-car passed her, and she had a grateful sense of
+companionship. She looked after its diminishing light in the
+distance, and almost wished that she had stopped it, but car-fares
+had to be counted carefully.
+
+She began to dread unspeakably passing the factories. She told
+herself that there was no sense in it, that it was not late, that
+the electric-light made it like high noon, that there was a watchman
+in each building, that there was nothing whatever to fear; but it
+was in vain. It was only by a great effort of her will that she did
+not turn and go back home when she reached Lloyd's.
+
+Lloyd's came first; then, a few rods farther, on the other side of
+the street, McGuire's, and then Briggs's.
+
+Ellen had a library book under her arm, and she clutched her
+dress-skirt firmly. A terror as to the supernatural was stealing
+over her. She felt as she had when waking in the night from some
+dreadful dream, though all the time she was dinning in her ears how
+foolish she was. She saw the lantern of the night-watchman in
+Lloyd's moving down a stair which crossed a window.
+
+She came opposite Lloyd's, and, just as she did so, saw a dark
+figure descending the right-hand flight of stairs from the entrance
+platform. She thought, from something in the carriage, that it was
+Mr. Lloyd, and hung back a little, reflecting that she would keep
+behind him all the way to town.
+
+The man reached the ground at the foot of the stairs, then there was
+a flash of fire from the shadow underneath, and a shot rang out.
+Ellen did what she could never have counted upon herself for doing.
+She ran straight towards the man, who had fallen prostrate like a
+log, and was down on the ground beside him, with his head on her
+lap, shouting for the night-watchman, whose name was McLaughlin.
+
+"McLaughlin!" she shouted. But there was no need of it, for he had
+heard the shot. The cry had not left Ellen's lips before she was
+surrounded by men, one of whom was Granville Joy, one was Dixon, and
+one was John Sargent.
+
+Joy and Sargent had met down-town, and were walking home together,
+when the shot rang out, and they had rushed forward. Then there was
+McLaughlin, the watchman of Lloyd's, and the two watchmen from
+Briggs's and McGuire's came pelting down their stairs, swinging
+their lanterns.
+
+They all stood around the wounded man and Ellen, and stared for a
+second. They were half stupefied.
+
+"My God! this is a bad job," said Dixon.
+
+"Go for a doctor," cried Ellen, hoarsely.
+
+"We're a pack of fools," ejaculated Sargent, suddenly. Then he gave
+Granville Joy a push on the back. "Run for your life for the first
+doctor," he cried, and was down on his knees beside the wounded man.
+Lloyd seemed to be quite insensible. There was a dark spot which was
+constantly widening in a hideous circle of death on his shirt-front
+when Sargent opened his coat and vest tenderly.
+
+"Is he--" whispered Ellen. She held one of Lloyd's hands in a firm
+clutch as if she would in such wise hold him to life.
+
+"No, not yet," whispered Sargent. Dixon knelt down on the other
+side, and took Lloyd's other hand and felt his pulse. McLaughlin was
+rushing aimlessly up and down, talking as he went.
+
+"I never heard a thing till that shot came," he kept repeating.
+"He'd jest been in to get his pocketbook he'd left in the office. I
+never heard a thing till I heard that shot."
+
+Sargent was opening Lloyd's shirt. "McLaughlin, for God's sake stop
+talking and run for another doctor, in case Joy does not get one at
+once," he cried; "then go to his house, and tell young Lloyd, but
+don't say anything to his wife."
+
+"Poor Mrs. Lloyd," whispered Ellen.
+
+The sick man sighed audibly. It seemed as if he had heard. The other
+watchmen stood looking on helplessly.
+
+"Why in thunder don't you two scatter, and see if you can't catch
+him," cried Dixon to them. "He can't be far off."
+
+But the words had no sooner left his mouth than up came a great
+Swede who was one of the workmen in Lloyd's, and he had Nahum Beals
+in a grasp as imperturbable as fate. The assassin, even with the
+strength of his fury of fanaticism, was as a reed in the grasp of
+this Northern giant. The Swede held him easily, walking him before
+him in a forced march. He had a hand of Nahum's in each of his, and
+he compelled Nahum's right hand to retain the hold of the discharged
+pistol. There was something terrible about the Swede as he drew
+near, a captor as unyielding and pitiless as justice itself. He was
+even smiling with a smile which showed his gums from ear to ear, but
+there was no joy in his smile, and no triumph. His blue eyes
+surveyed them all with the placid content of achievement.
+
+"I have him," he said. "I heard him shoot, and I heard him run, and
+I stood still until he ran into my arms. I have him."
+
+Nahum, in the grasp of this fate, was quivering from head to foot,
+but not from fear.
+
+"Is he dead?" he shouted, eagerly.
+
+"Hush up, you murderer," cried Dixon. "We didn't want any such work
+as this, damn you. Keep fast hold of him, Olfsen."
+
+"I will keep him fast," replied the Swede, smiling.
+
+Then there was a swift clatter of wheels, and two doctors drove up,
+and men came running. The space in front of Lloyd's was black with
+men. Robert Lloyd was among them. Granville Joy had met him on the
+street.
+
+"You'd better go down to the factory, quick," he had said, hoarsely.
+"There's trouble there; your uncle--"
+
+Robert pushed through the crowd, which made way respectfully for
+him. He knelt down beside the wounded man. "Is he--" he whispered to
+Sargent.
+
+"Not yet," whispered Sargent, "but I'm afraid it's pretty bad."
+
+"You here?" Robert said to Ellen.
+
+"Yes," she answered, "I was passing when I heard the shot."
+
+"See here," said Robert, "I don't know but I am asking a good deal,
+but will you get into Dr. James's buggy, and let his man drive you
+to my aunt's, and you break it to her? She likes you. I must stay
+with him. I don't want her to know it first when he is brought
+home."
+
+"Yes, that will be the best way," said the other physician, who was
+the one regularly employed by the Lloyds. "Some one must tell her
+first, and if she knows this young lady--"
+
+"I will go," said Ellen.
+
+Dr. Story whispered something to Ellen as she was getting into the
+buggy. Then Dr. James's man drove her away down the street.
+
+There was a little black mare harnessed to the buggy, and she went
+with nervous leaps of speed. When Ellen reached the Lloyd house she
+saw that it was blazing with light. Norman Lloyd was fond of
+brilliant light, and would have every room in his house illuminated
+from garret to cellar.
+
+As Ellen went up the stone steps she saw a woman's figure in the
+room at the right, which moved to an attitude of attention when she
+rang the bell.
+
+Before Ellen could inquire for Mrs. Lloyd of the maid who answered
+her ring there was a shrill cry from the room on the right.
+
+"Who is it? Who is it?" demanded the voice.
+
+Then, before Ellen could speak, Mrs. Lloyd came running out.
+
+"What is it?" she said. "Tell me quick. I know something has
+happened. Tell me quick. You came in Dr. James's buggy, and the man
+was driving fast. Tell me."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Lloyd," said Ellen. Then she could say no more, but the
+other woman knew.
+
+"Is he dead?" she asked, hoarsely.
+
+"Oh, no, no, not dead."
+
+"Hurt?"
+
+Ellen nodded, trembling.
+
+"How?"
+
+"He was shot."
+
+"Who shot him?"
+
+"One of the workmen. They have him. Carl Olfsen found him."
+
+"One of the workmen, when he has always been so good!"
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Lloyd seemed to gather herself together into the
+strength of action.
+
+"Are they bringing him home?" she asked Ellen, in a sharp, decisive
+voice.
+
+"I think they must be by this time."
+
+"Then I've got to get ready for him. Come, quick."
+
+There was by that time a man and two women servants standing near
+them, aghast. Mrs. Lloyd turned to the man.
+
+"Go down to the drug-store and get some brandy, there isn't any in
+the house," said she; "then come back as quick as you can. Maggie,
+you see that there is plenty of hot water. Martha, you and Ellen
+come up-stairs with me, quick."
+
+Ellen followed Mrs. Lloyd and the maid up-stairs, and, before she
+knew what she was doing, was assisting to put the room in perfect
+readiness for the wounded man. The maid was weeping all the time she
+worked, although she had never liked Mr. Lloyd. There was something
+about her mistress which was fairly abnormal. She kept looking at
+her. This gentle, soft-natured woman had risen above her own pain
+and grief to a sublime strength of misery.
+
+"Get the camphor, quick, Martha," she said to the maid, who flew
+out, with the tears streaming. Ellen stood on one side of the bed,
+and Mrs. Lloyd on the other. Mrs. Lloyd had stripped off the
+blankets, and was pinning the sheet tightly over the mattress. She
+seemed to know instinctively what to do.
+
+"I wish you would bring that basin over here, and put it on the
+stand," said Mrs. Lloyd. "Martha, you fetch more towels, and,
+Maggie, you run up garret and bring down some of those old sheets
+from the trunk under the window, quick."
+
+This maid, who was as large and as ample as her mistress, fled out
+of the room with heavy, noiseless pads of flat feet.
+
+All the time Mrs. Lloyd worked she was evidently listening. She paid
+no attention to Ellen except to direct her. All at once she gave a
+great leap and stood still.
+
+"They're coming," said she, though Ellen had heard nothing. Ellen
+went close to her, and took her two fat, cold hands. She could say
+nothing. Then she heard the roll of carriage-wheels in the street
+below.
+
+Mrs. Lloyd pulled her hands away from Ellen's and went to the head
+of the stairs.
+
+"Bring him right up here," she ordered, in a loud voice.
+
+Ellen stood back, and the struggling procession with the prostrate
+man in the midst labored up the broad stairs.
+
+"Bring him in here," said Mrs. Lloyd, "and lay him on the bed."
+
+When Lloyd was stretched on the bed, the crowd drew back a little,
+and she bent over him.
+
+Then she turned with a sort of fierceness to the doctors.
+
+"Why don't you do something?" she demanded. She raised a hand with a
+repellant gesture towards the other men.
+
+"You had better go now," said she. "I thank you very much. If there
+is anything you can do, I will let you know."
+
+When Mrs. Lloyd was left with the two doctors and a young assistant,
+Robert, and Ellen, she said, cutting her words short as if she
+released every one from a mental grip:
+
+"I have got everything ready. Shall I go out now?"
+
+"I think you had better, Mrs. Lloyd," said the family physician,
+pityingly. He went close to Ellen.
+
+"Can't you stay with her a little while?" he whispered.
+
+Ellen nodded.
+
+Then the physician spoke quite loudly and cheerfully to Mrs. Lloyd.
+
+"We are going to probe for the ball," he said. "We must all hope for
+the best, Mrs. Lloyd."
+
+Mrs. Lloyd made no reply. She bent again over her husband with a
+rigid face, and kissed him on his white lips, then she went out,
+with Ellen following.
+
+Norman Lloyd lived only two hours after he was shot. The efforts to
+remove the ball had to be abandoned. He was conscious only a few
+minutes. He suddenly began to look about him with comprehension.
+
+"Robert," he said, in a far-away voice.
+
+Robert stooped closely over his uncle. The dying man looked up at
+him with an expression which he had never worn in life.
+
+"That man was insane," whispered he, faintly. Then he added, "Look
+out for her, if she has to go through the operation. Take care of
+her. Make it as easy for her as you can."
+
+"Then you know, Uncle Norman," gasped Robert.
+
+"All the time, but it--pleased her to think I--did not. Don't let
+her know I knew. Take care--"
+
+Then Norman Lloyd relapsed into unconsciousness, and the whole room
+and the whole house became clamorous with his stertorous breathing.
+Mrs. Lloyd and Ellen came and stood in the doorway. The doctor
+whispered to them. Then the breathing ceased, although at first it
+was inconceivable that the silence did not continue to ring with it,
+and Mrs. Lloyd came into the room.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIII
+
+
+When Mrs. Lloyd entered the room, the attention of every one was
+taken from the dead man on the bed and concentrated upon the woman.
+Dr. Story, a nervous, intense, elderly man with a settled frown of
+perplexity over keen eyes, which he had gotten from a struggle of
+forty years with unanswerable problems of life and death, stepped
+towards her hastily. Robert pressed close to her side. Ellen came
+behind her, holding in a curious, instinctive fashion to a fold of
+the older woman's gown, as if she had been a mother holding back a
+child from a sudden topple to its hurt. Everybody expected her to
+make some heart-breaking manifestation. She did nothing. At that
+moment the sublime unselfishness of the woman, which was her one
+strength of character, seemed actually to spread itself, as with
+wings, before them all. She moved steadily, close to her husband on
+the bed. She gazed at that profile of rigid calmness and enforced
+peace, which, although the head lay low, seemed to have an effect of
+upward motion, as if it were cleaving the mystery of space. Mrs.
+Lloyd laid her hand upon her husband's forehead; she felt a slight
+incredulousness of death, because it was still warm. She took his
+hands, drew them softly together, and folded them upon his breast.
+Then she turned and faced them all with an angelic expression.
+
+"He did not realize it to suffer much?" she said.
+
+"No, Mrs. Lloyd," replied Dr. Story, quickly. "No, I assure you that
+he suffered very little."
+
+"He seemed very happy when he died, Aunt Lizzie," said Robert,
+huskily.
+
+Mrs. Lloyd looked away from them all around the room. It was a
+magnificent apartment. Norman Lloyd had had an artistic taste as
+well as wealth. The furnishings had always been rather beyond Mrs.
+Lloyd's appreciation, but she admired them kindly. She took in every
+detail; the foam of rich curtains at the great windows, the
+cut-glass and silver on the dressing-table, the pale softness of a
+polar-bear skin beside the bed, the lifelike insistence of the
+costly pictures on the walls.
+
+"He's gone where it is a great deal more beautiful," she said to
+them, like a child. "He's gone where there's better treasures than
+these which he had here."
+
+They all looked at her in amazement. It actually seemed as if, for
+the moment, the woman's sole grief was over the loss to her husband
+of those things which he had on earth--the treasures of his mortal
+state.
+
+Robert took hold of his aunt's arm and led her, quite unresisting,
+from the room, and as she went she felt for Ellen's hand. "It is
+time she was home," she said to Robert. "Her folks will be worried
+about her. She's been a real comfort to me."
+
+It was the first time that Ellen had ever seen death, that she had
+ever seen the living confronted with it. She felt as if a wave were
+breaking over her own head as she clung fast to Mrs. Lloyd's hand.
+
+"Sha'n't I stay?" she whispered, pitifully, to her. "If I can send
+word to my mother--"
+
+"No, you dear child," replied Mrs. Lloyd, "you've done enough, and
+you will have to be up early in the morning."  Then she checked
+herself. "I forgot," said she to Robert; "the factory will be closed
+till after the funeral, won't it?"
+
+"Of course it will, Aunt Lizzie."
+
+"And the workmen will be paid just the same, of course," said Mrs.
+Lloyd. "Now, can't you take her home, Robert?"
+
+"Oh, don't mind about me," cried Ellen.
+
+"You can have a horse put into the buggy," said Mrs. Lloyd.
+
+"Oh, you mustn't leave her now," Ellen whispered to Robert. "Let
+somebody else take me--Dr. James--"
+
+"I would rather you took her," said Mrs. Lloyd. "And you needn't
+worry about his leaving me, dear child; the doctor will stay until
+he comes back."
+
+As Robert was finally going out his aunt caught his arm and looked
+at him with a radiant expression. "He will never know about _me_
+now," said she, "and it won't be long before I-- Oh, I feel as if I
+had gotten rid of my own death."
+
+She was filled with inexpressible thankfulness that she had herself
+to bear what she had dreaded for her husband. "Only think how hard
+it would have been for Norman," she said to Cynthia, the next day.
+
+Cynthia looked at her wonderingly. She could have understood this
+feeling over a dearly beloved child. "You are a good woman, Lizzie,"
+she said, in a tone of pitiful respect.
+
+"Not half as good a woman as he was a man," returned Mrs. Lloyd,
+jealously. "Norman wasn't a professor, I know, but he was a
+believer. You don't think it is necessary to be a professor in order
+to be saved, do you, Cynthia?"
+
+"I certainly do not," Cynthia replied. "I wish you would go and lie
+down, Lizzie."
+
+"Oh, I can't. I wouldn't let anybody do these things but me, for the
+whole world."  Mrs. Lloyd was arranging flowers, tuberoses and white
+carnations, in vases, and the whole house was scented with them. She
+looked ghastly, yet still unconquerably happy. She had now no reason
+to conceal the ravages of disease, and her color was something
+frightful. Still, she did not suffer as much, for her mind had
+overborne her body to such an extent that she had the mastery for
+the time, to a certain extent, of those excruciating stabs of pain.
+People looked at her incredulously. They could not believe that she
+felt as she talked, that she was as happy and resigned as she
+looked, but it was all true. It was either an abnormal state into
+which her husband's death had thrown her, or one too normal to be
+credited. She looked at it all with a supreme childishness and
+simplicity. She simply believed that her husband was in heaven,
+where she should join him; that he was beyond all suffering which
+might have come to him through her, and all that troubled her was
+the one consideration of his having been forced to leave his
+treasures of earth. She looked at various things which had been
+prized by the dead man, and found her chief comfort in saying to the
+minister or Cynthia or Robert that Norman had loved these, but he
+would have that which was infinitely more precious. She even gazed
+out of the window, that Tuesday night, and saw her nephew driving
+away with Ellen, and reflected, with pain, that her husband had been
+fond and proud of that bay. She was a little at a loss to conceive
+what could make up to her husband for that in another world, but she
+succeeded, and evolved from her own loving fancy, and her
+recollection of the Old Testament, a conception of some wonderful
+creature, shod with thunder and maned with a whirlwind. Her disease,
+and a drug she had been taking of late, stimulated her imagination
+to results of grotesque pathos, but she was comforted.
+
+That night when they were alone, Robert turned to the girl at his
+side with a sudden motion. It was no time for love-making, for that
+was in the mind of neither of them, but the bereavement of this
+other woman, and the tragedy of her state, filled him with a sort of
+protective pain towards the girl who might some time have to suffer
+through him the same loss.
+
+"Are you all tired out, dear?" he said, and passed his free arm
+around her waist.
+
+"No," replied Ellen. Then, since she was only a girl, and
+overwrought, having been through a severe strain, she broke down,
+and began to cry.
+
+Robert drew her closer, and she hid her face on his shoulder. "Poor
+little girl, it has been very hard for you," he whispered.
+
+"Oh, don't think of me," sobbed Ellen. "But I can't bear it, the way
+she acts and looks. It is sadder than grief."
+
+"She is not going to live long herself, dear," said Robert, in a
+stifled voice.
+
+"And he--did not know?"
+
+"Hush! yes; but you must never tell any one. She tried to keep it
+from him. That is her comfort."
+
+"Oh," said Ellen. She looked up at the white face of the young man
+bending over her, and suddenly the realization of a love that was
+mightier than all the creatures who came of it and all who followed
+it was over her.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIV
+
+
+When Ellen did not return, there was some alarm in the Brewster
+household. Mrs. Zelotes came over, finally, in a quiver of anxiety.
+
+"Maybe I had better start out and see if I can find her," said
+Andrew.
+
+"I think you had better," returned his mother. "She went before
+eight o'clock, and it's most midnight, and I've set at my window
+watchin' ever since. I don't see what you've been thinkin' about,
+waitin' all this time. I guess if I was a man I shouldn't have
+waited."
+
+"I think she may have gone in to see Abby Atkins--it's on the
+way--and not realized how late it was," said Fanny, obstinately, but
+with a very white face. She drew her thread through with a jerk. It
+knotted, and she broke it off viciously.
+
+"Fiddlesticks!" said her mother-in-law.
+
+"There's no use imaginin' things," said Fanny, angrily; "but I think
+myself you'd better go now, Andrew, and see if you can see anything
+of her."
+
+"I'm goin' with him," announced Mrs. Zelotes.
+
+"Now, mother, you'd better stay where you be," said Andrew, putting
+on his hat. Then the door flew open, and Amos Lee, who had seen the
+light in the windows, and was burning to impart the news of the
+tragedy, rushed in.
+
+"Heard what's happened?" he cried out.
+
+They all thought of Ellen. "What?" demanded Andrew, in a terrible
+voice. Fanny dropped her work and stared at him, with her chin
+falling as if she were dying. Mrs. Zelotes made a queer gurgling
+noise in her throat. Lee stared at them a second, bewildered by the
+effect of his own words, although they had for him such a tragic
+import. Andrew caught hold of him in a grasp like the clamp of a
+machine. "What?" he demanded again.
+
+"The boss has been shot," cried Lee, getting his breath.
+
+Andrew dropped his arm, and they all stared at him. Lee went on
+fluently, as if he were a fakir at a fair.
+
+"Nahum Beals did it. The boss went back to the office to get his
+pocketbook; McLaughlin saw him; then he went down the stairs; Nahum,
+he--he fired; he had been hidin' underneath the stairs. Carl Olfsen
+caught him, and he's in jail. Your daughter she was there when the
+shot came, and run up and held his head. The young boss he sent her
+in Dr. James's buggy to Mrs. Lloyd to break the news. She 'ain't got
+home?"
+
+"No," gasped Andrew.
+
+"The boss has been shot; he's dead by this time," repeated Lee.
+"Beals did it; they've got him."  There was the most singular
+evenness and impartiality in his tone, although he was evidently
+strained to a high pitch of excitement. It was impossible to tell
+whether he exulted in or was aghast at the tragedy.
+
+"Oh, that poor woman!" cried Fanny.
+
+"I'd like to know what they'll do next," cried Mrs. Zelotes. "I
+should call it pretty work."
+
+"Nahum Beals has acted to me as if he was half crazy for some time,"
+said Fanny.
+
+"No doubt about it," said Lee; "but I shouldn't wonder if he had to
+swing."
+
+"It's dreadful," said Fanny. "I wonder when she's comin' home."
+
+"Seems as if they might have got somebody besides that girl to have
+gone there," said Mrs. Zelotes.
+
+"She happened to be right on the spot," said Lee, importantly.
+
+Andrew seemed speechless; he leaned against the mantel-shelf, gazing
+from one to the other, breathing hard. He had had bitter feelings
+against the murdered man, and a curious sense of guilt was over him.
+He felt almost as if he were the murderer.
+
+"Andrew, I dun'no' but you'd better go up there and see if she's
+comin' home," said Fanny; and he answered heavily that maybe he had
+better, when they heard wheels, which stopped before the house.
+
+"They're bringin' her home," said Lee.
+
+Andrew ran and threw open the front door. He had a glimpse of
+Robert's pale face, nodding to him from the buggy as he drove away,
+and Ellen came hastening up the walk.
+
+"Well, Ellen, this is pretty dreadful news," said her father,
+tremulously.
+
+"So you have heard?"
+
+"Amos Lee has just come in. It's a terrible thing, Ellen."
+
+"Yes, it's terrible," returned Ellen, in a quick, strained voice.
+She entered the sitting-room, and when she met her mother's anxious,
+tender eyes, she stood back against the wall, with her hands to her
+face, sobbing. Fanny ran to her, but her grandmother was quicker.
+She had her arms around the girl before the mother had a chance.
+
+"If they couldn't get somebody besides you," she said, in a voice of
+intensest love and anger, "I should call it pretty work. Now you go
+straight to bed, Ellen Brewster, and I'm goin' to make a bowl of
+sage tea, and bring it up, and see if it won't quiet your nerves. I
+call it pretty work."
+
+"Yes, you'd better go to bed, Ellen," said Andrew, gulping as if he
+were swallowing a sob.
+
+Mrs. Zelotes fairly forced Ellen towards the door, Fanny following.
+
+"Don't talk and wake Amabel," whispered Ellen, forcing back her
+sobs.
+
+"Was he dead when you got there, Ellen?" called out Lee.
+
+Mrs. Zelotes turned back and looked at him. "It's after midnight,
+and time for you to be goin' home," she said. Then the three
+disappeared. Lee grinned sheepishly at Andrew.
+
+"Your mother is a stepper of an old woman," said he.
+
+"It's awful news," said Andrew, soberly. "Whatever anybody may have
+felt, nobody expected--"
+
+"Of course they didn't," retorted Lee, quickly. "Nahum went a step
+too far."  He started for the door as he spoke.
+
+"Well, he was crazy, without any doubt!" said Andrew.
+
+"He'll have to swing for it all the same," said Lee, going out.
+
+"It don't seem right, if he wasn't himself when he did it."
+
+"Lord, we're all crazy when it comes to things like that," returned
+Lee. Before closing the door he flashed his black eyes and white
+teeth at Andrew, who felt repelled.
+
+He sat down beside the table and leaned his head upon it. To his
+fancy all creation seemed to circle about that one dead man. Mr.
+Lloyd had been for years the arbiter of his destiny, almost of his
+life. Andrew had regarded him with almost feudal loyalty and
+admiration, and lately with bitter revolt and hatred, and now he was
+dead. He felt no sorrow, but rather a terrible remorse because he
+felt no sorrow. All the bitter thoughts which he had ever had
+against Lloyd seemed to marshal themselves before him like an
+accusing legion of ghosts. And with it all there was a sense of
+desolation, as if some force which had been necessary to his full
+living had gone out of creation.
+
+"It's over thirty years since I went to work under him," Andrew
+thought, and he gave a dry sob. At that moment a wonderful pity and
+sorrow for the dead man seemed to spring up in his soul like a
+light. He felt as if he loved him.
+
+
+Norman Lloyd's funeral was held in the First Baptist Church of Rowe.
+It was crowded. Mr. Lloyd had been the most prominent manufacturer
+and the wealthiest man in the city. His employes filled up a great
+space in the body of the church.
+
+Andrew went with his mother and wife. They arrived quite early. When
+Andrew saw the employes of Lloyd's marching in, he drew a great
+sigh. He looked at the solemn black thing raised on trestles before
+the pulpit with an emotion which he could not himself understand.
+"That man 'ain't treated me well enough for me to care anything
+about him," he kept urging upon himself. "He never paid any more
+attention to me than a gravel-stone under his feet; there ain't any
+reason why I should have cared about him, and I don't; it can't be
+that I do."  Yet arguing with himself in this way, he continued to
+eye the casket which held his dead employer with an unyielding
+grief.
+
+Mrs. Zelotes sat like a black, draped statue at the head of the pew,
+but her eyes behind her black veil were sharply observant. She
+missed not one detail. She saw everything; she counted the wreaths
+and bouquets on the casket, and stored in her mind, as vividly as
+she might have done some old mourning-piece, the picture of the near
+relatives advancing up the aisle.
+
+Mrs. Lloyd came leaning on her nephew's arm, and there were Cynthia
+Lennox and a distant cousin, an elderly widow who had been summoned
+to the house of death.
+
+Ellen sat in the body of the church, with the employes of Lloyd's,
+between Abby Atkins and Maria. She glanced up when the little
+company of mourners entered, then cast her eyes down again and
+compressed her lips. Maria began to weep softly, pressing her
+handkerchief to her eyes. Ellen's mother had begged her not to sit
+with the employes, but with her and her father and grandmother in
+their own pew, but the girl had refused.
+
+"I must sit where I belong," said she.
+
+"Maybe she thinks it would look as if she was putting on airs on
+account of--" Fanny said to Andrew when Ellen had gone out.
+
+"I guess she's right," returned Andrew.
+
+The employes had contributed money for a great floral piece composed
+of laurel and white roses, in the shape of a pillow. Mamie Brady,
+who sat behind Ellen, leaned over, and in a whisper whistled into
+her ear.
+
+"Ain't it handsome?" said she. "Can you see them flowers from the
+hands?"
+
+Ellen nodded impatiently. The great green and white decoration was
+in plain view from her seat, and as she looked at it she wondered if
+it were a sarcasm or poetic truth beyond the scope of the givers,
+the pillow of laurel and roses, emblematic of eternal peace,
+presented by the hard hands of labor to dead capital.
+
+Of course the tragic circumstances of Norman Lloyd's death increased
+the curiosity of the public. Gradually the church became crowded by
+a slow and solemn pressure. The aisles were filled. The air was
+heavy with the funeral flowers. The minister spoke at length,
+descanting upon the character of the deceased, his uprightness and
+strict integrity in business, avoiding pitfalls of admissions of
+weaknesses with the expertness of a juggler. He was always regarded
+as very apt at funerals, never saying too much and never too little.
+The church was very still, the whole audience wrapped in a solemn
+hush, until the minister began to pray; then there was a general
+bending of heads and devout screening of faces with hands. Then all
+at once a sob from a woman sounded from the rear of the church. It
+was hysterical, and had burst from the restraint of the weeper.
+People turned about furtively.
+
+"Who was that?" whispered Mamie Brady, after a prolonged stare over
+her shoulders from under her red frizzle of hair. "It ain't any of
+the mourners."
+
+Ellen shook her head.
+
+"Do keep still, Mamie Brady," whispered Abby Atkins.
+
+The sob came again, and this time it was echoed from the pew where
+sat the members of the dead man's family. Mrs. Lloyd began weeping
+convulsively. Her state of mind had raised her above natural
+emotion, and yet her nerves weakly yielded to it when given such an
+impetus. She wept like a child, and now and then a low murmur of
+heart-broken complaint came from her lips, and was heard distinctly
+over the church. Other women began to weep. The minister prayed, and
+his words of comfort seemed like the air in a discordant medley of
+sorrow.
+
+Andrew Brewster's face twitched; he held his hands clutched tightly.
+Fanny was weeping, but the old woman at the head of the pew sat
+immovable.
+
+When the services were over, and the great concourse of people had
+passed around the casket and viewed the face of the dead, with keen,
+sidewise observation of the funeral flowers, Mrs. Zelotes pressed
+out as fast as she was able without seeming to crowd, and caught up
+with Mrs. Pointdexter, who had sat in the rear of the church.
+
+She came alongside as they left the church, and the two old women
+moved slowly down the sidewalk, with lingering glances at the
+funeral procession drawn up in front of the church.
+
+"Who was that cryin' so in back; did you see?" asked Mrs. Zelotes of
+Mrs. Pointdexter, whose eyes were red, and whose face bore an
+expression of meek endurance of a renewal of her own experience of
+sorrow.
+
+"It was Joe Martin's wife," said she. "I sat just behind her."
+
+"What made her?"
+
+Then both started, for the woman who had sobbed came up behind them,
+her brother, an elderly man, trying to hold her back.
+
+"You stop, John," she cried. "I heard what she said, and I'm goin'
+to tell her. I'm goin' to tell everybody. Nobody shall stop me.
+There the minister spoke and spoke and spoke, and he never said a
+word as to any good he'd done. I'm goin' to tell. I wanted to stan'
+right up in the church an' tell everybody. He told me not to say a
+word about it, an' I never did whilst he was livin', but now I'm
+goin' to stan' up for the dead."  The woman pulled herself loose
+from her brother, who stood behind her, frightened, and continually
+thrusting out a black-gloved hand of remonstrance. People began to
+gather. The woman, who was quite old, had a face graven with hard
+lines of habitual restraint, which was now, from its utter abandon,
+at once pathetic and terrible. She made a motion as if she were
+thrusting her own self into the background.
+
+"I'm goin' to speak," she said, in a high voice. "I held my tongue
+for the livin', but I'm goin' to speak for the dead. My poor husband
+died twenty years ago, got his hand cut in a machine in Lloyd's, and
+had lockjaw, and I was left with my daughter that had spinal
+disease, and my little boy that died, and my own health none too
+good, and--and he--he--came to my house, one night after the
+funeral, and--and told me he was goin' to look out for me, and he
+has, he has. That blessed man gave me five dollars every week of my
+life, and he buried poor Annie when she died, and my little boy, and
+he made me promise never to say a word about it. Five dollars every
+week of my life--five dollars."
+
+The woman's voice ended in a long-drawn, hysterical wail. The other
+women who had been listening began to weep. Mrs. Pointdexter, when
+she and Mrs. Zelotes moved on, was sobbing softly, but Mrs.
+Zelotes's face, though moved, wore an expression of stern
+conjecture.
+
+"I'd like to know how many things like that Norman Lloyd did," said
+she. "I never supposed he was that kind of a man."
+
+She had a bewildered feeling, as if she had to reconstruct her own
+idea of the dead man as a monument to his memory, and reconstruction
+was never an easy task for the old woman.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLV
+
+
+A Short time after Norman Lloyd's death, Ellen, when she had reached
+the factory one morning, met a stream of returning workmen. They
+swung along, and on their faces were expressions of mingled
+solemnity and exultation, as of children let out to play because of
+sorrow in the house, which will not brook the jarring inconsequence
+of youth.
+
+Mamie Brady, walking beside a young man as red-haired as herself,
+called out, with ill-repressed glee, "Turn round, Ellen Brewster;
+there ain't no shop to-day."
+
+The young man at her side, nervously meagre, looked at Ellen with a
+humorous contortion of this thin face, then he caught Mamie Brady by
+the arm, and swung her into a hopity-skip down the sidewalk. Just
+behind them came Granville Joy, with another man. Ellen stopped.
+"What is it?" she said to him. "Why is the shop closed?"
+
+Granville stopped, and let the stream of workmen pass him and Ellen.
+They stood in the midst of it, separating it, as rock will separate
+a current. "Mrs. Lloyd is dead," Granville replied, soberly.
+
+"I heard she was very low last night," Ellen returned, in a hushed
+voice.
+
+Then she passed Granville, who stood a second gazing wistfully after
+her, before he resumed his homeward way. He told himself quite
+accurately that she had purposely refrained from turning, in order
+to avoid walking with himself. A certain resentment seized him. It
+seemed to him that something besides his love had been slighted.
+"She needn't have thought I was going to make love to her going home
+in broad daylight with all these folks," he reflected, and he threw
+up his head impatiently.
+
+The man with whom he had been walking when Ellen appeared lingered
+for him to rejoin him. "Wonder how many shops they'd shut up for you
+and me," said the man, with a sort of humorous bitterness. He had a
+broad face, seemingly fixed in an eternal mask of laughter, and yet
+there were hard lines in it, and a forehead of relentless judgment
+overhung his wide bow of mouth and his squat and wrinkled nose.
+
+"Guess not many," replied Granville, echoing the man in a way
+unusual to him.
+
+"And yet if it wa'n't for us they couldn't keep the shop running at
+all," said the man, whose name was Tom Peel.
+
+"That's so," said Granville, with a slight glance over his shoulder.
+
+Ellen had met the Atkins girls, and had turned, and was coming back
+with them. It was as he had thought.
+
+"If the new boss cuts down fifteen per cent., as the talk is, what
+be you goin' to do?" asked Tom Peel.
+
+"I ain't goin' to stand it," replied Granville, fiercely.
+
+"Ain't goin' to be swept clean by the new broom, hey?" said the man,
+with a widened grin.
+
+"No!" thundered Granville--"not by him, nor any one like him. Damn
+him!"
+
+Tom Peel's grin widened still further into an intense but silent
+laugh.
+
+Meantime Ellen was walking with Abby and Maria.
+
+"I wonder how we're going to get along with young Lloyd," said Abby.
+
+Ellen looked at her keenly. "Why?" she said.
+
+"Oh, I heard the men talking the other night after I'd gone to bed.
+Maybe it isn't true that he's thinking of cutting down the wages."
+
+"It can't be," said Ellen.
+
+"I say so, too," said Maria.
+
+"Well, I hope not," said Abby. "You can't tell. Some chimneys always
+have the wind whistling in them, and I suppose it's about so with a
+boot and shoe shop. It don't follow that there's going to be a
+hurricane."
+
+They had come to the entrance of the street where the Atkins sisters
+lived, and Ellen parted from them.
+
+She kept on her way quite alone. They had walked slowly, and the
+other operatives had either boarded cars or had gone out of sight.
+
+Ellen, when she turned, faced the northwest, out of which a stiff
+wind was blowing. She thrust a hand up each jacket-sleeve, folding
+her arms, but she let the fierce wind smite her full in the face
+without blenching. She had a sort of delight in facing a wind like
+that, and her quick young blood kept her from being chilled. The
+sidewalk was frozen. There was no snow, and the day before there had
+been a thaw. One could see on this walk, hardened into temporary
+stability, the footprints of hundreds of the sons and daughters of
+labor. Read rightly, that sidewalk in the little manufacturing city
+was a hieroglyphic of toil, and perhaps of toil as tending to the
+advance of the whole world. Ellen did not think of that, for she was
+occupied with more personal considerations, thinking of the dead
+woman in the great Lloyd house. She pictured her lying dead on that
+same bed whereon she had seen her husband lie dead. All the ghastly
+concomitants of death came to her mind. "They will turn off all that
+summer heat, and leave her alone in this freezing cold," she
+thought. She remembered the sound of that other woman's kind voice
+in her ears, and she saw her face when she told her the dreadful
+news of her husband's death. She felt a sob rising in her throat,
+but forced it back. What Abby had told concerning Mrs. Lloyd's
+happiness in the face of death seemed to her heart-breaking, though
+she knew not why. That enormous, almost transcendent trust in that
+which was absolutely unknown seemed to engulf her.
+
+When she reached home, her mother looked at her in astonishment. She
+was sewing on the interminable wrappers. Andrew was paring apples
+for pies. "What be you home for--be you sick?" asked Fanny. Andrew
+gazed at her in alarm.
+
+"No, I am not sick," replied Ellen, shortly. "Mrs. Lloyd is dead,
+and the factory's closed."
+
+"I heard she was very low--Mrs. Jones told me so yesterday," said
+Fanny, in a hushed voice. Andrew began paring another apple. He was
+quite pale.
+
+"When is the funeral to be, did you hear?" asked Fanny. Ellen was
+hanging up her hat and coat in the entry.
+
+"Day after to-morrow."
+
+"Have you heard anything about the hands sending flowers?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I suppose they will," said Fanny, "as long as they sent one to him.
+Well, she was a good woman, and it's a mark of respect, and I 'ain't
+anything to say against it, but I can't help feeling as if it was a
+tax."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVI
+
+
+It was some time after Mrs. Lloyd's death. Ellen had not seen Robert
+except as she had caught from time to time a passing glimpse of him
+in the factory. One night she overheard her father and mother
+talking about him after she had gone to bed, the sitting-room door
+having been left ajar.
+
+"I thought he'd come and call after his aunt died," she heard Fanny
+say. "I've always thought he liked Ellen, an' here he is now, with
+all that big factory, an' plenty of money."
+
+"Mebbe he will," replied Andrew, with a voice in which were
+conflicting emotions, pride and sadness, and a struggle for
+self-renunciation.
+
+"It would be a splendid thing for her," said Fanny.
+
+"It would be a splendid thing for _him_," returned Andrew, with a
+flash.
+
+"Land, of course it would! You needn't be so smart, Andrew Brewster.
+I guess I know what Ellen is, as well as you. Any man might be proud
+to get her--I don't care who--whether he's Robert Lloyd, or who, but
+that don't alter what I say. It would be a splendid chance for
+Ellen. Only think of that great Lloyd house, and it must be full of
+beautiful things--table linen, and silver, and what-not. I say it
+would be a splendid thing for her, and she'd be above want all her
+life--that's something to be considered when we 'ain't got any more
+than we have to leave her, and she workin' the way she is."
+
+"Yes, that's so," assented Andrew, with a heavy sigh, as of one who
+looks upon life from under the mortification of an incubus of fate.
+
+"We'd ought to think of her best good," said Fanny, judiciously.
+"I've been thinkin' every evening lately that he'd be comin'. I've
+had the fire in the parlor stove all ready to touch off, an' I've
+kept dusted in there. I know he liked her, but mebbe he's like all
+the rest of the big-bugs."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Andrew, with an inward qualm of repulsion.
+He always hated unspeakably to hear his wife say "big-bugs" in that
+tone. Although he was far from being without humility, he was
+republican to the core in his estimate of his own status in his own
+free country. In his heart, as long as he kept the law of God and
+man, he recognized no "big-bugs."  It was one of the taints of his
+wife's ancestry which grated upon him from time to time.
+
+"Oh, well, mebbe he don't want to be seen callin' on a shop-girl."
+
+"Then he'd better keep away, that's all!" cried Andrew, furiously.
+
+"Oh, well, mebbe it ain't so," said Fanny. "He's always seemed to me
+like a sensible feller, and I know he's liked Ellen, an' lots of
+girls that work in shops marry rich. Look at Annie Graves, married
+that factory boss over to Pemberton, an' has everythin'. She'd
+worked in his factory years. Mebbe it ain't that."
+
+"Ellen don't act as if she minded anything about his not comin',"
+said Andrew, anxiously.
+
+"Land, no; she ain't that kind. She's too much like her grandmother,
+but there 'ain't been a night lately that she 'ain't done her hair
+over when she got home from the shop and changed her dress."
+
+"She always changes her dress, don't she?" said Andrew.
+
+"Oh yes, she always has done that. I guess she likes to get rid of
+the leather smell for a while; but she has put on that pretty, new,
+red silk waist, and I've seen her watchin', though she's never said
+anything."
+
+"You don't suppose she--" began Andrew, in a voice of intensest
+anxiety and indignant tenderness.
+
+"Land, no; Ellen Brewster ain't a girl to fret herself much over any
+man unless she's sure he wants her; trust her. Don't you worry about
+that. All I mean is, I know she's had a kind of an idea that he
+might come."
+
+Ellen, up-stairs, lay listening against her will, and felt herself
+burning with mortified pride and shame. She said to herself that she
+would never put on that red silk waist again of an evening; she
+would not even do her hair over. It was quite true that she had
+thought that Robert might come, that he might renew his offer, now
+that he was so differently situated, and the obstacles, on his side,
+at least, removed. She told herself all the time that the obstacles
+on her own were still far from removed. She asked herself how could
+she, even if this man loved her and wished to marry her, allow him
+to support all her family, although he might be able to do so. She
+often told herself that she ought perhaps to have pride enough to
+refuse, and yet she watched for him to come. She had reflected at
+first that it was, of course, impossible for him to seem to take
+advantage of the deaths which had left him with this independence,
+that he must stay away for a while from motives of delicacy; but now
+the months were going, and she began to wonder if he never would
+come. Every night, when she took off the pretty, red silk waist,
+donned in vain, and let down her fair lengths of hair, it was with
+a sinking of her heart, and a sense of incredulous unhappiness.
+Ellen had always had a sort of sanguinity of happiness and of the
+petting of Providence as well as of her friends. However, the girl
+had, in spite of her childlike trust in the beauty of her life,
+plenty of strength to meet its refutal, and a pride equal to her
+grandmother's. In case Robert Lloyd should never approach her again,
+she would try to keep one face of her soul always veiled to her
+inmost consciousness.
+
+The next evening she was careful not to put on her red silk waist,
+but changed her shop dress for her old blue woollen, and only
+smoothed her hair. She even went to bed early in order to prove to
+her mother that she expected nobody.
+
+"You ain't goin' to bed as early as this, Ellen?" her mother said,
+as she lighted her lamp.
+
+"Yes, I'm going to bed and read."
+
+"Seems as if somebody might be in," said Fanny, awkwardly.
+
+"I don't know who," Ellen returned, with a gentle haughtiness.
+
+Andrew colored. He was at his usual task of paring apples. Andrew,
+in lieu of regular work outside, assisted in these household tasks,
+that his wife might have more time to sew. He looked unusually worn
+and old that night.
+
+"If anybody does come, Ellen will have to get up, that's all," said
+Fanny, when the girl had gone up-stairs. Then she pricked up her
+ears, for the electric-car had stopped before the house. Then it
+went on, with a sharp clang of the bell and a gathering rush of
+motion.
+
+"That car stopped," Fanny said, breathlessly, her work falling from
+her fingers. Andrew and she both listened intently, then footsteps
+were heard plainly coming around the path at the side of the house.
+
+Fanny's face fell. "It's only some of the men," said she, in a low
+voice. Then there came a knock on the side door, and Andrew ushered
+in John Sargent, Joe Atkins, and Amos Lee. Nahum Beals did not come
+in those days, for he was in prison awaiting trial for the murder of
+Norman Lloyd. However, Amos Lee's note was as impressive as his. He
+called often with Sargent and Atkins. They could not shake him off.
+He lay in wait for them at street corners, and joined them. He never
+saw Ellen alone, and did not openly proclaim his calls as meant for
+her. She prevented him from doing that in a manner which he could
+not withstand, full of hot and reckless daring as he was. When he
+entered that night he looked around with keen furtiveness, and was
+evidently listening and watching for her, though presently his voice
+rose high in discussion with the others. After a while the man who
+lived next door dropped in, and his wife with him. She and Fanny
+withdrew to the dining-room with their sewing--for the woman also
+worked on wrappers--and left the sitting-room to the men.
+
+"It beats all how they like to talk," said the woman, with a
+large-minded leniency, "and they never get anywhere," she added.
+"They work themselves all up, and never get anywhere; but men are
+all like that."
+
+"Yes, they be," assented Fanny.
+
+"Jest hear that Lee feller," said the woman.
+
+Amos Lee's voice was audible over the little house, and could have
+been heard in the yard, for it had an enormous carrying quality. It
+was the voice of a public ranter. Ellen, up in her chamber, lying in
+her bed, with a lamp at her side, reading, closely covered from the
+cold--for the room was unheated--heard him with a shiver of disgust
+and repulsion, and yet with a fierce sympathy and loyalty. She could
+not distinguish every word he said, but she knew well what he was
+talking about.
+
+Mrs. Lloyd's death had made a certain hush in the ferment of revolt
+at Lloyd's, but now it was again on the move. There was a strong
+feeling of dislike to young Lloyd among the workmen. His uncle had
+heaped up ill-feeling as well as wealth as a heritage for him. The
+older Lloyd had never been popular, and Robert had succeeded to all
+his unpopularity, and was fast gathering his own. He was undoubtedly
+disposed to follow largely his uncle's business methods. He had
+admired them, they had proved successful, and he had honestly seen
+nothing culpable in them as business methods go; so it was not
+strange that he tried to copy them when he came into charge of
+Lloyd's. He was inclined to meet opposition with the same cool
+inflexibility of persistency in his own views, and was disposed to
+consult his own interests and carry out his own plans with no more
+brooking of interference than the skipper of a man-o'-war.
+Therefore, when it happened, shortly after his aunt's death, that he
+conceived a dissatisfaction with some prominent spirits among union
+men, he discharged them without the slightest reference to the fact
+that they were old and skilful workmen, and employed non-union men
+from another town in their places. He had, indeed, the object of
+making in time his factory entirely non-union. He said to himself
+that he would be dictated to by no labor organization under the sun,
+and that went a step beyond his uncle, inasmuch as the elder Lloyd
+had always made his own opinion subservient to good business policy;
+but Robert was younger and his blood hotter. It happened, also, a
+month later, when he began to see that business had fallen off
+considerably (indeed, it was the beginning of a period of extreme
+business depression), and that he could no longer continue on the
+same scale with the same profits, that instead of assembling the men
+in different departments, communicating the situation to them, and
+submitting them a reduced price-list for consideration, as was the
+custom with the more pacific of the manufacturers in the vicinity,
+he posted it up in the different rooms with no ado whatever. That
+had been his uncle's method, but never in the face of such brewing
+discontent as was prevalent in Lloyd's at that time. It was an
+occasion when the older man would have shut down, but Robert had,
+along with his arbitrary impetuosity, a real dislike to shut down on
+account of the men, for which they would have been the last to give
+him credit. "Poor devils," he told himself, standing in the office
+window one night, and seeing them pour out and disappear into the
+early darkness beyond the radius of the electric-lights, "I can't
+turn them adrift without a dollar in midwinter. I'll try to run the
+factory a while longer on a reduced scale, if I only meet expenses."
+
+He saw Ellen going out, descending the steps with the Atkins girls,
+and as she passed the light, her fair head shone out for a second
+like an aureole. A great wave of tenderness came over him. He
+reflected that it would make no difference to her, that it was only
+a question of time before he lifted her forever out of the ranks of
+toil. The impulse was strong upon him to go to see her that night,
+but he had set himself to wait three months after his aunt's death,
+and the time was not yet up. He had a feeling that he might seem to
+be, and possibly would be, taking advantage of his bereavement if he
+went sooner, and that Ellen herself might think so.
+
+It was that very night that Ellen had gone to bed early, to prove
+not only to her mother but to herself that she did not expect him,
+and the men came to see Andrew. Once she heard Amos Lee's voice
+raised to a higher pitch than ever, and distinguished every word.
+
+"I tell you he's goin' to cut the wages to-morrow," said he.
+
+There was a low rumble of response, which Ellen could not
+understand, but Lee's answer made it evident.
+
+"How do I know?" he thundered. "It is in the air. He don't tell any
+more than his uncle did; but you wait and see, that's all."
+
+"I don't believe it," the girl up-stairs said to herself,
+indignantly and loyally. "He can't cut the wages of all those poor
+men, he with all his uncle's money."
+
+But the next morning the reduced price-list was posted on the walls
+of the different rooms in Lloyd's.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVII
+
+
+There was a driving snow-storm the next day. When Ellen started for
+the factory the white twilight of early morning still lingered.
+Everywhere were the sons and daughters of toil plodding laboriously
+and noiselessly through the snow, each keeping in the track of the
+one who went before. There was no wind blowing, and the snow was in
+a blue-white level; the trees bent stiffly and quietly beneath a
+heavy shag of white, and now and then came a clamor of birds, which
+served to accentuate the silence and peace. Ellen could always be
+forced by an extreme phase of nature to forgetfulness of her own
+stresses. For the time being she forgot everything; her vain
+watching for Robert, the talk of trouble in the factory, the
+disappointment in her home--all were forgotten in the contemplation,
+or rather in the absorbing, of this new-old wonder of snow.
+
+There was a survival of the old Greek spirit in the girl, and had
+she come to earth without her background of orthodox traditions, she
+might have easily found her own deities in nature. The peace of the
+snow enveloped her soul as well as the earth, and she became a
+beneficiary of the white storm; the graceful droop of the pine
+boughs extended to her thoughts, and the clamor of the birds aroused
+in her a winged freedom, so that she felt at once peace and a sort
+of ecstasy. She walked in the track of a stolidly plodding man
+before her, as different a person as if she were an inhabitant of
+another planet. He was digesting the soggy, sweet griddle-cakes
+which he had eaten for breakfast, and revolving in his mind two
+errands for his wife--one, a pail of lard; the other, three yards of
+black dress braid; he was considering the surface scum of existence,
+that which pertained solely to his own petty share of it; the girl,
+the clear residue of life which was, and had been, and would be.
+Each was on the way to humble labor for daily bread, but with a
+difference of eternity between them.
+
+But when Ellen reached the end of the cross street where the Atkins
+girls lived, she heard a sound which dispelled her rapt state. Her
+far vision became a near one; she saw, as it were, the clouded
+window-glass between her mortal eyes and the beyond, and the sound
+of a cough brought it about. Abby and Maria were coming towards her
+through the snow. Maria was coughing violently, and Abby was
+scolding her.
+
+"I don't care anything about it, Maria Atkins," Abby was saying,
+"you ought to be ashamed of yourself coming out such a morning as
+this. There isn't any sense in it. You know you'll catch cold, and
+then there'll be two of you to take care of. You don't help a mite
+doing so, you needn't think you do."
+
+When Abby caught sight of Ellen she hastened forward, while Maria,
+still coughing, trailed behind, lifting her little, heavy,
+snow-bound feet wearily.
+
+"Ellen, I wish you'd tell Maria to turn around and go home," she
+said. "Just hear her cough, and out in all this snow, and getting
+her skirts draggled. She hasn't got common-sense, you tell her so."
+
+Ellen stopped, nodding assentingly. "I think she's right, Maria,"
+she said. "You ought not to be out such a morning as this. You had
+better go home."
+
+Maria came up smiling, though her lips were quite white, and she
+controlled her cough to convulsive motions of her chest.
+
+"I am no worse than usual," said she. "I feel better than I
+generally do in the morning. I haven't coughed any more, if I have
+as much, and I am holding my dress up high, and you know how warm
+the factory is. It will be enough sight warmer than it is at home.
+It is cold at home."
+
+"Lloyd don't have to save coal," said Abby, bitterly, "but that
+don't alter the fact of your getting your skirts draggled."
+
+Maria pulled up her skirts so high that she exposed her slender
+ankles, then seeing that she had done so, she let them fall with a
+quick glance at two men behind them.
+
+"The snow will shake right off; it's light, Abby," she said.
+
+"It ain't light. I should think you might listen to Ellen, if you
+won't to me."
+
+Ellen pressed close to Maria, and pulled her thin arm through her
+own. "Look here," she said, "don't you think--"
+
+Then Maria burst out with a pitiful emphasis. "I've got to go," she
+said. "Father had a bad spell last night; he can't get out. He'll
+lose his place this time, we are afraid, and there's a note coming
+due that father says he's paid, but the man didn't give it up, and
+he's got to pay it over again; the lawyer says there is no other
+way, and we can't let John Sargent do everything. He's got a sister
+out West he's about supporting since her husband died last fall.
+I've got to go to work; we've got to have the money, Ellen, and as
+for my cough, I have always coughed. It hasn't killed me yet, and I
+guess it won't yet for a while."  Maria said the last with a
+reckless gayety which was unusual to her.
+
+Abby trudged on ahead with indignant emphasis. "I'd like to know
+what good it is going to do to work and earn and pay up money if
+everybody is going to be killed by it?" she said, without turning
+her head.
+
+Ellen pulled up Maria's coat-collar around her neck and put an extra
+fold of her dress-skirt into her hand.
+
+"There, you can hold it up as high as that, it looks all right,"
+said she.
+
+"I wish Robert Lloyd had to get up at six o'clock and trudge a mile
+in this snow to his work," said Abby, with sudden viciousness.
+"He'll be driven down in his Russian sleigh by a man looking like a
+drum-major, and cut our poor little wages, and that's all he cares.
+Who's earning the money, he or us, I'd like to know? I hate the
+rich!"
+
+"If it's true, what you say," said Maria, "it seems to me it's like
+hating those you have given things to, and that's worse than hating
+your enemies."
+
+"Don't say given, say been forced to hand over," retorted Abby,
+fiercely; "and don't preach, Maria Atkins, I hate preaching; and do
+have sense enough not to talk when you are out in this awful storm.
+You can keep your mouth shut, if you can't do anything else!"
+
+Ellen had turned quite white at Abby's words.
+
+"You don't think that he means to cut the wages?" she said, eagerly.
+
+"I know he does. I had it straight. Wait till you get to the shop."
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+"You wait. Norman Lloyd was as hard as nails, and the young one is
+just like him."  Abby looked relentlessly at Ellen.
+
+"Maybe it isn't so," whispered Maria to Ellen.
+
+"I don't believe it is," responded Ellen, but Abby heard them, and
+turned with a vicious jerk.
+
+"Well, you wait!" said she.
+
+The moment Ellen reached the factory she realized that something
+unwonted had happened. There were groups of men, talking, oblivious
+even of the blinding storm, which was coming in the last few minutes
+with renewed fury, falling in heavy sheets like dank shrouds.
+
+Ellen saw one man in a muttering group throw out an arm, whitened
+like a branch of a tree, and shake a rasped, red fist at the
+splendid Russian sleigh of the Lloyd's, which was just gliding out
+of sight with a flurry of bells and a swing of fur tails, the whole
+surmounted by the great fur hat of the coachman. Abby turned and
+looked fiercely at Ellen.
+
+"What did I tell you?" she cried.
+
+Even then Ellen would not believe. She caught a glimpse of Robert's
+fair head at the office window, and a great impulse of love and
+loyalty came over her.
+
+"I don't believe it," she said aloud to Maria. Maria held her arm
+tightly.
+
+"Maybe it isn't so," she said.
+
+But when they entered the room where they worked, there was a sullen
+group before a placard tacked on the wall. Ellen pressed closely,
+and saw what it was--a reduced wage-list. Then she went to her
+machine.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVIII
+
+
+Ellen had a judicial turn of mind, as her school-master had once
+said of her. She was able to look at matters from more than one
+stand-point, but she reasoned with a New Testament clearness of
+impartiality. She was capable of uncompromising severity, since she
+brought such a clear light of youth and childhood to bear upon even
+those things which needed shadows for their true revelation.
+Everything was for her either black or white. She had not lived long
+enough, perhaps she never would, for a comprehension of half-tones.
+The situation to her mind was perfectly simple, and she viewed it
+with a candor which was at once terrible and cruel, for it involved
+cruelty not only to Robert but to herself. She said to herself, here
+was this rich man, this man with accumulation of wealth, not one
+dollar of which he had earned himself, either by his hands or his
+brains, but which had been heaped up for his uncle by the heart and
+back breaking toil of all these poor men and women; and now he was
+going to abuse his power of capital, his power to take the bread out
+of their mouths entirely, by taking it out in part. He was going to
+reduce their wages, he was deliberately going to cause privation,
+and even suffering where there were large families. She felt the
+most unqualified dissent and indignation, and all the love which she
+had for the man only intensified it. Love, with a girl like this,
+tended to clearness of vision instead of blindness. She judged him
+as she would have judged herself. As she stood working at her
+machine, stitching linings to vamps, she kept a sharply listening
+ear for what went on about her, but there was very little to hear
+after work had fairly commenced and the great place was in full hum.
+The demand of labor was so imperative that the laborers themselves
+were merged in it; they ceased to be for the time, and, instead of
+living, they became parts of the struggle for life. A man hustling
+as if the world were at stake to get his part of a shoe finished as
+soon as another man, so as not to clog and balk the whole system,
+had no time for rebellion. He was in the whirlpool which was
+mightier than himself and his revolt. After all, a man is a small
+and helpless factor before his own needs. For a time those whirring
+machines, which had been evolved in the first place from the brains
+of men, and partook in a manner of both the spirit and the grosser
+elements of existence, its higher qualities and its sordid
+mechanism, like man himself, had the best of it. The swart arms of
+the workmen flew at their appointed tasks, they fed those
+unsatisfied maws, the factory vibrated with the heavy thud of the
+cutting-machines like a pulse, the racks with shoes in different
+stages of completion trundled from one department to another,
+propelled by men with tense arms and doggedly bent heads.
+
+Ellen worked with the rest, but she was one of the few whose brain
+could travel faster than her hands. She thought as she worked, for
+her muscles did not retard her mind. She was composed of two
+motions, one within the other, and the central motion was so swift
+that it seemed still.
+
+Ed Flynn came down the room and bent over her.
+
+"Good-morning," he said. He was too gayly confident to be entirely
+respectful, but he had always a timidity of bearing which sat oddly
+upon him before Ellen. He looked half boldly, half wistfully at her
+fair face, and challenged her with gay eyes, which had in their
+depths a covert seriousness.
+
+Ellen stood between Abby Atkins and Sadie Peel at her work. Sadie
+Peel turned on the foreman coquettishly and said, "You'd better go
+an' talk to Mamie Brady, she's got on a new blue bow on her red
+hair. Why don't you give her some better work than tying those old
+shoes? Here she's been workin' in this shop two years. You needn't
+come shinin' round Ellen an' me! We don't want you."
+
+Flynn colored angrily and shot a vicious glance at the girl.
+
+"It's a pretty hard storm," he said to Ellen, as if the other girl
+had not spoken.
+
+"You needn't pretend you don't hear me, Ed Flynn," called out the
+girl. Her cheap finery was in full force that morning, not a lock of
+her brown hair was unstudied in its arrangement, and she was as
+conscious of her pose before her machine as if she had been on the
+stage. She knew just how her slender waist and the graceful slope of
+her shoulders appeared to the foreman, and her voice, in spite of
+its gay rallying and audacity, was wheedling.
+
+Flynn caught hold of her shoulders, round and graceful under her
+flannel blouse, and shook her, half in anger, half in weakness.
+
+"You shut up, you witch," said he. Then he turned to Ellen again,
+and his whole manner and expression changed.
+
+"I'm sorry about that new list," he said, very low, in her ear.
+Ellen never looked at him, and did not make a motion as if she
+heard.
+
+"It's a hard storm," the foreman said again, almost appealingly.
+
+"Yes, it is very hard," replied Ellen, slipping another shoe under
+the needles.
+
+"What on earth ails you this morning, Ellen Brewster?" Sadie Peel
+said to her, when the foreman had gone. "You look queer and act
+queer."
+
+"Ellen ain't in the habit of joking with Ed Flynn," said Abby
+Atkins, on the other side, with sarcastic emphasis.
+
+"My, don't you feel big!" sneered Sadie Peel. There was always a
+jarring inconsequence about this girl, she was so delicately pretty
+and refined in appearance, her ribbons were so profuse and cheap,
+and her manners were so recklessly coarse.
+
+Ellen said nothing, but worked steadily.
+
+"Mame Brady's just gone on Ed Flynn, and he goes with her just
+enough to keep her hangin', and I don't believe he means to marry
+her, and I think it's mean," said Sadie Peel.
+
+"She ought to have more sense than to take any stock in him," said
+Abby.
+
+"She ain't the only one," said Sadie. "Nellie Stone in the office
+has been daft over him since she's been there, and he don't look at
+her. I don't see what there is about Ed Flynn, for my part."
+
+"I don't," said Abby, dryly.
+
+"Well, I don't know. He's pretty good-looking," said Sadie Peel,
+"and he's got a sort of a way with him."  All the time the girl was
+talking her heart was aching. The foreman had paid her some little
+attention, which she had taken seriously, but nobody except her
+father had known it, or known when he had fallen off. Sometimes
+Flynn, meeting the father's gaze as he passed him at his work at the
+cutting-bench, used to waver involuntarily, though he asked himself
+with perfect good faith what was it all about, for he had done the
+girl no harm. He felt more guilty concerning Mamie Brady.
+
+Ellen worked on, with her fingers flying and her forehead tense with
+thought. The chatter of the girls ceased. They were too busy to keep
+it up. The hum of work continued. Once Ellen knew, although she did
+not see him, by some subtle disturbance of the atmosphere, a little
+commotion which was perfectly silent, that Robert Lloyd had entered
+the room. She knew when he passed her, and she worked more swiftly
+than ever. After he had gone out there was a curiously inarticulate
+sound like a low growl of purely animal dissent over the room; a
+word of blasphemy sounded above the din of the machines. Then all
+went on as before until the noon whistle blew.
+
+Even then there was not so much discussion as might have been
+expected. Robert, since the storm was so heavy, remained in the
+office, and sent a boy out for a light luncheon, and the foremen
+were much in evidence. There was always an uncertainty about their
+sentiments, occupying as they did a position half-way between
+employer and employes; and then, too, they were not affected by the
+cut in wages. The sentiments of the unaffected are always a matter
+of suspicion to those who suffer themselves. There were grumblings
+carried on in a low key behind Flynn's back, but the atmosphere for
+the most part was one of depression. Ellen ate her luncheon with
+Maria and Abby. Willy Jones came up timidly when they were nearly
+finished, feeling his way with a remark about the storm, which was
+increasing.
+
+"All the cars are tied up," he said, "and the noon train isn't in."
+
+He leaned, with a curious effort at concealment from them all and
+himself, upon the corner of the bench near Abby. Then a young man
+passed them, with such an air of tragedy and such a dead-white face
+that they all stared after him.
+
+"What in the world ails you, Ben Simmons?" called out Sadie Peel.
+But he did not act as if he heard. He crossed vehemently to the
+other side of the room, and stood at a window, looking out at the
+fierce white slant of the storm.
+
+"What in creation ails him?" cried Sadie Peel.
+
+"I guess I know," Willy Jones volunteered, timidly.
+
+"What?"
+
+"He was going to get married, and this cut in his wages is going to
+put a stop to it. I heard him say so this morning."
+
+"Married! Who to?" asked Sadie Peel.
+
+"Floretta Vining."
+
+"My land!" cried Sadie Peel. "So she did take up with him after the
+school-teacher went away. I always said she would. I always knew
+Edward Harris wouldn't marry her, and I always said Ben Simmons
+would get her if he hung on long enough. Floretta was bound to marry
+somebody; she wasn't going to wind up an old maid; and if she
+couldn't get one, she'd take another. I suppose Ben has got that
+sick sister of his to do for since her father died, and thinks he
+can't get married with any less pay. Floretta won't make a very
+cheap wife. She's bound to have things whether or no, and Ben 'ain't
+never earned so much as some. He's awful steady, but he's slow as
+cold molasses, and he won't let his sister suffer for no Floretta."
+
+"That's so; I don't believe he would," said Abby. "What any man in
+his senses wants a doll like that for enough to look as if he was
+dead when he's got to put off marrying her!"
+
+"That's because you ain't a man, Abby Atkins," said Sadie Peel. "All
+the men think of is looks, and little fine airs and graces."
+
+"It seems as if they might get along," ventured Willy Jones, "as if
+they might do with less for a while."
+
+Then Ellen turned to him unexpectedly. "There's no use in talking
+about doing with less when every single cent has to count," said
+she, sternly. "Ben Simmons has his taxes and insurance, and a steady
+doctor's bill for his sister, and medicines to buy. He can't have
+laid up a cent, for he's slow, though he's a good workman. You can't
+do with less when you haven't any more than enough."
+
+"That's so," said Abby. Then she turned a tender, conciliating,
+indulgent gaze on the young man at her side. "If I were Floretta
+Vining," said she, "and if Ellen were, we would go without things,
+and never know it. We'd go to work; but Floretta, she's different.
+We went to school with Floretta Vining."
+
+"Floretta Vining is dreadful fond of men, but she wouldn't go
+without a yard of ribbon for one if he was dying," said Sadie Peel,
+conclusively. "It's awful hard on Ben Simmons, and no mistake."
+
+"What?" said Amos Lee, coming up.
+
+"Oh, what's hard on all of us? What's the use of asking?" said the
+girl, with a bitter coquetry. "I shouldn't think any man with
+horse-sense would ask what's hard on us when he's seen the ornaments
+tacked up all over the shop this morning."
+
+"That's so," said Lee, with a glance over his shoulder. Flynn was at
+the other end of the room. Granville Joy, Dixon, and one or two
+other men were sauntering up. For a second the little group looked
+at one another.
+
+"What are you going to do?" asked Ellen, in a low voice, which had
+an intonation that caused the others to start.
+
+"I know what I'll do, if I can get enough to back me," cried Lee, in
+a loud voice.
+
+"Hush up!" said Sadie Peel. Then her father came along smiling his
+imperturbable smile on his wide face, which had a Slavonic cast,
+although he was New England born and bred. He looked from one to the
+other without saying a word.
+
+"We're deciding whether to strike or not, father," said Sadie, in a
+flippant manner. She raised a hand and adjusted a stray lock of hair
+as she spoke, then she straightened her ribbon stock. Her father
+said nothing, but his face assumed a stolidity of expression.
+
+"I know what I'll do," proclaimed Amos Lee again.
+
+"Hush up!" cried Sadie Peel again, with a giggle. "Here's Ed Flynn."
+ And the foreman came sauntering up as the one-o'clock whistle blew,
+and the workers sprang to their posts of work.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIX
+
+
+The snow increased all day. When the six-o'clock whistle blew, and
+the workmen streamed out of the factories, it was a wild waste of
+winter and storm. The wind had come up, and the light snow arose in
+the distance like white dancers of death, spinning furiously over
+the level, then settling into long, gravelike ridges. Ellen glanced
+into the office as she passed the door, and saw Robert Lloyd talking
+busily with Flynn and another foreman by the name of Dennison. As
+she passed, Robert turned with a look as if he had been watching for
+her, and came forward hastily.
+
+"Miss Brewster!" he called.
+
+Mamie Brady, following close behind, gave Ellen an admonishing
+nudge. "Boss wants to see you," she whispered, loudly. Ellen
+stopped, and Robert came up.
+
+"Please step in here a moment, Miss Brewster," he said, and colored
+a little.
+
+Granville Joy, who was following Ellen, looked keenly at him, some
+one sniggered aloud, and a girl said quite audibly, "My land!"
+
+Ellen followed Robert into the office, and he bent over her,
+speaking rapidly, in a low voice.
+
+"You must not walk home in this snow," he said, "and the cars are
+not running. You must let me take you. My sleigh is at the door."
+
+Ellen turned white. Somehow this protecting care for herself, in the
+face of all which she had been considering that day, gave her a
+tremendous shock. She felt at once touched and more indignant than
+she had ever been in her whole life. She had been half believing
+that Robert was neglecting her, that he had forgotten her; all day
+she had been judging his action of cutting the wages of the workmen
+from her unswerving, childlike, unshadowed point of view, and now
+this little evidence of humanity towards her, in the face of what
+she considered wholesale inhumanity towards others, made her at once
+severe to him and to herself, and she forced back sternly the leap
+of pleasure and happiness which this thought of her awakened. "No,
+thank you," she said, shortly; "I am much obliged, but I would
+rather walk."
+
+"But you cannot, in this storm," pleaded Robert, in a low voice.
+
+"Yes, I can; it is no worse for me than for others. There is Maria
+Atkins, she has been coughing all day."
+
+"I will take her too. Ellen, you cannot walk. You must let me take
+you."
+
+"I am much obliged, but I would rather not," replied Ellen, in an
+icy tone. She looked quite hard in his face.
+
+Robert looked at her perplexed. "But it is drifting," he said.
+
+"It is no worse for me than for the others."  Ellen turned to go.
+Her attitude of rebuff was unmistakable.
+
+Robert colored. "Very well; I will not urge you," he said, coldly.
+Then he returned to his desk, and Ellen went out. She caught up with
+Maria Atkins, who was struggling painfully through the drifts,
+leaning on Abby's arm, and slipped a hand under her thin shoulder.
+
+"I expect nothing but she'll get her death out in this storm,"
+grumbled Abby. "What did he want, Ellen?"
+
+"Nothing in particular," replied Ellen. Uppermost in her mind at
+that moment was the charge of cruelty against Robert for not taking
+her hint as to Maria. "He can ask me to ride because he has amused
+himself with me, but as for taking this poor girl, whom he does not
+love, when it may mean life or death to her, he did not think
+seriously of doing that for a moment," she thought.
+
+Maria was coughing, although she strove hard to smother the coughs.
+Granville Joy, who was plodding ahead, turned and waited until they
+came up.
+
+"You had better let me carry you, Maria," he said, jocularly, but
+his honest eyes were full of concern.
+
+"He is enough sight kinder than Robert Lloyd," thought Ellen; "he
+has a better heart."  And then the splendid Lloyd sleigh came up
+behind them and stopped, tilting to a drift. Robert, in his
+fur-lined coat, sprang out and went up to Maria.
+
+"Please let me take you home," he said, kindly. "You have a cold,
+and this storm is too severe for you to be out. Please let me take
+you home."
+
+Maria looked at him, fairly gasping with astonishment. She tried to
+speak, but a cough choked her.
+
+"You had better go if Mr. Lloyd will take you," Abby said,
+decisively. "Thank you, Mr. Lloyd; she isn't fit to be out."  She
+urged her sister towards the sleigh, and Robert assisted her into
+the fur-lined nest.
+
+"I can sit with the driver," said Robert to Abby, "if you will come
+with your sister."
+
+"No, thank you," replied Abby. "I am able to walk, but I will be
+much obliged if you will take Maria home."
+
+Robert sprang in beside Maria, and the sleigh slid out of sight.
+
+"I never!" said Abby. Ellen said nothing, but plodded on, her eyes
+fixed on the snowy track.
+
+"I am glad she had a chance to ride," said Granville Joy, in a
+tentative voice. He looked uneasily at Ellen.
+
+"It beats the Dutch," said Abby. She also regarded Ellen with
+sympathy and perplexity. When they reached the street where she
+lived, up which the sleigh had disappeared, she let Granville go on
+ahead, and she spoke to Ellen in a low tone. "Why didn't he ask
+you?" she said.
+
+"He did," replied Ellen.
+
+"In the office?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you wouldn't?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I don't care to accept favors from a man who oppresses all my
+friends!"
+
+"He was good to take in Maria," said Abby, in a perplexed voice.
+"His uncle would never have thought of it."
+
+Ellen made no reply. She stood still in the drifting snow, with her
+mouth shut hard.
+
+"You feel as if this cutting wages was a pretty hard thing?" said
+Abby.
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Well, so do I. I wonder what they will do about it. I don't know
+how the men feel. Somehow, folks can't seem to think or plan much in
+a storm like this. There's the sleigh coming back."
+
+"Good-night," Ellen said, hurriedly, and trudged on as fast as she
+was able in order not to have the Lloyd sleigh pass her; it had to
+turn after reaching the end of the street. Ellen caught up with
+Granville Joy. Robert, glancing over the waving fringe of fur tails,
+saw disappearing in the pale gleam of the electric-light the two dim
+figures veiled by the drifting snow. He thought to himself, with a
+sharp pain, that perhaps, after all, Granville Joy was the reason
+for her rebuff. It never occurred to him that his action in cutting
+the wages could have anything to do with it.
+
+Ellen went along with Granville, who was anxious to offer her his
+arm, but did not quite dare. He kept thrusting out an elbow in her
+direction, and an inarticulate invitation died in his throat.
+Finally, when they reached an unusually high drift of snow, he
+plucked up sufficient courage.
+
+"Take my arm, won't you?" he said, with a pitiful attempt at ease,
+then stared as if he had been shot, at Ellen's reply.
+
+"No, thank you," she said. "I think it is easier to walk alone in
+snow like this."
+
+"Maybe it is," assented Granville, dejectedly. He walked on,
+scuffling as hard as he could to make a path for Ellen with the
+patient faithfulness of a dog.
+
+"What are you going to do about the cut in wages?" Ellen asked,
+presently.
+
+Granville started. The sudden transition from personalities to
+generalities confused him.
+
+"What?" he said.
+
+Ellen repeated her question.
+
+"I don't know," said Granville. "I don't think the boys have made up
+their minds. I don't know what they will do. They have been weeding
+out union men. I suppose the union would have something to say about
+it otherwise. I don't know what we will do."
+
+"I shouldn't think there would be very much doubt as to what to do,"
+said Ellen.
+
+Granville stared at her over his shoulder in a perplexed, admiring
+fashion. "You mean--?" he asked.
+
+"I shouldn't think there would be any doubt."
+
+"Well, I don't know. It is a pretty serious thing to get out of work
+in midwinter for a good many of us, and as long as the union isn't
+in control, other men can come in. I don't know."
+
+"I know," said Ellen.
+
+"You mean--?"
+
+"I mean that I do not think it right, that it is unjust, and I
+believe in resisting injustice."
+
+"Men have resisted injustice ever since the Creation," said
+Granville, in a bitter voice.
+
+"Well, resistance can continue as long as life lasts," returned
+Ellen. Just then came a fiercer blast than ever, laden with a
+stinging volley of snow, and seemed to sweep the words from the
+girl's mouth. She bent before it involuntarily, and the conviction
+forced itself upon her that, after all, resistance to injustice
+might be as futile as resistance to storm, that injustice might be
+one of the primal forces of the world, and one of the conditions of
+its endurance, and yet with the conviction came the renewed
+resolution to resist.
+
+"What can poor men do against capital unless they are backed up by
+some labor organization?" asked Granville. "And I don't believe
+there are a dozen in the factory who belong to the union. There has
+been an understanding, without his ever saying so that I know of,
+that the old boss didn't approve of it. So lots of us kept out of
+it, we wanted work so bad. What can we do against such odds?"
+
+"When right is on your side, you have all the odds," said Ellen,
+looking back over her snow-powdered shoulder.
+
+"Then you would strike?"
+
+"I wouldn't submit."
+
+"Well, I don't know how the boys feel," said Granville. "I suppose
+we'll have to talk it over."
+
+"I shouldn't need to talk it over," said Ellen. "You've gone past
+your house, Granville."
+
+"I ain't going to let you go home alone in such a storm as this,"
+said Granville, in a tender voice, which he tried to make facetious.
+"I wouldn't let any girl go home alone in such a storm."
+
+Ellen stopped short. "I don't want you to go home with me, thank
+you, Granville," she said. "Your mother will have supper ready, and
+I can go just as well alone."
+
+"Ellen, I won't let you go alone," said the young man, as a wilder
+gust came. "Suppose you should fall down?"
+
+"Fall down!" repeated Ellen, with a laugh, but her regard of the
+young man, in spite of her rebuff, was tender. He touched her with
+his unfailing devotion; the heavy trudging by her side of this poor
+man meant, she told herself, much more than the invitation of the
+rich one to ride behind his bays in his luxurious sleigh. This meant
+the very bone and sinew of love. She held out her little, mittened
+hand to him.
+
+"Good-night, Granville," she said.
+
+Granville caught it eagerly. "Oh, Ellen," he murmured.
+
+But she withdrew her hand quickly. "We have always been good
+friends, and we always will be," said she, and her tone was
+unmistakable. The young man shrank back.
+
+"Yes, we always will, Ellen," he said, in a faithful voice, with a
+note of pain in it.
+
+"Good-night," said Ellen again.
+
+"Good-night," responded Granville, and turned his plodding back on
+the girl and retraced his laborious steps towards his own home,
+which he had just passed. There come times for all souls when the
+broad light of the path of humanity seems to pale to insignificance
+before the intensity of the one little search-light of personality.
+Granville Joy felt as if the eternal problem of the rich and poor,
+of labor and capital, of justice and equality, was as nothing before
+the desire of his heart for that one girl who was disappearing from
+his sight behind the veil of virgin snow.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter L
+
+
+When Ellen came in sight of her house that night she saw her
+father's bent figure moving down the path with sidewise motions of a
+broom. He had been out at short intervals all the afternoon, that
+she should not have to wade through drifts to the door. The
+electric-light shone full on this narrow, cleared track and the
+toiling figure.
+
+"Hullo, father!" Ellen called out. Andrew turned, and his face lit
+with love and welcome and solicitude.
+
+"Be you dreadful snowy?" he asked.
+
+"Oh no, father, not very."
+
+"It's an awful storm."
+
+"Pretty bad, but I got along all right. The snow-plough has been
+out."
+
+"Wait a minute till I get this swept," said Andrew, sweeping
+violently before her.
+
+"You needn't have bothered, father," said Ellen.
+
+"I 'ain't anything else to do," replied Andrew, in a sad voice.
+
+"There's mother watching," said Ellen.
+
+"Yes, she's been diggin' at them wrappers all day."
+
+"I suppose she has," Ellen returned, in a bitter tone. Her father
+stared at her. Ellen never spoke like that. For the first time she
+echoed him and her mother. Something like terror came over him at
+the sound of that familiar note of his own life from this younger
+one. He seemed to realize dimly that a taint of his nature had
+descended upon his child.
+
+When Ellen entered the house, the warm air was full of savory odors
+of toast and tea and cooking meat and vegetables.
+
+"You'd better go right up-stairs and put on a dry dress, Ellen,"
+said Fanny. "I put your blue one out on your bed, and your shoes are
+warming by the sitting-room stove. I've been worrying as to how you
+were going to get home all day."  Then she stopped short as she
+caught sight of Ellen's face. "What on earth is the matter, Ellen
+Brewster?" she said.
+
+"Nothing," said Ellen. "Why?"
+
+"You look queer. Has anything happened?"
+
+"Yes, something has happened."
+
+"What?"
+
+Andrew turned pale. He stood in the entry with his snowy broom in
+hand, staring from one to the other.
+
+"Nothing that you need worry about," said Ellen. "I'll tell you when
+I get my dress changed."
+
+Ellen pulled off her rubbers, and went up-stairs to her chamber.
+Fanny and Andrew stood looking at each other.
+
+"You don't suppose--" whispered Andrew.
+
+"Suppose what?" responded Fanny, sharply.
+
+They continued to look at each other. Fanny answered Andrew as if he
+had spoken, with that jealous pride for her girl's self-respect
+which possessed her even before the girl's father.
+
+"Land, it ain't that," said she. "You wouldn't catch Ellen lookin'
+as if anything had come across her for such a thing as that."
+
+"No, I suppose she wouldn't," said Andrew; and he actually blushed
+before his wife's eyes.
+
+That afternoon Mrs. Wetherhed had been in, and told Fanny that she
+had heard that Robert Lloyd was to be married to Maud Hemingway; and
+both Andrew and Fanny had thought of that as the cause of Ellen's
+changed face.
+
+"You'd better take that broom out into the shed, and get the snow
+off yourself, and come in and shut the door," Fanny said, shortly.
+"You're colding the house all off, and Amabel has got a cold, and
+she's sitting right in the draught."
+
+"All right," replied Andrew, meekly, though Fanny had herself been
+holding the sitting-room door open. In those days Andrew felt below
+his moral stature as head of the house. Actually, looking at Fanny,
+who was earning her small share towards the daily bread, she seemed
+to him much taller than he, though she was a head shorter. He
+thought so little of himself, he seemed to see himself as through
+the wrong end of a telescope. Fanny went into the sitting-room and
+shut the door with a bang. Amabel did not look up from her book. She
+was reading a library book much beyond her years, and sniffing
+pathetically with her cold. Amabel had begun to discover an
+omnivorous taste for books, which stuck at nothing. She understood
+not more than half of what she read, but seemed to relish it like
+indigestible food.
+
+When Ellen came down-stairs, and sat beside the coal stove to change
+her shoes, she looked at the book which Amabel was reading. "You
+ought not to read that book, dear," she said. "Let Ellen get you a
+better one for a little girl to-morrow."
+
+But Amabel, without paying the slightest heed to Ellen's words,
+looked up at her with amazement, as Andrew and Fanny had done.
+"What's the matter, Ellen?" she asked, in her little, hoarse voice.
+
+Fanny and Andrew, who had just entered, stood waiting. Ellen bent
+over her shoe, drawing in the strings firmly and evenly.
+
+"Mr. Lloyd has reduced the wage-list," she said.
+
+"How much?" asked Andrew, in a hoarse voice.
+
+"Ten per cent."
+
+There was a dead silence. Andrew and Fanny looked at Ellen like
+people who are uncertain of their next move; Amabel stared from one
+to the other with her weak, watery eyes. Ellen continued to lace her
+shoes.
+
+"What do you think about it, Ellen?" asked Andrew, almost timidly.
+
+"I know of only one thing to think," replied Ellen, in a dogged
+voice.
+
+As she spoke she pulled the tag off a shoe-string because it would
+not go through the eyelet.
+
+"What is that?" asked Fanny, in a hard voice.
+
+"I think it is cruelty and tyranny," said Ellen, pulling the rough
+end of the string through the eyelet.
+
+"I suppose the times are pretty hard," ventured Andrew; but Ellen
+cut him short.
+
+"Robert Lloyd has half a million, which has been accumulated by the
+labor of poor men in prosperous times," said she, with her childlike
+severity and pitilessness. "There is no question about the matter."
+
+Then Fanny flung all self-interest to the wind and was at her
+daughter's side like a whirlwind. The fact that the two were of one
+blood was never so strongly evident. Red spots glowed in the elder
+woman's cheeks and her black eyes blazed.
+
+"Ellen's right," said she; "she's right. For a man worth half a
+million to cut down the wages of poor, hard-working folks in
+midwinter is cruelty. I don't care who does it."
+
+"Yes, it is," said Ellen.
+
+Fanny opened her mouth to tell Ellen of the rumor concerning
+Robert's engagement to Maud Hemingway, then she refrained, for some
+reason which she could not analyze. In her heart she did not believe
+the report to be true, and considered the telling of it a slight to
+Ellen, but it influenced her in her indignation against Robert for
+the wage-cutting.
+
+"What are they going to do?" asked Andrew.
+
+"I don't know," replied Ellen.
+
+"Did he--young Lloyd--talk to the men?"
+
+"No; notices were tacked up all over the shop."
+
+"That was the way his uncle would have done," said Andrew, in a
+curious voice of bitterness and respect.
+
+"So you don't know what they are going to do?" said Fanny.
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, I know what I would do," said Fanny. "I never would give in,
+if I starved--never!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LI
+
+
+When Ellen started for the factory the next morning the storm had
+not ceased; the roads were very heavy, although the snow-plough had
+been out at intervals all night, and there was a struggling line of
+shovelling men along the car-track, but the cars were still unable
+to penetrate the drifts. When Ellen passed her grandmother's house
+the old woman tapped sharply on the window and motioned her back
+frantically with one bony hand. The window was frozen to the sill
+with the snow, and she could not raise it. Ellen shook her head,
+smiling. Her grandmother continued to wave her back, the lines of
+forbidding anxiety in her old face as strongly marked as an etching
+in the window frame. This love, which had at once coerced and
+fondled the girl since her birth, was very precious to her. This
+protection, which she was forced to repel, smote her like a pain.
+
+"Poor old grandmother!" she thought; "there she will worry about me
+all day because I have gone out in the storm."  She turned back and
+waved her hand and nodded laughingly; but the old woman continued
+that anxiously imperative backward motion until Ellen was out of
+sight.
+
+Ellen walked in the car-track, as did everybody else, that being
+better cleared than the rest of the road. She was astonished that
+she heard nothing of the cut in wages from the men. There seemed to
+be no excitement at all. They merely trudged heavily along, their
+whitening bodies bent before the storm. There was an unusual
+doggedness about this march to the factory this morning, but that
+was all. Ellen returned the muttered greeting of several, and walked
+along in silence with the rest. Even when Abby Atkins joined her
+there was little said. Ellen asked for Maria, and Abby replied that
+she had taken more cold yesterday, and could not speak aloud; then
+relapsed into silence, making her way through the snow with a sort
+of taciturn endurance. Ellen looked at the struggling procession of
+which she was a part, all slanting with the slant of the storm, and
+a fancy seized her that rebellion and resistance were hopeless, that
+those parallel lines of yielding to the onslaughts of fate were as
+inevitable as life itself, one of its conditions. Men could not help
+walking that way when the bitter storm-wind was blowing; they could
+not help living that way when fate was in array against their
+progress. Then, thinking so, a mightier spirit of revolt than she
+had ever known awoke within her. She, as she walked, straightened
+herself. She leaned not one whit before the drive of the storm. She
+advanced with no yielding in her, her brave face looking ahead
+through the white blur of snow with a confidence which was almost
+exultation.
+
+"What do you think the men will do?" she said to Abby when they came
+in sight of Lloyd's, shaggy with fringes and wreaths and overhanging
+shelvings of snow, roaring with machinery, with the steady stream of
+labor pouring in the door.
+
+"Do?" repeated Abby, almost listlessly. "Do about what?"
+
+"About the cut in wages?"
+
+Abby turned on her with sudden fire. "Oh, my God, what can they do,
+Ellen Brewster?" she demanded. "Haven't they got to live? Hasn't
+Lloyd got it all his own way? How are men to live in weather like
+this without work? Bread without butter is better than none at all,
+and life at any cost is better than death for them you love. What
+can they do?"
+
+"It seems to me there is only one thing to do," replied Ellen.
+
+Abby stared at her wonderingly. "You don't mean--" she said, as they
+climbed up the stairs.
+
+"I mean I would do anything, at whatever cost to myself, to defeat
+injustice," said Ellen, in a loud, clear voice.
+
+Several men turned and looked back at her and laughed bitterly.
+
+"It's easy talking," said one to another.
+
+"That's so," returned the other.
+
+The people all settled to their work as usual. One of the foremen
+(Dennison), who was anxious to curry favor with his employer,
+reported to him in an undertone in the office that everything was
+quiet. Robert nodded easily. He had not anticipated anything else.
+In the course of the morning he looked into the room where Ellen was
+employed, and saw with relief and concern her fair head before her
+machine. It seemed to him that he could not bear it one instant
+longer to have her working in this fashion, that he must lift her
+out of it. He still tingled with his rebuff of the night before, but
+he had never loved her so well, for the idea that the cut in wages
+affected her relation to him never occurred to him. As he walked
+through the room none of the workers seemed to notice him, but
+worked with renewed energy. He might have been invisible for all the
+attention he seemed to excite. He looked with covert tenderness at
+the back of Ellen's head, and passed on. He reflected that he had
+adopted the measure of wage-cutting with no difficulty whatever.
+
+"All it needs is a little firmness," he thought, with a boyish
+complacency in his own methods. "Now I can keep on with the factory,
+and no turning the poor people adrift in midwinter."
+
+At noon Robert put on his fur-lined coat and left the factory,
+springing into the sleigh, which had drawn up before the door with a
+flurry of bells. He had an errand in the next town that afternoon,
+and was not going to return. When the sleigh had slid swiftly out of
+sight through the storm, which was lightening a little, the people
+in the office turned to one another with a curious expression of
+liberty, but even then little was said. Nellie Stone was at the desk
+eating her luncheon; Ed Flynn and Dennison and one of the lasters,
+who had looked in and then stepped in when he saw Lloyd was gone,
+were there. The laster, who was young and coarsely handsome, had an
+admiration for the pretty girl at the desk. Presently she addressed
+him, with her mouth full of apple-pie.
+
+"Say, George, what are you fellows going to do?" she asked.
+
+Dennison glanced keenly from one to the other; Flynn shrugged his
+shoulders and looked out of the window.
+
+"Looks as if it was clearing up," he remarked.
+
+"What are you going to do?" asked Nellie Stone again, with a
+coquettish flirt of her blond fluff of hair.
+
+"Grin and bear it, I s'pose," replied the young laster, with an
+adoring look at her.
+
+"My land! grin and bear a cut of ten per cent.? Well, I don't think
+you've got much spunk, I must say. Why don't you strike?"
+
+"Who's going to feed us?" replied the laster, in a tender voice.
+
+"Feed you? Oh, you don't want much to eat. Join the union. It's
+ridiculous so few of the men in Lloyd's belong to it, anyway; and
+then the union will feed you, won't it?"
+
+"The union did not do what it promised in the Scarboro strike,"
+interposed Dennison, curtly.
+
+"Oh, we all know where you are, Frank Dennison," said the girl, with
+a soft roll of her blue eyes. "Besides, it's easy to talk when you
+aren't hit. Your wages aren't cut. But here is George May here, he's
+in a different box."
+
+"He's got nobody dependent on him, anyway," said Flynn.
+
+"If I wasn't going to get married I'd strike," cried the young man,
+with a fervent glance at the girl. She colored, half pleased, half
+angry, and the other men chuckled. She took another bite of pie to
+conceal her confusion. She preferred Flynn to the laster, and while
+she was not averse to proving to the former the triumph of her
+charms over another man, did not like too much concessions.
+
+"You'd better go and eat your dinner, George May," she said, in her
+sweet, shrill voice. "First thing you know the whistle will blow.
+Here's yours, Ed."  With that she pulled out a leather bag from
+under the desk, where she had volunteered to place it for warmth and
+safety against the coil of steam-pipes.
+
+"I don't believe your coffee is very cold, Ed," said she.
+
+The laster glared from one to the other jealously. Dennison went
+towards a shelf where he had stored away his luncheon, when he
+stopped suddenly and listened, as did the others. There came a great
+uproar of applause from the next room beyond. Then it subsided, and
+a girl's clear, loud voice was heard.
+
+"What is going on?" cried Nellie Stone. She jumped up and ran to the
+door, still eating her pie, and the men followed her.
+
+At the end of one of the work-rooms, backed against a snowy window,
+clung about with shreds of the driving storm, stood Ellen Brewster,
+with some other girls around her, and a few men on the outskirts,
+and a steady, curious movement of all the other workmen towards her,
+as of iron filings towards a magnet, and she was talking.
+
+Her voice was quite audible all over the great room. It was
+low-pitched, but had a wonderful carrying quality, and there was
+something marvellous in its absolute confidence.
+
+"If you men will do nothing, and say nothing, it is time for a girl
+to say and act," she proclaimed. "I did not dream for a minute that
+you would yield to this cut in wages. Why should you have your wages
+cut?"
+
+"The times are pretty hard," said a doubtful voice among her
+auditors.
+
+"What if the times are hard? What is that to you? Have you made them
+hard? It is the great capitalists who have made them hard by
+shifting the wealth too much to one side. They are the ones who
+should suffer, not you. What have you done, except come here morning
+after morning in cold or heat, rain or shine, and work with all your
+strength? They who have precipitated the hard times are the ones who
+should bear the brunt of them. Your work is the same now as it was
+then, the strain on your flesh and blood and muscles is the same,
+your pay should be the same."
+
+"That's so," said Abby Atkins, in a reluctant, surly fashion.
+
+"That's so," said another girl, and another. Then there was a
+fusilade of hand-claps started by the girls, and somewhat feebly
+echoed by the men.
+
+One or two men looked rather uneasily back towards Dennison and
+Flynn and two more foremen who had come forward.
+
+"It ain't as though we had something to fall back on," said a man's
+grumbling voice. "It's easy to talk when you 'ain't got a wife and
+five children dependent on you."
+
+"That's so," said another man, doggedly.
+
+"That has nothing to do with it," said Ellen, firmly. "We can all
+club together, and keep the wolf from the door for those who are
+hardest pressed for a while; and as for me, if I were a man--"
+
+She paused a minute. When she spoke again her voice was full of
+childlike enthusiasm; it seemed to ring like a song.
+
+"If I were a man," said she, "I would go out in the street and
+dig--I would beg, I would steal--before I would yield--I, a free man
+in a free country--to tyranny like this!"
+
+There was a great round of applause at that. Dennison scowled and
+said something in a low voice to another foreman at his side. Flynn
+laughed, with a perplexed, admiring look at Ellen.
+
+"The question is," said Tom Peel, slouching on the outskirts of the
+throng, and speaking in an imperturbable, compelling, drawling
+voice, "whether the free men in the free country are going to kick
+themselves free, or into tighter places, by kicking."
+
+"If you have got to stop to count the cost of bravery and standing
+up for your rights, there would be no bravery in the world,"
+returned Ellen, with disdain.
+
+"Oh, I am ready to kick," said Peel, with his mask-like smile.
+
+"So am I," said Granville Joy, in a loud voice. Amos Lee came
+rushing through the crowd to Ellen's side. He had been eating his
+dinner in another room, and had just heard what was going on. He
+opened his mouth with a motion as of letting loose a flood of
+ranting, but somebody interposed. John Sargent, bulky and
+irresistible in his steady resolution, put him aside and stood
+before him.
+
+"Look here," he said to them all. "There may be truth in what Miss
+Brewster says, but we must not act hastily; there is too much at
+stake. Let us appoint a committee and go to see Mr. Lloyd this
+evening, and remonstrate on the cutting of the wages."  He turned to
+Ellen in a kindly, half-paternal fashion. "Don't you see it would be
+better?" he said.
+
+She looked at him doubtfully, her cheeks glowing, her eyes like
+stars. She was freedom and youth incarnate, and rebellious against
+all which she conceived as wrong and tyrannical. She could hardly
+admit, in her fire of enthusiasm, of pure indignation, of any
+compromise or arbitration. All the griefs of her short life, she had
+told herself, were directly traceable to the wrongs of the system of
+labor and capital, and were awakening within her as freshly as if
+they had just happened.
+
+She remembered her father, exiled in his prime from his place in the
+working world by this system of arbitrary employment; she remembered
+her aunt in the asylum; poor little Amabel; her own mother toiling
+beyond her strength on underpaid work; Maria coughing her life away.
+She remembered her own life twisted into another track from the one
+which she should have followed, and there was for the time very
+little reason or justice in her. That injustice which will arise to
+meet its kind in equal combat had arisen in her heart. Still, she
+yielded. "Perhaps you are right," she said to Sargent. She had
+always liked John Sargent, and she respected him.
+
+"I am sure it is the best course," he said to her, still in that
+low, confidential voice.
+
+It ended in a committee of four--John Sargent, Amos Lee, Tom Peel,
+and one of the older lasters, a very respectable man, a deacon in
+the Baptist Church--being appointed to wait on Robert Lloyd that
+evening.
+
+When the one-o'clock whistle blew, Ellen went back to her machine.
+She was very pale, but she was conscious of a curious steadiness of
+all her nerves. Abby leaned towards her, and spoke low in the roar
+of wheels.
+
+"I'll back you up, if I die for it," she said.
+
+But Sadie Peel, on the other side, spoke quite openly, with a laugh
+and shrug of her shoulders. "Land," she said, "father'll be with
+you. He's bound to strike. He struck when he was in McGuire's. Catch
+father givin' up anything. But as for me, I wish you'd all slow up
+an' stick to work, if you do get a little less. If we quit work I
+can't have a nearseal cape, and I've set my heart on a nearseal cape
+this winter."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LII
+
+
+Ellen resolved that she would say as little as possible about the
+trouble at home that night. She did not wish her parents to worry
+over it until it was settled in one way or another.
+
+When her mother asked what they had done about the wage-cutting, she
+replied that a committee had been appointed to wait on Mr. Lloyd
+that evening, and talk it over with him; then she said nothing more.
+
+"He won't give in if he's like his uncle," said Fanny.
+
+Ellen went on eating her supper in silence. Her father glanced at
+her with sharp solicitude.
+
+"Maybe he will," said he.
+
+"No, he won't," returned Fanny.
+
+Ellen was very pale and her eyes were bright. After supper she went
+to the window and pressed her face against the glass, shielding her
+eyes from the in-door light, and saw that the storm had quite
+ceased. The stars were shining and the white boughs of the trees
+lashing about in the northwest wind. She went into the entry, where
+she had hung her hat and coat, and began putting them on.
+
+"Where are you going, Ellen?" asked her mother.
+
+"Just down to Abby's a minute."
+
+"You don't mean to say your are goin' out again in this snow, Ellen
+Brewster? I should think you were crazy."  When Fanny said crazy,
+she suddenly started and shuddered as if she had struck herself. She
+thought of Eva. Always the possibility of a like doom was in her own
+mind.
+
+"It has stopped snowing, mother," Ellen said.
+
+"Stopped snowing! What if it has? The roads ain't cleared. You can't
+get down to Abby Atkins's without gettin' wet up to your knees. I
+should think if you got into the house after such a storm you'd have
+sense enough to stay in. I've worried just about enough."
+
+Ellen took off her coat and hat and hung them up again. "Well, I
+won't go if you feel so, mother," she said, patiently.
+
+"It seems as if you might get along without seein' Abby Atkins till
+to-morrow mornin', when you'd seen her only an hour ago," Fanny went
+on, in the high, nagging tone which she often adopted with those
+whom she loved the dearest.
+
+"Yes, I can," said Ellen. It seemed to her that she must see
+somebody with whom she could talk about the trouble in the factory,
+but she yielded. There was always with the girl a perfect surface
+docility, as that she seemed to have no resistance, but a little way
+down was a rock-bed of firmness. She lighted her lamp, and took her
+library book and went up-stairs to bed to read. But she could not
+read, and she could not sleep when she had put aside her book and
+extinguished her lamp. She could think of nothing except Robert, and
+what he would say to the committee. She lay awake all night thinking
+of it. Ellen was a girl who was capable of the most devoted love,
+and the most intense dissent and indignation towards the same
+person. She could love in spite of faults, and she could see faults
+in spite of love. She thought of Robert Lloyd as of the one human
+soul whom she loved best out of the whole world, whom she put before
+everybody else, even her own self, and she also thought of him with
+a wrath which was pitiless and uncompromising, and which seemed to
+tear her own heart to pieces, for one cannot be wroth with love
+without a set-back of torture. "If he does not give in and raise the
+wages, I shall hate him," thought Ellen; and her heart stung her as
+if at the touch of a hot iron, and then she could have struck
+herself for the supposition that he would not give in. "He must,"
+she told herself, with a great fervor of love. "He must."
+
+But when she went down to breakfast the next morning her mother
+stared at her sharply.
+
+"Ellen Brewster, what is the matter with you?" she cried.
+
+"Nothing. Why?"
+
+"Nothing! You look like a ghost."
+
+"I feel perfectly well," said Ellen. She made an effort to eat as
+much breakfast as usual in order that her mother should not suspect
+that she was troubled. When at last she set out for the factory, in
+the early morning dusk, she was chilled and trembling with
+excitement.
+
+The storm had quite ceased, and there was a pale rose-and-violet
+dawn-light in the east, and presently came effects like
+golden-feathered shafts shooting over the sky. The road was alive
+with shovelling men, construction-cars of the railroad company were
+laboring back and forth to clear the tracks, householders were
+making their way from their doors to their gates, clearing their
+paths, lifting up the snow in great, glittering, blue-white blocks
+on their clumsy shovels. Everywhere were the factory employes
+hastening to their labor; the snow was dropping from the overladen
+tree branches in great blobs; there was an incessant, shrill chatter
+of people, and occasional shouts. It was the rally of mankind after
+a defeat by a primitive force of nature. It was the eternal
+reassertion of human life and a higher organization over the
+elemental. Men who had walked doggedly the morning before now moved
+with a spring of alacrity, although the road was very heavy. There
+was a new light in their eyes; their cheeks glowed. Ellen had no
+doubt whatever that if Robert Lloyd had not yielded the attitude of
+the employes of Lloyd's would be one of resistance. She herself
+seemed to breathe in resistance to tyranny, and strength for the
+right in every breath of the clear, crisp morning air. She felt as
+if she could trample on herself and her own weakness, for the sake
+of justice and the inalienable good of her kind, with as little
+hesitation as she trampled on the creaking snow. Yet she trembled
+with that deadly chill before a sense of impending fate. When she
+returned the salutations of her friends on the road she felt that
+her lips were stiff.
+
+"You look dreadful queer, Ellen," Abby Atkins said, anxiously, when
+she joined her. Maria also was out that morning.
+
+"Have you heard what they are going to do?" Ellen asked, in a sort
+of breathless fashion.
+
+"You mean about the wage-cutting? Don't look so, Ellen."
+
+Maria pressed close to Ellen, and slid her thin arm through hers.
+
+"Yes," said Ellen. "What did John Sargent say when he got home last
+night?"
+
+Abby hesitated a second, looking doubtfully at Ellen. "I don't see
+that there is any need for you to take all this so much to heart,"
+she said.
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"Well," Abby replied, reluctantly, "I believe Mr. Lloyd wouldn't
+give in. Ellen Brewster, for Heaven's sake, don't look so!"
+
+Ellen walked on, her head high, her face as white as death. Maria
+clung closely to her, her own lips quivering.
+
+"What are the men going to do, do you think?" asked Ellen,
+presently, in a low voice.
+
+"I don't know," replied Abby. "John Sargent seems to think they'll
+give in. He says he doesn't know what else they can do. The times
+are hard. I believe Amos Lee and Tom Peel are for striking, but he
+says he doesn't believe the men will support them. The amount of it
+all is, a man with money has got it all his own way. It's like
+fighting with bare hands to oppose him, and getting yourself cut,
+and not hurting him at all. He's got all the weapons. We simply
+can't go without work all winter. It is better to do with less than
+with nothing at all. What can a man like Willy Jones do if he hasn't
+any work? He and his mother would actually suffer. What could we
+do?"
+
+"I don't think we ought to think so much about that," said Ellen.
+
+"What do you think we ought to think about, for goodness' sake?"
+
+"Whether we are doing right or not, whether we are furthering the
+cause of justice and humanity, or hindering it. Whether it is for
+good in the long run or not. There have always been martyrs; I don't
+see why it is any harder for us to be martyrs than for those we read
+about."
+
+Sadie Peel came pressing up behind eagerly, her cheeks glowing,
+holding up her dress, and displaying a cheap red petticoat. "Ellen
+Brewster," she exclaimed, "if you dare say anything more to-day I'm
+goin' to talk. Father is tearing, though he goes around looking as
+if he wouldn't jump at a cannon-ball. Do, for Heaven's sake, keep
+still; and if you can't get what you want, take what you can get. I
+ain't goin' to be cheated out of my nearseal cape, nohow."
+
+"Sadie Peel, you make me tired," cried Abby Atkins. "I don't say
+that I'm striking, but I'd strike for all a nearseal cape. I'm
+ashamed of you."
+
+"I don't care if you be," said the girl, tossing her head. "A
+nearseal cape means as much to me as some other things to you. I
+want Ellen Brewster to hold her tongue."
+
+"Ellen Brewster will hold her tongue or not, just as she has a mind
+to," responded Abby, with a snap. She did not like Sadie Peel.
+
+"Oh, stick up for her if you want to, and get us all into trouble."
+
+"I shall stick up for her, you can be mighty sure of that," declared
+Abby.
+
+Ellen walked on as if she heard nothing of it at all, with little
+Maria clinging closely to her. Robert Lloyd got out of his sleigh
+and went up-stairs just before they reached the factory, and she
+heard a very low, subdued mutter of execration.
+
+"They don't mean to strike," she told herself. "They mean to
+submit."
+
+All went to their tasks as usual. In a minute after the whistle blew
+the great pile was in the full hum of labor. Ellen stood for a few
+moments at her machine, then she left it deliberately, and made her
+way down the long room to where John Sargent stood at his bench
+cutting shoes, with a swift faithfulness born of long practice. She
+pressed close to him, while the men around stared.
+
+"What is going to be done?" she asked, in a low voice.
+
+Sargent turned and looked at her in a troubled fashion, and spoke in
+a pacific, soothing tone, as her father might have done. He was much
+older than Ellen.
+
+"Now look here, child," he said, "I don't dare take the
+responsibility of urging all these men into starvation this kind of
+weather. The times are hard. Lloyd has some reason--"
+
+Ellen walked away from him swiftly and went to the row of
+lasting-machines where Amos Lee and Tom Peel stood. She walked up to
+them and spoke in a loud, clear voice.
+
+"You are not going to give in?" said she. "You don't mean to give
+in?"
+
+Lee turned and gave her one stare, and left his machine.
+
+"Not another stitch of work will I do under this new wage-list, so
+help me, God!" he proclaimed.
+
+Tom Peel stood for a second like an automaton, staring at them both.
+Then he turned back to his post.
+
+"I'm with ye," he said.
+
+The lasters, for some occult reason, were always the most turbulent
+element in Lloyd's. In less than three minutes the enthusiasm of
+revolt had spread, and every laster had left his machine. In a
+half-hour more there was an exodus of workmen from Lloyd's. There
+were very few left in the factory. Among them were John Sargent, the
+laster who was a deacon and had formed one of the consulting
+committee, Sadie Peel, who wanted her nearseal cape, and Mamie
+Brady, who would do nothing which she thought would displease the
+foreman, Flynn.
+
+"If father's mind to be such a fool, it's no reason why I should,"
+said Sadie Peel, stitching determinedly away. Mamie Brady looked at
+Flynn, when he came up to her, with a gentle, wheedling smile. There
+was no one near, and she fancied that he might steal a kiss. But
+instead he looked at her, frowning.
+
+"No use you tying away any longer, Mamie," he said. "The strike's
+on."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIII
+
+
+That was one of the strangest days which Ellen had ever passed. The
+enforced idleness gave her an indefinite sense of guilt. She tried
+to assist her mother about the household tasks, then she tried to
+sew on the wrappers, but she was awkward about it, from long disuse.
+
+"Do take your book and sit down and read and rest a little, now
+you've got a chance," said Fanny, with sharp solicitude.
+
+She said never one word concerning it to Ellen, but all the time she
+thought how Ellen had probably lost her lover. It was really
+doubtful which suffered the more that day, the mother or the
+daughter. Fanny, entirely faithful to her own husband, had yet that
+strange vicarious affection for her daughter's lover, and a
+realization of her state of mind, of which a mother alone is
+capable. It is like a cord of birth which is never severed. Not one
+shadow of sad reflection passed over the bright enthusiastic face of
+the girl but was passed on, as if driven by some wind of spirit,
+over the face of the older woman. She reflected Ellen entirely.
+
+As for Andrew, his anxiety was as tender, and less subtle. He did
+not understand so clearly, but he suffered more. He was clumsy with
+this mystery of womanhood, but he was unremitting in his efforts to
+do something for the girl. Once he tiptoed up to Fanny and
+whispered, when Ellen was in the next room, that he hoped she hadn't
+made any mistake, that it seemed to him she looked pretty pale.
+
+"Mistake?" cried Fanny, tossing her head, and staring at him
+proudly. "Haven't you got any spirit, and you a man, Andrew
+Brewster?"
+
+"I ain't thinking about myself," said Andrew.
+
+And he was quite right. Andrew, left to himself and his purely
+selfish interests, could have struck with the foremost. He would
+never have considered himself when it came to a question of a
+conscientious struggle against injustice, though he was so prone to
+look upon both sides of an argument that his decision would have
+been necessarily slow; but here was Ellen to consider, and she was
+more than himself. While he had been, in the depths of his heart,
+fiercely jealous of Robert Lloyd, yet the suspicion that his girl
+might suffer because of her renunciation of him hurt him to the
+quick. Ellen had told him all she had done in the interests of the
+strike, and he had no doubt that her action would effectually put an
+end to all possible relations between the two. He tried to imagine
+how a girl would feel, and being a man, and measuring all passion by
+the strength of his own, he exaggerated her suffering. He could eat
+nothing, and looked haggard. He remained out-of-doors the greater
+part of the day. After he had cleared his own paths, he secured a
+job clearing some for a more prosperous neighbor. Andrew in those
+days grasped eagerly at any little job which could bring him in a
+few pennies. He worked until dark, and when he went home he saw with
+a great throb of excitement the Lloyd sleigh waiting before his
+door.
+
+Robert had heard from Dennison of Ellen's attitude about the strike.
+He had been incredulous at first, as indeed he had been incredulous
+about the strike. He had looked out of the office window with the
+gaze of one who does not believe what he sees when he had heard that
+retreating tramp of the workmen on the stairs.
+
+"What does all this mean?" he said to Dennison, who entered, pale to
+his lips.
+
+"It means a strike," replied Dennison. Nellie Stone rolled her
+pretty eyes around at the two men from under her fluff of blond
+hair. Flynn came in and stood in a curious, non-committal attitude.
+
+"A strike!" repeated Robert, vaguely. "What for?"
+
+It seemed incredible that he should ask, but he did. The calm
+masterfulness of his uncle, which could not even imagine opposition,
+had apparently descended upon him.
+
+Both foremen stared at him. Nellie Stone smiled a little covertly.
+
+"Why, you know you had a committee wait upon you last night, Mr.
+Lloyd," replied Dennison.
+
+Flynn looked out of the window at the retreating throngs of workmen,
+and gave a whistle under his breath.
+
+"Have they struck because of the wage-cutting?" asked Robert, in a
+curious, boyish, incredulous, aggrieved tone. Then all at once he
+colored violently. "Let them strike, then!" he cried. He threw
+himself into a chair and took up the morning paper, with its glaring
+headlines about the unprecedented storm, as if nothing had happened.
+Nellie Stone, after a sly wink at Flynn, which he did not return,
+began writing again. Flynn went out, and Dennison remained
+standing in a rather helpless attitude. A strike in Lloyd's was
+unprecedented, but this manner of receiving the news was more
+unprecedented still. The proprietor was apparently reading the
+morning paper with much interest, when two more foremen, heads of
+other departments, came hurrying in.
+
+"I have heard already," said Robert, in response to their gasped
+information. Then he turned another page of the paper.
+
+"What's to be done, sir?" said one of the new-comers, after a
+prolonged stare at his companion and Dennison. He was a spare man,
+with a fierce glimmer of blue eyes under bent brows.
+
+"Let them strike if they want to," replied Robert.
+
+It was in his mind to explain at length to these men his reasons for
+cutting the wages--for his own attitude as he knew it himself was
+entirely reasonable--but the pride of a proud family was up in him.
+
+"The strike would never have been on, for the men went to work
+quietly enough, if it hadn't been for that Brewster girl," Dennison
+said, presently, but rather doubtfully. He was not quite sure how
+the information would be received.
+
+Robert dropped his paper, and stared at him with angry incredulity.
+
+"What are you talking about?" he said. "What had Miss Brewster to do
+with it?"
+
+He said "Miss Brewster" with a meaning emphasis of respect, and
+Dennison was quick to adopt the hint.
+
+"Oh, nothing," he replied, uneasily, "only she talked with them."
+
+"You mean that Miss Brewster talked to the men?"
+
+"Yes; she said a good deal yesterday, and to-day the men would not
+have struck if it had not been for her. It only needs a spark to set
+them off sometimes."
+
+Robert was very pale. "Well," he said, coolly, "there is no need for
+you to remain longer, since the factory is shut down. You may as
+well go."
+
+"The engineer is seeing to the fires, Mr. Lloyd," said Dennison.
+
+"Very well."  Robert turned to the girl at the desk. "The factory is
+closed, Miss Stone," he said; "there is no need for you to remain
+longer to-day. Come to-morrow at ten o'clock, and I will have
+something for you to do with regard to settling up accounts. There
+is nothing in shape now."
+
+That afternoon Robert went to see Ellen. He could not wait until
+evening.
+
+Fanny greeted him at the door, and there was the inevitable flurry
+about lighting the parlor stove, and presently Ellen entered.
+
+She had changed the gown which she had worn at her factory-work for
+her last winter's best one. Her young face was pale, almost severe,
+and she met him in a way which made her seem a stranger.
+
+Robert realized suddenly that she had, as it were, closed the door
+upon all their old relations. She seemed years older, and at the
+same time indefinably younger, since she was letting the childish
+impulses, which are at the heart of all of us untouched by time and
+experience, rise rampant and unchecked. She was following the lead
+of her own convictions with the terrible unswerving of a child, even
+in the face of her own hurt. She was, metaphorically, bumping her
+own head against the floor in her vain struggles for mastery over
+the mighty conditions of her life.
+
+She bowed to Robert, and did not seem to see his proffered hand.
+
+"Won't you shake hands with me?" he asked, almost humbly, although
+his own wrath was beginning to rise.
+
+"No, I would rather not," she replied, with a straight look at him.
+Her blue eyes did not falter in the least.
+
+"May I sit down?" he said. "I have something I would like to say to
+you."
+
+"Certainly, if you wish," she replied. Then she seated herself on
+the sofa, with Robert opposite in the crushed-plush easy-chair.
+
+The room was still very cold, and the breath could be seen at the
+lips of each in white clouds. Robert had on his coat, but Ellen had
+nothing over her blue gown. It was on Robert's tongue to ask if she
+were not cold, then he refrained. The issues at stake seemed to make
+the question frivolous to offensiveness. He felt that any approach
+to tenderness when Ellen was in her present mood would invoke an
+indignation for which he could scarcely blame her, that he must try
+to meet her on equal fighting-ground.
+
+Ellen sat before him, her little, cold hands tightly folded in her
+lap, her mouth set hard, her steady fire of blue eyes on his face,
+waiting for him to speak.
+
+Robert felt a decided awkwardness about beginning to talk. Suddenly
+it occurred to him to wonder what there was to say. It amounted to
+this: they were in their two different positions, their two points
+of view--would either leave for any argument of the other? Then he
+wondered if he could, in the face of a girl who wore an expression
+like that, stoop to make an argument, for the utter blindness and
+deafness of her very soul to any explanation of his position was too
+evident in her face.
+
+"I called to tell you, if you will permit me, how much I regret the
+unfortunate state of affairs at the factory," Robert said, and the
+girl's eyes met his as with a flash of flame.
+
+"Why did you not prevent it, then?" asked she. Ellen had all the
+fire of her family, but a steadiness of manner which never deserted
+her. She was never violent.
+
+"I could not prevent it," replied Robert, in a low voice.
+
+Ellen said nothing.
+
+"You mistake my position," said Robert. It was in his mind then to
+lay the matter fully before her, as he had disdained to do before
+the committee, but her next words deterred him.
+
+"I understand your position very fully," said she.
+
+Robert bowed.
+
+"There is only one way of looking at it," said Ellen, in her
+inexpressibly sweet, almost fanatical voice. She tossed her head,
+and the fluff of fair hair over her temples caught a beam of
+afternoon sunlight.
+
+"She is only a child," thought Robert, looking at her. He rose and
+crossed over to the sofa, and sat down beside her with a masterful
+impatience. "Look here, Ellen," he said, leaving all general issues
+for their own personal ones, "you are not going to let this come
+between us?"
+
+Ellen sat stiff and straight, and made no reply.
+
+"All this can make very little difference to you," Robert urged.
+"You know how I feel. That is, it can make very little difference to
+you if you still feel as you did. You must know that I have only
+been waiting--that I am eager and impatient to lift you out of it
+all."
+
+Ellen faced him. "Do you think I would be lifted out of it now?" she
+said.
+
+"Why, but, Ellen, you cannot--"
+
+"Yes, I can. You do not know me."
+
+"Ellen, you are under a total misapprehension of my position."
+
+"No, I am not. I apprehend it perfectly."
+
+"Ellen, you cannot let this separate us."
+
+Ellen looked straight ahead in silence.
+
+"You at least owe it to me to tell me if, irrespective of this, your
+feelings have changed," Robert said, in a low voice.
+
+Ellen said nothing.
+
+"You may have come to prefer some one else," said Robert.
+
+"I prefer no one before my own, before all these poor people who are
+a part of my life," Ellen cried out, suddenly, her face flaming.
+
+"Then why do you refuse to let me act for their final good? You must
+know what it means to have them thrown out of work in midwinter. You
+know the factory will remain closed for the present on account of
+the strike."
+
+"I did not doubt it," said Ellen, in a hard voice. All the bitter
+thoughts to which she would not give utterance were in her voice.
+
+"I cannot continue to run the factory at the present rate and meet
+expenses," said Robert; "in fact, I have been steadily losing for
+the last month."  He had, after all, descended to explanation. "It
+amounts to my either reducing the wage-list or closing the factory
+altogether," he continued. "For my own good I ought to close the
+factory altogether, but I thought I would give the men a chance."
+
+Robert thought by saying that he must have finally settled matters.
+It did not enter his head that she would really think it advisable
+for him to continue losing money. The pure childishness of her
+attitude was something really beyond the comprehension of a man of
+business who had come into hard business theories along with his
+uncle's dollars.
+
+"What if you do lose money?" said Ellen.
+
+Robert stared at her. "I beg your pardon?" said he.
+
+"What if you do lose money?"
+
+"A man cannot conduct business on such principles," replied Robert.
+"There would soon be no business to conduct. You don't understand."
+
+"Yes, I do understand fully," replied Ellen.
+
+Robert looked at her, at the clear, rosy curve of her young cheek,
+the toss of yellow hair above a forehead as candid as a baby's, at
+her little, delicate figure, and all at once such a rage of
+masculine insistence over all this obstinacy of reasoning was upon
+him that it was all he could do to keep himself from seizing her in
+his arms and forcing her to a view of his own horizon. He felt
+himself drawn up in opposition to an opponent at once too delicate,
+too unreasoning, and too beloved to encounter. It seemed as if the
+absurdity of it would drive him mad, and yet he was held to it. He
+tried to give a desperate wrench aside from the main point of the
+situation. He leaned over Ellen, so closely that his lips touched
+her hair.
+
+"Ellen, let us leave all this," he pleaded; "let me talk to you. I
+had to wait a little while. I knew you would understand that, but
+let me talk to you now."
+
+Ellen sat as rigid as marble. "I wish to talk of nothing besides the
+matter at hand, Mr. Lloyd," said she. "That is too close to my heart
+for any personal consideration to come between."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIV
+
+
+When Robert went home in the winter twilight he was more miserable
+than he had ever been in his life. He felt as if he had been
+assaulting a beautiful alabaster wall of unreason. He felt as if
+that which he could shatter at a blow had yet held him in defiance.
+The idea of this girl, of whom he had thought as his future wife,
+deliberately setting herself against him, galled him inexpressibly,
+and in spite of himself he could not quite free his mind of
+jealousy. On his way home he stopped at Lyman Risley's office, and
+found, to his great satisfaction, that he was alone, writing at his
+desk. Even his stenographer had gone home. He turned around when
+Robert entered, and looked at him with his quizzical, yet kindly,
+smile.
+
+"Well, how are you, boy?" he said.
+
+Robert dropped into the first chair, and sat therein, haunched up as
+in a lapse of despair and weariness.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked Risley.
+
+"You have heard about the trouble in the factory?"
+
+For answer Risley held up a night's paper with glaring head-lines.
+
+"Yes, of course it is in the papers," assented Robert, wearily.
+
+Risley stared at him in a lazily puzzled fashion. "Well," he said,
+"what is it all about? Why are you so broken up about it?"  Risley
+laid considerable emphasis on the _you_.
+
+"Yes," cried Robert, in a sudden stress of indignation. "You look at
+it like all the rest. Why are all the laborers to be petted and
+coddled, and the capitalists held up to execration? Good Lord, isn't
+there any pity for the rich man without his drop of water, in the
+Bible or out? Are all creation born with blinders on, and can they
+only see before their noses?"
+
+"What are you talking about, Robert?" said Risley, laughing a
+little.
+
+"I say why should all the sympathy go to the workmen who are acting
+like the pig-headed idiots they are, and none for the head of the
+factory, who has the sharp-edged, red-hot brunt of it all to bear?"
+
+"You wouldn't look at it that way if you were one of the poor men
+just out on strike such weather as this," said Risley, dryly. He
+glanced as he spoke at the window, which was beginning to be thickly
+furred with frost in spite of the heat of the office. Robert
+followed his gaze, and noted the spreading fairy jungle of
+crystalline trees and flowers on the broad field of glass.
+
+"Do you think that is the worst thing in the world to bear?" he
+demanded, angrily.
+
+"What? Cold and hunger not only for yourself, but for those you
+love?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, I think it is pretty bad," replied Risley.
+
+"Well, suppose you had to bear that, at least for those you loved,
+and--and--" said the young man, lamely.
+
+Risley remained silent, waiting.
+
+"If I had been my uncle instead of myself I should simply have shut
+down with no ado," said Robert, presently, in an angry,
+argumentative voice.
+
+"I suppose you would; and as it was?"
+
+"As it was, I thought I would give them a chance. Good God, Risley,
+I have been running the factory at a loss for a month as it is. With
+this new wage-list I should no more than make expenses, if I did
+that. What was it to me? I did it to keep them in some sort of work.
+As for myself, I would much rather have shut down and done with it,
+but I tried to keep it running on their account, poor devils, and
+now I am execrated for it, and they have deliberately refused what
+little I could offer."
+
+"Did you explain all this to the committee?" asked Risley.
+
+"Explain? No! I told them my course was founded upon strict business
+principles, and was as much for their good as for mine. They
+understood. They know how hard the times are. Why, it was only last
+week that Weeks & McLaughlin failed, and that meant a heavy loss. I
+didn't explain."  Then Robert hesitated and colored. "I have just
+explained to her," he said, with a curious hang of his head, like a
+boy, "and if my explanation was met in the same fashion by the
+others in the factory I might as well have addressed the north wind.
+They are all alike; they are a different race. We cannot help them,
+and they cannot help themselves, because they are themselves."
+
+"You mean by her, Ellen Brewster?" Risley said.
+
+Robert nodded gloomily.
+
+"That is all in the paper," said Risley--"what she said to the men."
+
+Robert made an impatient move.
+
+"If ever there was a purely normal outgrowth, a perfect flower of
+her birth and environments and training, that girl is one," said
+Risley, with an accent of admiration.
+
+"She is infected with the ranting idiocy of those with whom she has
+been brought in daily contact," said Robert; but even as he spoke he
+seemed to see the girl's dear young face, and his voice faltered.
+
+"Even as you may be infected with the conservatism of those with
+whom you are brought in contact," said Risley, dryly.
+
+"What a democrat you are, Risley!" said Robert, impatiently. "I
+believe you would make a good walking delegate."
+
+Risley laughed. "I think I would myself," he said. "Wouldn't she
+listen to you, Robert?"
+
+"She listened with such utter dissent that she might as well have
+been dumb. It is all over between us, Risley."
+
+"How precipitate you are, you young folks!" said the other,
+good-humoredly.
+
+"How precipitate? Do you mean to say--?"
+
+"I mean that you are forever thinking you are on the brink of
+nothingness, when the true horizon-line is too far for you ever to
+reach in your mortal life."
+
+"Not in this case," said Robert.
+
+"You know nothing about it. But if you will excuse me, it seems to
+me that the matter of all these people being reduced to starvation
+in a howling winter is of more importance than the coming together
+of two people in the bonds of wedlock. It is the aggregate against
+the individual."
+
+"I don't deny that," said Robert, doggedly, "but I am not
+responsible for the starvation, and the aggregate have brought it on
+themselves."
+
+"You have shut down finally?"
+
+"Yes, I have. I would rather shut down than not, as far as I am
+concerned. It is distinctly for my interest. The only one objection
+is losing experienced workmen, but in a community like this, and in
+times like this, that objection is reduced to a minimum. I can hire
+all I want in the spring if I wish to open again. I should run a
+risk of losing on every order I should have to fill in the next
+three months, even with the reduced list. I would rather shut down
+than not; I only reduced the wages for them."
+
+Robert rose as he spoke. He felt in his heart that he had gotten
+scant sympathy and comfort. The older man looked with pity at the
+young fellow's handsome, gloomy face.
+
+"There's one thing to remember," he said.
+
+"What?"
+
+"All the troubles of this world are born with wings."  Risley
+laughed, as he spoke, in his half-cynical fashion.
+
+As Robert walked home--for there was no car due--he felt completely
+desolate. It seemed to him that everybody was in league against him.
+When he reached his uncle's splendid house and entered, he felt such
+an isolation from his kind in the midst of his wealth that something
+like an actual terror of solitude came over him.
+
+The impecunious cousin of his aunt's who had come to her during her
+last illness acted as his housekeeper. There was something
+inexpressibly irritating about this woman, who had suffered so much,
+and was now nestling, with a sense of triumph over the passing of
+her griefs, in a luxurious home.
+
+She asked Robert if it were true that the factory was closed, and he
+felt that she noted his gloomy face, and realized a greater extent
+of comfort from her own exemption from such questions.
+
+"Business must be a great care," said she, and a look of utter
+peaceful reflection upon her own lot overspread her face.
+
+After supper Robert went down to his aunt Cynthia's. He had not been
+there for a long time. The minute he entered she started up with an
+eagerness which had been completely foreign to her of late years.
+
+"What is the matter, Robert?" she asked, softly. She took both his
+hands as she spoke, and her look in his face was full of delicate
+caressing.
+
+Robert succumbed at once to this feminine solicitude, of which he
+had had lately so little. He felt as if he had relapsed into
+childhood. A sense of injury which was exquisite, as it brought
+along with it a sense of his demand upon love and sympathy, seized
+him.
+
+"I am worried beyond endurance, Aunt Cynthia," said he.
+
+"About the strike? I have read the night papers."
+
+"Yes; I tried to do what was right, even at a sacrifice to myself,
+and--"
+
+Cynthia had read about Ellen, but she was a woman, and she said
+nothing as to that.
+
+"I tried to do what was right," Robert said, fairly broken down
+again.
+
+Cynthia had seated herself, and Robert had taken a low foot-stool at
+her side. It came over him as he did so that it had been a favorite
+seat of his when a child. As for Cynthia, influenced by the
+appealing to the vulnerable place of her nature, she put her slim
+hands on her nephew's head, and actually seemed to feel his baby
+curls.
+
+"Poor boy," she whispered.
+
+Robert put both his arms around her and hid his face on her
+shoulder, for love is a comforter, in whatever guise.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LV
+
+
+On the day after the strike Ellen went to McGuire's and to Briggs's,
+the two other factories in Rowe, to see if she could obtain a
+position; but she was not successful. McGuire had discharged some of
+his employes, reducing his force to its smallest possible limits,
+since he had fewer orders, and was trying in that way to avert the
+necessity of a cut in wages, and a strike or shut-down. McGuire's
+was essentially a union factory, as was Briggs's. Ellen would have
+found in either case difficulty about obtaining employment, because
+she did not belong to the union, if for no other reason. At Briggs's
+she encountered the proprietor himself in the office, and he
+dismissed her with a bluff, almost brutal, peremptoriness which hurt
+her cruelly, although she held up her head high as she left. Briggs
+turned to a foreman who was standing by before she was well out of
+hearing.
+
+"I like that!" he said. "Mrs. Briggs read about that girl in the
+paper last night, and the strike wouldn't have been on at Lloyd's if
+it hadn't been for her. I would as soon take a lighted match into a
+powder-magazine."
+
+The foreman grinned. "She's a pretty, mild-looking thing," he said;
+"doesn't look as if she could say boo to a goose."
+
+"That's all you can tell," returned Briggs. "Deliver me from a
+light-complexioned woman. They're all the very devil. Mrs. Briggs
+says it's the same girl that read that composition that made such a
+stir at the high-school exhibition. She'd make more trouble in a
+factory than a dozen ordinary girls, and just now, when everything
+is darned ticklish-looking."
+
+"That's so," assented the foreman, "and all the more because she's
+good-looking."
+
+"I don't know what you call good-looking," returned Briggs.
+
+He had two daughters, built upon the same heavy lines as himself and
+wife, and he adored them. Insensibly he regarded all more delicate
+feminine beauty as a disparagement of theirs. As Briggs spoke, the
+foreman seemed to see in the air before his eyes the faces of the
+two Briggs girls, large and massive, and dull of hue, the feminine
+counterpart of their father's.
+
+"Well, maybe you're right," said he, evasively. "I suppose some
+might call her good-looking."
+
+As he spoke he glanced out of the window at Ellen's retreating
+figure, moving away over the snow-path with an almost dancing motion
+of youth and courage, though she was sorely hurt. The girl had
+scarcely ever had a hard word said to her in her whole life, for she
+had been in her humble place a petted darling. She had plenty of
+courage to bear the hard words now, but they cut deeply into her
+unseasoned heart.
+
+Ellen went on past the factories to the main street of Rowe. She had
+no idea of giving up her efforts to obtain employment. She said to
+herself that she must have work. She thought of the stores, that
+possibly she might obtain a chance to serve as a sales-girl in one
+of them. She actually began at the end of the long street, and
+worked her way through it, with her useless inquiries, facing
+proprietors and superintendents, but with no success. There was not
+a vacancy in more than one or two, and there they wished only
+experienced hands. She found out that her factory record told
+against her. The moment she admitted that she had worked in a
+factory the cold shoulder was turned. The position of a shop-girl
+was so far below that of a sales-lady that the effect upon the
+superintendent was almost as if he had met an unworthy aspirant to a
+throne. He would smile insultingly and incredulously, even as he
+regarded her.
+
+"You would find that our goods are too fine to handle after leather.
+Have you tried all the shops?"
+
+At last Ellen gave that up, and started homeward. She paused once as
+she came opposite an intelligence office. There was one course yet
+open to her, but from that she shrank, not on her own account, but
+she dared not--knowing what would be the sufferings of her relatives
+should she do so--apply for a position as a servant.
+
+As for herself, strained as she was to her height of youthful
+enthusiasm for a great cause, as she judged it to be, clamping her
+feet to the topmost round of her ladder of difficulty, she would
+have essayed any honest labor with no hesitation whatever. But she
+thought of her father and mother and grandmother, and went on past
+the intelligence office.
+
+When she came to her old school-teacher's--Miss Mitchell's--house,
+she paused and hesitated a moment, then she went up the little path
+between the snow-banks to the front door, and rang the bell. The
+door was opened before the echoes had died away. Miss Mitchell had
+seen her coming, and hastened to open it. Miss Mitchell had not been
+teaching school for some years, having retired on a small competency
+of her savings. Her mortgage was paid, and there was enough for
+herself and her mother to live upon, with infinite care as to
+details of expenditure. Every postage-stamp and car-fare had its
+important part in the school-teacher's system of economy; but she
+was quite happy, and her large face wore an expression of perfect
+peace and placidity.
+
+She was a woman who was not tortured by any strong, ungratified
+desires. Her allotment of the gifts of the gods quite satisfied her.
+
+When Ellen entered the rather stuffy sitting-room--for Miss Mitchell
+and her mother were jealous of any breath of cold air after the
+scanty fire was kindled--it was like entering into a stratum of
+peace. It seemed quite removed from the turmoil of her own life. The
+school-teacher's old mother sat in her rocker close to the stove,
+stouter than ever, filling up her chair with those wandering curves
+and vague outlines which only the over-fleshy human form can assume.
+She looked as indefinite as a quivering jelly until one reached her
+face. That wore a fixedness of amiability which accentuated the
+whole like a high light. She had not seen Ellen for a long time, and
+she greeted her with delight.
+
+"Bless your heart!" said she, in her sweet, throaty, husky voice.
+"Go and get her some of them cookies, Fanny, do."  The old woman's
+faculties were not in the least impaired, although she was very old,
+neither had her hands lost their cunning, for she still retained her
+skill in cookery, and prepared the simple meals for herself and
+daughter, seated in a high chair at the kitchen table to roll out
+pastry or the famous little cookies which Ellen remembered along
+with her childhood.
+
+There was something about these cookies which Miss Mitchell
+presently brought to her in a pretty china plate, with a little,
+fine-fringed napkin, which was like a morsel of solace to the girl.
+With the first sweet crumble of the cake on her plate, she wished to
+cry. Sometimes the rush of old, kindly, tender associations will
+overcome one who is quite equal to the strain of present emergency.
+But she did not cry; she ate her cookies, and confided to Miss
+Mitchell and her mother her desire to obtain a position elsewhere,
+since her factory-work had failed her. It had occurred to her that
+possibly Miss Mitchell, who was on the school-board, might know of a
+vacancy in a primary school for the coming spring term, and that she
+might obtain it.
+
+"I think I know enough to teach a primary school," Ellen said.
+
+"Of course you do, bless your heart," said old Mrs. Mitchell. "She
+knows enough to teach any kind of a school, don't she, Fanny? You
+get her a school, dear, right away."
+
+But Miss Mitchell knew of no probable vacancy, since one young woman
+who had expected to be married had postponed her marriage on account
+of the strike in Lloyd's, and the consequent throwing out of
+employment of her sweetheart. Then, also, Miss Mitchell owned with
+hesitation, in response to Ellen's insistent question, that she
+supposed that the fact that she had worked in a shop might in any
+case interfere with her obtaining a position in a school.
+
+"There is no sense in it, dear child, I know," she said, "but it
+might be so."
+
+"Yes, I supposed so," replied Ellen, bitterly. "They would all say
+that a shop-girl had no right to try to teach school. Well, I'm much
+obliged to you, Miss Mitchell."
+
+"What are you going to do?" Miss Mitchell asked, anxiously,
+following her to the door.
+
+"I'm going to Mrs. Doty, to get some of the wrappers that mother
+works on, until something else turns up," replied Ellen.
+
+"It seems a pity."
+
+Ellen smiled bravely. "Beggars mustn't be choosers," she said. "If
+we can only keep along, somehow, I don't care."
+
+There came a vehement pound of a stick on the floor, for that was
+the way the old woman in the sitting-room commanded attention. Miss
+Mitchell opened the door on a crack, that she might not let in the
+cold air.
+
+"What is it, mother?" she said.
+
+"You get Ellen a school right away, Fanny."
+
+"All right, mother; I'll do my best."
+
+"Get her the grammar-school you used to have."
+
+"All right, mother."
+
+There was something about the imperative solicitude of the old woman
+which comforted Ellen in spite of its futility as she went on her
+way. The good-will of another human soul, even when it cannot be
+resolved into active benefits, has undoubtedly a mighty force of its
+own. Ellen, with the sweet of the cookies still lingering on her
+tongue, and the sweet of the old woman's kindness in her soul, felt
+refreshed as if by some subtle spiritual cake and wine. She even
+went to the door of Mrs. Doty's house. Mrs. Doty was the woman who
+let out wrappers to her impecunious neighbors with an undaunted
+heart. She had no difficulty there. The demand for cheap wrappers
+was not on the wane, even in the hard times. When Ellen reached her
+grandmother's house, with a great parcel under her arm, Mrs. Zelotes
+opened her side door.
+
+"What have you got there, Ellen Brewster?" she called out sharply.
+
+"Some wrappers," replied Ellen, cheerfully.
+
+"Are you going to work on wrappers?"
+
+"Yes, grandma."
+
+The door was shut with a loud report.
+
+When Ellen entered the house and the sitting-room, her mother looked
+up from a pink wrapper which she was finishing.
+
+"What have you got there?" she demanded.
+
+"Some wrappers."
+
+"Why, I haven't finished the last lot."
+
+"These are for me to make, mother."
+
+Andrew got up and went out of the room. Fanny shut her mouth hard,
+and drew her thread through with a jerk.
+
+"Well," she said, in a second, "take off your things, and let me
+show you how to start on them. There's a little knack about it."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVI
+
+
+That was a hard winter for Rowe. Aside from the financial stress,
+the elements seemed to conspire against the people who were so
+ill-prepared to meet their fury. It was the coldest winter which had
+been known for years; coal was higher, and the poor people had less
+coal to burn. Storm succeeded storm; then, when there came a warm
+spell, there was an epidemic of the grippe, and doctors' bills to
+pay and quinine to buy--and quinine was very dear.
+
+The Brewsters managed to keep up the interest on the house mortgage,
+but their living expenses were reduced to the smallest possible
+amount. In those days there was no wood laid ready for kindling in
+the parlor stove, since there was neither any wood to spare nor
+expectation of Robert's calling. Ellen and her mother sat in the
+dining-room, for even the sitting-room fire had been abolished, and
+they heated the dining-room whenever the weather admitted it from
+the kitchen stove, and worked on the wrappers for their miserable
+pittance.
+
+The repeated storms were in a way a boon to Andrew, since he got
+many jobs clearing paths, and thus secured a trifle towards the
+daily expenses.
+
+In those days Mrs. Zelotes watched the butcher-cart anxiously when
+it stopped before her son's house, and she knew just what a tiny bit
+of meat was purchased, and how seldom. On the days when the cart
+moved on without any consultation at the tail thereof, the old woman
+would buy an extra portion, cook it, and carry some over to her
+son's.
+
+Times grew harder and harder. Few of the operatives who had struck
+in Lloyd's succeeded in obtaining employment elsewhere, and most of
+them joined the union to enable them to do so. There was actual
+privation. One evening, when the strike was some six weeks old, Abby
+Atkins came over in a pouring rain to see Ellen. There were a number
+of men in the dining-room that night. Amos Lee and Frank Dixon were
+among them. It was a singular thing that Andrew, taking, as he had
+done, no active part in any rebellion against authority, should have
+come to see his house the headquarters for the rallies of
+dissension. Men seemed to come to Andrew Brewster's for the sake of
+bolstering themselves up in their hard position of defiance against
+tremendous odds, though he sat by and seldom said a word. As for
+Ellen, she and her mother on these occasions sat out in the kitchen,
+sewing on the endless seams of the endless wrappers. Sometimes it
+seemed to the girl as if wrappers enough were being made to clothe
+not only the present, but future generations of poor women. She
+seemed to see whole armies of hopeless, overburdened women, all
+arrayed in these slouching garments, crowding the foreground of the
+world.
+
+That evening little Amabel, who had developed a painful desire to
+make herself useful, having divined the altered state of the family
+finances, was pulling out basting-threads, with a puckered little
+face bent over her work. She was a very thin child, but there was an
+incisive vitality in her, and somehow Fanny and Ellen contrived to
+keep her prettily and comfortably clothed.
+
+"I've got to do my duty by poor Eva's child, if I starve," Fanny
+often said.
+
+When the side door opened, Ellen and her mother thought it was
+another man come to swell the company in the dining-room.
+
+"It beats all how men like to come and sit round and talk over
+matters; for my part, I 'ain't got any time to talk; I've got to
+work," remarked Fanny.
+
+"That's so," rejoined Ellen. She looked curiously like her mother
+that night, and spoke like her. In her heart she echoed the sarcasm
+to the full. She despised those men for sitting hour after hour in a
+store, or in the house of some congenial spirit, or standing on a
+street corner, and talking--talking, she was sure, to no purpose. As
+for herself, she had done what she thought right; she had, as it
+were, cut short the thread of her happiness of life for the sake of
+something undefined and rather vague, and yet as mighty in its
+demands for her allegiance as God. And it was done, and there was no
+use in talking about it. She had her wrappers to make. However, she
+told herself, extenuatingly, "Men can't sew, so they can't work
+evenings. They are better off talking here than they would be in the
+billiard-saloon."  Ellen, at that time of her life, had a slight,
+unacknowledged feeling of superiority over men of her own class. She
+regarded them very much as she regarded children, with a sort of
+tolerant good-will and contempt. Now, suddenly, she raised her head
+and listened. "That isn't another man, it's a woman--it's Abby," she
+said to her mother.
+
+"She wouldn't come out in all this rain," replied Fanny. As she
+spoke, a great, wind-driven wash of it came over the windows.
+
+"Yes, it is," said Ellen, and she jumped up and opened the
+dining-room door.
+
+Abby had entered, as was her custom, without knocking. She had left
+her dripping umbrella in the entry, and her old hat was flattened on
+to her head with wet, and several damp locks of her hair straggled
+from under it and clung to her thin cheeks. She still held up her
+wet skirts around her, as she had held them out-of-doors, but she
+was gesticulating violently with her other hand. She was repeating
+what she had said before. Ellen had heard her indistinctly through
+the door.
+
+"Yes, I mean just what I say," she cried. "Get up and go to work, if
+you are men! Stop hanging around stores and corners, and talking
+about the tyranny of the rich, and go to work, and make them pay you
+something for it, anyhow. This has been kept up long enough. Get up
+and go to work, if you don't want those belonging to you to starve."
+
+Abby caught sight of Ellen, pale and breathless, in the door, with
+her mother looking over her shoulder, and she addressed her with
+renewed violence. "Come here, Ellen," she said, "and put yourself on
+my side. We've got to give in."
+
+"You go away," cried little Amabel, in a shrill voice, looking
+around Ellen's arm; but nobody paid any attention to her.
+
+"I never will," returned Ellen, with a great flash, but her voice
+trembled.
+
+"You've got to," said Abby. "I tell you there's no other way."
+
+"I'll die before I give up," cried Lee, in a loud, threatening
+voice.
+
+"I'm with ye," said Tom Peel.
+
+Dixon and the young laster who sat beside him looked at each other,
+but said nothing. Dixon wrinkled his forehead over his pipe.
+
+"Then you'd better go to work quick, before some that I know of, who
+are enough sight better worth saving than you are, starve," replied
+Abby, unshrinkingly. "If I could I would go to Lloyd's and open it
+on my own account to-morrow. I believe in bravery, but nothing
+except fools and swine jump over precipices."
+
+Abby passed through the room, sprinkling rain-drops from her
+drenched skirts, and went into the kitchen with Ellen. Fanny cast an
+angry glance at her, then a solicitous one at her dripping garments.
+
+"Abby Atkins, you haven't got any rubbers on," said she.
+
+"Rubbers!" repeated Abby.
+
+"You just slip off those wet skirts, and Amabel will fetch you down
+Ellen's old black petticoat and brown dress. Amabel--"
+
+But Abby seated herself peremptorily before the kitchen stove and
+extended one soaked little foot in its shabby boot. "I'm past
+thinking or caring about wet skirts," said she. "Good Lord, what do
+wet skirts matter? We can't make wrappers any longer. We had to sell
+the sewing-machine yesterday to pay the rent or be turned out, and
+we haven't got a thing to eat in the house except potatoes and a
+little flour. We haven't had any meat for a week. Nice fare for a
+man like poor father and a girl like Maria! We have come down to the
+kitchen fire like you, but we can't keep it burning as late as this.
+The rest went to bed an hour ago to keep warm. Maria has got more
+cold. She did seem better one spell, but now she's worse again. Our
+chamber is freezing cold, and we haven't had a fire in it since the
+strike. John Sargent has ransacked every town within twenty miles
+for work, but he can't get any, and his sick sister keeps sending to
+him for money. He looks as if he was just about done, too. He went
+off somewhere after supper. A great supper! He don't smoke a pipe
+nowadays. Father don't get the medicine he ought to have, and that
+cold spell he just about perished for a little whiskey. The bedroom
+was like ice with no fire in the sitting-room, and he didn't sleep
+warm. It's one awful thing after another happening. Did you know
+Mamie Brady took laudanum last night?"
+
+"Good land!" said Fanny.
+
+"Yes, she did. Ed Flynn has been playing fast and loose with her for
+a long time, and she's none too well balanced, and when it came to
+her not having enough to eat, and to keep her warm, and her mother
+nagging at her all the time--you know what an awful hard woman her
+mother is--she got desperate. She gulped it down when the last car
+went past and Ed Flynn hadn't come; she had been watchin' out for
+him; then she told her mother, and her mother shook her, then run
+for Dr. Fox, and he called in Dr. Lord, and they worked with a
+stomach-pump till morning, and she isn't out of danger yet. Then
+that isn't all. Willy Jones's mother is failing. He was over to our
+house last evening, telling us about it, and he fairly cried, poor
+boy. He said he actually could not get her what she needed to make
+her comfortable this awful winter. It was all he could do with odd
+jobs to keep the roof over their heads, that she hadn't actually
+enough to eat and keep her warm. It seemed as if he would die when
+he told about it. And that isn't all. Those little Blake children
+next door are fairly starving. They are going around to the
+neighbors' swill-buckets--it's a fact--just like little hungry dogs,
+and it's precious little they find in them. Mrs. Wetherhed has let
+her sewing-machine go, and Edward Morse is going to be sold out for
+taxes. And that isn't all."  Abby lowered her voice a little. She
+cast an apprehensive glance at the door of the other room, and at
+Amabel. "Mamie Bemis has gone to the bad. I had it straight. She's
+in Boston. She didn't have enough to pay for her board, and got
+desperate. I know her sister did wrong, but that was no reason why
+she should have, and I don't believe she would if it hadn't been for
+the strike. It's all on account of the strike. There's no use
+talking: before the sparrow flies in the eyes of the tiger, he'd
+better count the cost."
+
+Fanny, quite white, stood staring from Abby to Ellen, and back
+again.
+
+Amabel was holding fast to a fold of Ellen's skirt. Ellen looked
+rigid.
+
+"I knew it all before," she said, in a low voice.
+
+Suddenly Abby jumped up and caught the other girl in a fierce
+embrace. "Ellen," she sobbed--"Ellen, isn't there any way out of it?
+I can't see--"
+
+Ellen freed herself from Abby with a curious imperative yet gentle
+motion, then she opened the door into the other room again. The loud
+clash of voices hushed, and every man faced towards her standing on
+the threshold, with her mother and Abby and little Amabel in the
+background. "I want to say to you all," said Ellen, in a clear
+voice, "that I think I did wrong. I have been wondering if I had not
+for some time, and growing more and more certain. I did not count
+the cost. All I thought of was the principle, but the cost is a part
+of the principle in this world, and it has to be counted in with it.
+I see now. I don't think the strike ought ever to have been. It has
+brought about too much suffering upon those who were not responsible
+for it, who did not choose it of their own free will. There are
+children starving, and people dying and breaking their hearts. We
+have brought too much upon ourselves and others. I am sorry I said
+what I did in the shop that day, if I influenced any one. Now I am
+not going to strike any longer. Let us all accept Mr. Lloyd's terms,
+and go back to work."
+
+But Ellen's voice was drowned out in a great shout of wrath and
+dissent from Lee. He directly leaped to the conclusion that the girl
+took this attitude on account of Lloyd, and his jealousy, which was
+always smouldering, flamed.
+
+"Well, I guess not!" he shouted. "I rather guess not! I've struck,
+and I'm going to stay struck! I ain't goin' to back out because a
+girl likes the boss, damn him!"
+
+Andrew and the young laster rose and moved quietly before Ellen. Tom
+Peel said nothing, but he grinned imperturbably.
+
+"I 'ain't had a bit of tobacco, and the less said about what I've
+had to eat the better," Lee went on, in a loud, threatening voice,
+"but I ain't going to give up. No, miss; you've het up the fightin'
+blood in me, and it ain't so easy coolin' of it down."
+
+The door opened, and Granville Joy entered. He had knocked several
+times, but nobody had heard him. He looked inquiringly from one to
+another, then moved beside Andrew and the laster.
+
+Dixon got up. "It looks to me as if it was too soon to be giving up
+now," he said.
+
+"It's easy for a man who's got nobody dependent upon him to talk,"
+cried Abby.
+
+"I won't give up!" cried Dixon, looking straight at Ellen, and
+ignoring Abby.
+
+"That's so," said Lee. "We don't give up our rights for bosses, or
+bosses' misses."
+
+As he said that there was a concerted movement of Andrew, the
+laster, and Granville. Granville was much slighter than Lee, but
+suddenly his right arm shot out, and the other man went down like a
+log. Andrew followed him up with a kick.
+
+"Get out of my house," he shouted, "and never set foot in it again!
+Out with ye!"
+
+Lee was easily cowed. He did not attempt to make any resistance, but
+gathered himself up, muttering, and moved before the three into the
+entry, where he had left his coat and hat. Dixon and Peel followed
+him. When the door was shut, Ellen turned to the others, with a
+quieting hand on Amabel's head, who was clinging to her, trembling.
+
+"I think it will be best to talk to John Sargent," said she. "I
+think a committee had better be appointed to wait upon Mr. Lloyd
+again, and ask him to open the factory. I'm not going to strike any
+longer."
+
+"I'm sure I'm not," said Abby.
+
+"Abby and I are not going to strike any longer," said Ellen, in an
+indescribably childlike way, which yet carried enormous weight with
+it.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVII
+
+
+Ellen had not arrived at her decision with regard to the strike as
+suddenly as it may have seemed. All winter, ever since the strike,
+Ellen had been wondering, not whether the principle of the matter
+was correct or not, that she never doubted; she never swerved in her
+belief concerning the cruel tyranny of the rich and the helpless
+suffering of the poor, and their good reason for making a stand, but
+she doubted more and more the wisdom of it. She used to sit for
+hours up in her chamber after her father and mother had gone to bed,
+wrapped up in an old shawl against the cold, resting her elbows on
+the window-sill and her chin on her two hands, staring out into the
+night, and reflecting. Her youthful enthusiasm carried her like a
+leaping-pole to conclusions beyond her years. "I wonder," she said
+to herself, "if, after all, this inequality of possessions is not a
+part of the system of creation, if the righting of them is not
+beyond the flaming sword of the Garden of Eden? I wonder if the one
+who tries to right them forcibly is not meddling, and usurping the
+part of the Creator, and bringing down wrath and confusion not only
+upon his own head, but upon the heads of others? I wonder if it is
+wise, in order to establish a principle, to make those who have no
+voice in the matter suffer for it--the helpless women and children?"
+ She even thought with a sort of scornful sympathy of Sadie Peel,
+who could not have her nearseal cape, and had not wished to strike.
+She reflected, as she had done so many times before, that the world
+was very old--thousands of years old--and inequality was as old as
+the world. Might it not even be a condition of its existence, the
+shifting of weights which kept it to its path in the scheme of the
+universe? And yet always she went back to her firm belief that the
+strikers were right, and always, although she loved Robert Lloyd,
+she denounced him. Even when it came to her abandoning her position
+with regard to the strike, she had not the slightest thought of
+effecting thereby a reconciliation with Robert.
+
+For the first time, that night when she had gone to bed, after
+announcing her determination to go back to work, she questioned her
+affection for Robert. Before she had always admitted it to herself
+with a sort of shamed and angry dignity. "Other women feel so about
+men, and why should I not?" she had said; "and I shall never fail to
+keep the feeling behind more important things."  She had accepted
+the fact of it with childlike straightforwardness as she accepted
+all other facts of life, and now she wondered if she really did care
+for him so much. She thought over and over everything Abby had said,
+and saw plainly before her mental vision those poor women parting
+with their cherished possessions, the little starving children
+snatching at the refuse-buckets at the neighbors' back doors. She
+saw with incredulous shame, and something between pity and scorn,
+Mamie Bemis, who had gone wrong, and Mamie Brady, who had taken her
+foolish, ill-balanced life in her own hands. She remembered every
+word which she had said to the men on the morning of the strike, and
+how they had started up and left their machines. "I did it all," she
+told herself. "I am responsible for it all--all this suffering, for
+those hungry little children, for that possible death, for the ruin
+of another girl."  Then she told herself, with a stern sense of
+justice, that back of her responsibility came Robert Lloyd's. If he
+had not cut the wages it would never have been. It seemed to her
+that she almost hated him, and that she could not wait to strive to
+undo the harm which she had done. She could not wait for morning to
+come.
+
+She lay awake all night in a fever of impatience. When she went
+down-stairs her eyes were brilliant, there were red spots on her
+cheeks, her lips were tense, her whole face looked as if she were
+strained for some leap of action. She took hold of everything she
+touched with a hard grip. Her father and mother kept watching her
+anxiously. Directly after breakfast Ellen put on her hat and coat.
+
+"What are you going to do?" asked Fanny.
+
+"I am going over to see John Sargent, and ask him to get some other
+men and go to see Mr. Lloyd, and tell him we are willing to go to
+work again," replied Ellen.
+
+Ellen discovered, when she reached the Atkins house, that John
+Sargent had already resolved upon his course of action.
+
+"The first thing he said when he came in last night was that he
+couldn't stand it any longer, and he was going to see the others,
+and go to Lloyd, and ask him to open the shop on his own terms,"
+said Abby. "I told him how we felt about it."
+
+"Yes, I am ready to go back whenever the factory is opened," said
+Ellen. "I am glad he has gone."
+
+Ellen did not remain long. She was anxious to return and finish some
+wrappers she had on hand. Abby promised to go over and let her know
+the result of the interview with Lloyd.
+
+It was not until evening that Abby came over, and John Sargent with
+her. Lloyd had not been at home in the morning, and they had been
+forced to wait until late afternoon. The two entered the
+dining-room, where Ellen and her mother sat at work.
+
+Abby spoke at once, and to the point. "Well," said she, "the shop's
+going to be opened to-morrow."
+
+"On what terms?" asked Ellen.
+
+"On the boss's, of course," replied Abby, in a hard voice.
+
+"It's the only thing to do," said Sargent, with a sort of stolid
+assertion. "If we are willing to be crushed under the Juggernaut of
+principle, we haven't any right to force others under, and that's
+what we are doing."
+
+"Bread without butter is better than no bread at all," said Abby.
+"We've got to live in the sphere in which Providence has placed us."
+ The girl said "Providence" with a sarcastic emphasis.
+
+Andrew was looking at Sargent. "Do you think there will be any
+trouble?" he asked.
+
+Sargent hesitated, with a glance at Fanny. "I don't know; I hope
+not," said he. "Lee and Dixon are opposed to giving in, and they are
+talking hard to-night in the store. Then some of the men have joined
+the union since the strike, and of course they swear by it, because
+it has been helping them, and they won't approve of giving up. But I
+doubt if there will be much trouble. I guess the majority want to go
+to work, even the union men. The amount of it is, it has been such a
+tough winter it has taken the spirit out of the poor souls."
+Sargent, evidently, in yielding was resisting himself.
+
+"You don't think there will be any danger?" Fanny said, anxiously,
+looking at Ellen.
+
+"Oh no, there's no danger for the girls, anyhow. I guess there's
+enough men to look out for them. There's no need for you to worry,
+Mrs. Brewster."
+
+"Mr. Lloyd did not offer to do anything better about the wages?"
+asked Ellen.
+
+Sargent shook his head.
+
+"Catch him!" said Abby, bitterly.
+
+Ellen had a feeling as if she were smiting in the face that image of
+Robert which always dwelt in her heart.
+
+"Well," said Abby, with a mirthless laugh, "there's one thing:
+according to the Scriptures, it is as hard for the rich man to get
+into heaven as it is for the poor men to get into their factories."
+
+"You don't suppose there will be any danger?" Fanny said again,
+anxiously.
+
+"Danger--no; who's afraid of Amos Lee and a few like him?" cried
+Abby, contemptuously; "and Nahum Beals is safe. He's going to be
+tried next month, they say, but they'll make it imprisonment for
+life, because they think he wasn't in his right mind. If he was here
+we might be afraid, but there's nobody now that will do anything but
+talk. I ain't afraid. I'm going to march up to the shop to-morrow
+morning and go to work, and I'd like to see anybody stop me."
+
+However, before they left, John Sargent spoke aside with Andrew, and
+told him of a plan for the returning workmen to meet at the corner
+of a certain street, and go in a body to the factory, and suggested
+that there might be pickets posted by the union men, and Andrew
+resolved to go with Ellen.
+
+The next morning the rain had quite ceased, and there was a faint
+something, rather a reminiscence than a suggestion, of early spring
+in the air. People caught themselves looking hard at the elm
+branches to see if they were acquiring the virile fringe of spring
+or if their eyes deceived them, and wondered, with respect to the
+tips of maple and horse-chestnut branches, whether or not they were
+swollen red and glossy. Sometimes they sniffed incredulously when a
+soft gust of south wind seemed laden with fresh blossom fragrance.
+
+"I declare, if I didn't know better, I should think I smelled apple
+blossoms," said Maria.
+
+"Stuff!" returned Abby. She was marching along with an alert,
+springy motion of her lean little body. She was keenly alive to the
+situation, and scented something besides apple blossoms. She had
+tried to induce Maria to remain at home. "I don't know but there'll
+be trouble, and if there is, you'll be just in the way," she told
+her before they left the house, but not in their parents' hearing.
+
+"Oh, I don't believe there'll be any. Folks will be too glad to get
+back to work," replied Maria. She had a vein of obstinacy, gentle as
+she was; then, too, she had a reason which no one suspected for
+wishing to be present. She would not yield when John Sargent begged
+her privately not to go. It was just because she was afraid there
+might be trouble, and he was going to be in it, that she could not
+bear to stay at home herself.
+
+Andrew had insisted upon accompanying Ellen in spite of her
+remonstrances. "I've got an errand down to the store," he said,
+evasively; but Ellen understood.
+
+"I don't think there is any danger, and there wouldn't be any danger
+for me--not for the girls, sure," she said; but he persisted.
+
+"Don't you say a word to your mother to scare her," he whispered.
+But they had not been gone long before Fanny followed them, Mrs.
+Zelotes watching her furtively from a window as she went by.
+
+All the returning employes met, as agreed upon, at the corner of a
+certain street, and marched in a solid body towards Lloyd's. The men
+insisted upon placing the girls in the centre of this body, although
+some of them rebelled, notably Sadie Peel. She was on hand, laughing
+and defiant.
+
+"I guess I ain't afraid," she proclaimed. "Father's keepin' on
+strikin', but I guess he won't see his own daughter hurt; and now
+I'm goin' to have my nearseal cape, if it is late in the season.
+They're cheaper now, that's one good thing. On some accounts the
+strike has been a lucky thing for me."  She marched along, swinging
+her arms jauntily. Ellen and Maria and Abby were close together.
+Andrew was on the right of Ellen, Granville Joy behind; the young
+laster, who had called so frequently evenings, was with him. John
+Sargent and Willy Jones were on the left. They all walked in the
+middle of the street like an army. It was covertly understood that
+there might be trouble. Some of the younger men from time to time
+put hands on their pockets, and a number carried stout sticks.
+
+The first intimation of disturbance came when they met an
+electric-car, and all moved to one side to let it pass. The car was
+quite full of people going to another town, some thirty miles
+distant, to work in a large factory there. Nearly every man and
+woman on the car belonged to the union.
+
+As this car slid past a great yell went up from the occupants; men
+on the platforms swung their arms in execration and derision.
+"Sc-ab, sc-ab!" they called. A young fellow leaped from the rear
+platform, caught up a stone and flung it at the returning Lloyd men,
+but it went wide of its mark. Then he was back on the platform with
+a running jump, and one of the Lloyd men threw a stone, which missed
+him. The yell of "Scab, scab!" went up with renewed vigor, until it
+died out of hearing along with the rumble of the car.
+
+"Sometimes I wish I had joined the union and stuck it out," said one
+of the Lloyd men, gloomily.
+
+"For the Lord's sake, don't show the white feather now!" cried a
+young fellow beside him, who was striding on with an eager, even
+joyous outlook. He had fighting blood, and it was up, and he took a
+keen delight in the situation.
+
+"It's easy to talk," grumbled the other man. "I don't know but all
+our help lies in the union, and we've been a pack of fools not to go
+in with them, because we hoped Lloyd would weaken and take us back.
+He hasn't weakened; we've had to. Good God, them that's rich have it
+their own way!"
+
+"I'd have joined the union in a minute, and got a job, and got my
+nearseal cape, if it hadn't been for father," said Sadie Peel, with
+a loud laugh. "But, my land! if father'd caught me joinin' the union
+I dun'no' as there would have been anything left of me to wear the
+cape."
+
+They all marched along with no disturbance until they reached the
+corner of the street into which they had to turn in order to
+approach Lloyd's. There they were confronted by a line of pickets,
+stationed there by the union, and the real trouble began. Yells of
+"Scab, scab!" filled the air.
+
+"Good land, I ain't no more of a scab than you be!" shrieked Sadie
+Peel, in a loud, angry voice. "Scab yourself! Touch me if you
+dasse!"
+
+Many young men among the returning force had stout sticks in their
+hands. Granville Joy was one of them. Andrew, who was quite unarmed,
+pressed in before Ellen. Granville caught him by the arm and tried
+to draw him back.
+
+"Look here, Mr. Brewster," he said, "you keep in the background a
+little. I am young and strong, and here are Sargent and Mendon.
+You'd better keep back."
+
+But Ellen, with a spring which was effectual because so utterly
+uncalculated, was before Granville and her father, and them all. She
+reasoned it out in a second that she was responsible for the strike,
+and that she would be in the front of whatever danger there was in
+consequence. Her slight little figure passed them all before they
+knew what she was doing. She was in the very front of the little
+returning army. She saw the threatening faces of the pickets; she
+half turned, and waved an arm of encouragement, like a general in a
+battle. "Strike if you want to," she cried out, in her sweet young
+voice. "If you want to kill a girl for going back to work to save
+herself and her friends from starvation, do it. I am not afraid! But
+kill me, if you must kill anybody, because I am the one that started
+the strike. Strike if you want to."
+
+[Illustration: If you want to kill a girl for going back to work to save
+herself from starvation, do it!]
+
+The opposing force moved aside with an almost imperceptible motion.
+Ellen looked like a beautiful child, her light hair tossed around
+her rosy face, her eyes full of the daring of perfect confidence.
+She in reality did not feel one throb of fear. She passed the
+picket-line, and turned instinctively and marched backward with her
+blue eyes upon them all. Abby Atkins sprang forward to Ellen's side,
+with Sargent and Joy and Willy Jones and Andrew. Andrew kept calling
+to Ellen to come back, but she did not heed him.
+
+The little army was several rods from the pickets before a shot rang
+out, but that was fired into the air. However, it was followed by a
+fierce clamor of "Scab" and a shower of stones, which did little
+harm. The Lloyds marched on without a word, except from Sadie Peel.
+She turned round with a derisive shout.
+
+"Scab yourselves!" she shrieked. "You dassen't fire at me. You're
+scabs yourselves, you be!"
+
+"Scabs, scabs!" shouted the men, moving forward.
+
+"Scab yourself!" shouted Sadie Peel.
+
+Abby Atkins caught hold of her arm and shook her violently. "Shut
+up, can't you, Sadie Peel," she said.
+
+"I'll shut up when I get ready, Abby Atkins! I ain't afraid of them
+if you be. They dassen't hit me. Scab, scab!" the girl yelled back,
+with a hysteric laugh.
+
+"Don't that girl know anything?" growled a man behind her.
+
+"Shut up, Sadie Peel," said Abby Atkins.
+
+"I ain't afraid if you be, and I won't shut up till I get ready, for
+you or anybody else. I'm goin' to have my nearseal cape! Hi!"
+
+"I ain't afraid," said Abby, contemptuously, "but I've got sense."
+
+Maria pressed close to Sadie Peel. "Please do keep still, Sadie,"
+she pleaded. "Let us get into the factory as quietly as we can.
+Think, if anybody was hurt."
+
+"I ain't afraid," shrieked the girl, with a toss of her red fringe,
+and she laughed like a parrot. Abby Atkins gripped her arm so
+fiercely that she made her cry out with pain. "If you don't keep
+still!" she said, threateningly.
+
+Willy Jones was walking as near as he could, and he carried his
+right arm half extended, as if to guard her. Now and then Abby
+turned and gave him a push backward.
+
+"They won't trouble us girls, and you might as well let us and the
+men that have sticks go first," she said in a whisper.
+
+"If you think--" began the young fellow, coloring.
+
+"Oh, I know you ain't afraid," said Abby, "but you've got your
+mother to think of, and there's no use in running into danger."
+
+The pickets were gradually left behind; they were, in truth,
+half-hearted. Many of them had worked in Lloyd's, and had small mind
+to injure their old comrades. They were not averse to a great show
+of indignation and bluster, but when it came to more they hesitated.
+
+Presently the company came into the open space before Lloyd's.
+Robert and Lyman Risley and several foremen were standing at the
+foot of the stairs. The windows of the factory were filled with
+faces, and derisive cries came from them. Lloyd's tall shaft of
+chimney was plumed with smoke. The employes advanced towards the
+stairs, when suddenly Amos Lee, Dixon, and a dozen others appeared,
+coming with a rush from around a corner of the building, and again
+the air was filled with the cry of "Scab!"  Ellen and Abby linked
+arms and sprang forward before the men with an impetuous rush, with
+Joy and Willy Jones and Andrew following. Ellen, as she rushed on
+towards the factory stairs, was conscious of no fear at all, but
+rather of a sort of exaltation of courage. It did not really occur
+to her that she could be hurt, that it could be in the heart of Lee
+or Dixon, or any of them, actually to harm her. She was throbbing
+and intense with indignation and resolution. Into that factory to
+her work she was bound to go. All that intimidated her in the least
+was the fear for her father. She rushed as fast as she could that
+her father might not get before her and be hurt in some way.
+
+"Scab! scab!" shouted Lee and the others.
+
+"Scab yourself!" shrieked Sadie Peel. Her father was one of the
+opposing party, and that gave her perfect audacity. "Look out you
+don't hit me, dad," she cried to him. "I'm goin' to get my nearseal
+cape. Don't you hit your daughter, Tom Peel!"  She raced on with a
+sort of hoppity-skip. She caught a young man near her by the arm and
+forced him into the same dancing motion.
+
+They were at the foot of the stairs, when Robert, watching, saw Lee
+with a pistol in his hand aim straight at Ellen. He sprang before
+her, but Risley was nearer, and the shot struck him. When Risley
+fell, a great cry, it would have been difficult to tell whether of
+triumph or horror, went up from the open windows of the other
+factories, and men came swarming out. Lee and his companions
+vanished.
+
+A great crowd gathered around Risley until the doctors came and
+ordered them away, and carried him in the ambulance to the hospital.
+He was not dead, but evidently very seriously injured.
+
+When the ambulance had rolled out of sight, the Lloyd employes
+entered the factory, and the hum of machinery began.
+
+Fanny and Andrew stood together before the factory after Ellen had
+entered. Andrew had started when he had seen his wife.
+
+"You here?" he said.
+
+"I rather guess I'm here," returned Fanny. "Do you s'pose I was
+goin' to stay at home, and not know whether you and her were shot
+dead or not?"
+
+"I guess it's all safe now," said Andrew. He was very pale. He
+looked at the blood-stained place where Lyman Risley had lain. "It's
+awful work," he said.
+
+"Who did it?" asked Fanny, sharply. "I heard the shot just before I
+got here."
+
+"I don't know for sure, and guess it's better I don't," replied
+Andrew, sternly.
+
+Then all at once as they stood there a woman came up with a swift,
+gliding motion and a long trail of black skirts straight to Fanny,
+who was the only woman there. There were still a great many men and
+boys standing about. The woman, Cynthia Lennox, caught Fanny's arm
+with a nervous grip. Her finely cut face was very white under the
+nodding plumes of her black bonnet.
+
+"Is he in there?" she asked, in a strained voice, pointing to the
+shop.
+
+Fanny stared at her. She was half dazed. She did not know whether
+she was referring to the wounded man or Robert.
+
+Andrew was quicker in his perceptions.
+
+"They carried him off to the hospital in the ambulance," he told
+her. Then he added, as gently as if he had been addressing Ellen: "I
+guess he wasn't hurt so very bad. He came to before they took him
+away."
+
+"You don't know anything about it," Fanny said, sharply. "I heard
+them say something about his eyes."
+
+"His eyes!" gasped Cynthia. She held tightly to Fanny, who looked at
+her with a sudden passion of sympathy breaking through her
+curiosity.
+
+"Oh, I guess he wasn't hurt so very bad; he _did_ come to. I heard
+him speak," she said, soothingly. She laid her hard hand over
+Cynthia's slim one.
+
+"They took him to the hospital?"
+
+"Yes, in the ambulance."
+
+"Is--my nephew in there?"
+
+"No; he went with him."
+
+Cynthia looked at the other woman with an expression of utter
+anguish and pleading.
+
+"Look here," said Fanny; "the hospital ain't very far from here.
+Suppose we go up there and ask how he is? We could call out your
+nephew."
+
+"Will you go with me?" asked Cynthia, with a heart-breaking gasp.
+
+If Ellen could have seen her at that moment, she would have
+recognized her as the woman whom she had known in her childhood. She
+was an utter surprise to Fanny, but her sympathy leaped to meet her
+need like the steel to the magnet.
+
+"Of course I will," she said, heartily.
+
+"I would," said Andrew--"I would go with her, Fanny."
+
+"Of course I will," said Fanny; "and you had better go home, I
+guess, Andrew, and see how I left the kitchen fire. I don't know but
+the dampers are all wide open."
+
+Fanny and Cynthia hastened in one direction towards the hospital,
+and Andrew towards home; but he paused for a minute, and looked
+thoughtfully up at the humming pile of Lloyd's. The battle was over
+and the strike was ended. He drew a great sigh, and went home to see
+to the kitchen fire.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVIII
+
+
+Lyman Risley was very seriously injured. There was, as the men had
+reported, danger for his eyes. When Robert was called into the
+reception-room of the hospital to see his aunt, he scarcely
+recognized her. Her soft, white hair was tossed about her temples,
+her cheeks were burning. She ran up to him like an eager child and
+clutched his arm.
+
+"How is he?" she demanded. "Tell me quick!"
+
+"They are doing everything they can for him. Why, don't, poor Aunt
+Cynthia!"
+
+"His eyes, they said--"
+
+"I hope he will come out all right. Don't, dear Aunt Cynthia."  The
+young man put his arm around his aunt and spoke soothingly, blushing
+like a girl before this sudden revelation of an under-stratum of
+delicacy in a woman's heart.
+
+Cynthia lost control of herself completely; or, rather, the true
+self of her rose uppermost, shattering the surface ice of her
+reserve. "Oh," she said--"oh, if he--if he is--blind, if he
+is--I--I--will lead him everywhere all the rest of his life; I will,
+Robert."
+
+"Of course you will, dear Aunt Cynthia," replied Robert, soothingly.
+
+Suddenly Cynthia's face took on a new expression. She looked at
+Robert, deadly pale, and her jaw dropped. "He will not--die," she
+said, with stiff lips. "It is not as bad as that?"
+
+"Oh no, no; I am sure he will not," Robert cried, wonderingly and
+pityingly. "Don't, Aunt Cynthia."
+
+"If he dies," she said--"if he dies--and he has loved me all this
+time, and I have never done anything for him--I cannot bear it; I
+will not bear it; I will not, Robert!"
+
+"Oh, he isn't going to die, Aunt Cynthia."
+
+"I want to go to him," she said. "I _will_ go to him."
+
+Robert looked helplessly from her to Fanny. "I am afraid you can't
+just now, Aunt Cynthia," he replied.
+
+Fanny came resolutely to his assistance. "Of course you can't, Miss
+Lennox," she said. "The doctors won't let you see him now. You would
+do him more harm than good. You don't want to do him harm!"
+
+"No, I don't want to do him harm," returned Cynthia, in a wailing,
+hysterical voice. She threw herself down upon a sofa and began
+sobbing like a child, with her face hidden.
+
+A young doctor entered and stood looking at her.
+
+Robert turned to him. "It is my aunt, and she is agitated over Mr.
+Risley's accident," he said, coloring a little.
+
+Instantly the young physician's face lost its expression of
+astonishment and assumed the soothing gloss of his profession. "Oh,
+my dear Miss Lennox," he said, "there is no cause for agitation, I
+assure you. Everything is being done for Mr. Risley."
+
+"Will he be blind?" gasped Cynthia, with a great vehemence of woe,
+which seemed to gainsay the fact of her years. It seemed as if such
+an outburst of emotion could come only from a child all unacquainted
+with grief and unable to control it.
+
+The young doctor laughed blandly. "Blind? No, indeed," he replied.
+"He might have been blind had this happened twenty-five years ago,
+but with the resources of the present day it is a different matter.
+Pray don't alarm yourself, dear Miss Lennox."
+
+"Can you call a carriage for my aunt?" asked Robert. He went close
+to Cynthia and laid a hand on her slender shoulder. "I am going to
+have a carriage come for you, and perhaps Mrs. Brewster will be
+willing to go home with you in it."
+
+"Of course I will," replied Fanny.
+
+"You hear what Dr. Payson says, that there is nothing to be alarmed
+about," Robert said, in a low voice, with his lips close to his
+aunt's ear.
+
+Cynthia made no resistance, but when the carriage arrived, and she
+was being driven off, with Fanny by her side, she called out of the
+window with a fierce shamelessness of anxiety, "Robert, you must
+come and tell me how he is this afternoon, or I shall come back here
+and see him myself."
+
+"Yes, I will, Aunt Cynthia," he replied, soothingly. He met the
+doctor's curious eyes when he turned. The young man had a gossiping
+mind, but he forbore to say what he thought, which was to the effect
+that--why under the heavens, if that woman cared as much as that for
+that man, she had not married him, instead of letting him dangle
+after her so many years? But he merely said:
+
+"There is no use in saying anything to excite a woman further
+when she is in such a state of mind, but--"  Then he paused
+significantly.
+
+"You think the chances of his keeping his eyesight are poor?" said
+Robert.
+
+"Mighty poor," replied the doctor.
+
+Robert stood still, with his pale, shocked face bent upon the
+carpet. He could not seem to comprehend at once the enormity of it
+all; his mind was grasping at and trying to assimilate the horrible
+fact with an infinite pain.
+
+"Have they got the man that did it?" asked the doctor.
+
+"I don't know. I had to see to poor Risley," replied Robert. "I hope
+to God they have."  Then all at once he thought, with keen anxiety,
+of Ellen. Who knew what new tragedy had happened? "I must go back to
+the factory," he said, hurriedly. "I will be back here in an hour or
+so, and see how he is getting on. For Heaven's sake, do all you
+can!"
+
+Robert was desperately impatient to be back at the factory. He was
+full of vague anxiety about Ellen. He could not forget that the shot
+which had hit poor Risley had been meant for her, and he remembered
+the look on the man's face as he aimed. He found a carriage at the
+street corner, and jumped in, and bade the man drive fast.
+
+When Robert entered the great building, and felt the old vibration
+of machinery, he had a curious sensation, one which he had never
+before had and which he had not expected. For the first time in his
+life he knew what it was to have a complete triumph of his own will
+over his fellow-men. He had gotten his own way. All this army of
+workmen, all this machinery of labor, was set in motion at his
+desire, in opposition to their own. He realized himself a leader and
+a conqueror. He went into the office, and Flynn and Dennison came
+forward, smiling, to greet him.
+
+"Well," said Dennison, "we're off again."  He spoke as if the
+factory were a ship which had been launched from a shoal.
+
+"Yes," replied Robert, gravely.
+
+Nellie Stone, at the desk, was glancing around, with a half-shy,
+half-coquettish look.
+
+"How is Mr. Risley?" asked Flynn.
+
+"He is badly hurt," replied Robert. "Have they found the man? Do you
+know what has been done about it?"
+
+"They've got all the police force of the city out," replied Flynn,
+"but it's no use. They'll never catch Amos Lee. His mother was a
+gypsy, I've always heard. He knows about a thousand ways out of
+traps, and there's plenty to help him. They've got Dixon under
+arrest, and Tom Peel; but they didn't have any fire-arms on 'em, and
+they can't prove anything. Peel says he's ready to go back to work."
+ Flynn had a somewhat seedy and downcast appearance, although he
+fought hard for his old jaunty manner. His impulsive good-nature had
+gotten the better of his judgment and his own wishes, and he had
+gone to Mamie Brady and offered to marry her out of hand if she
+recovered from her attempted suicide. The night before he had
+watched, turn and turn about, with her mother. He gave a curious
+effect of shamefaced and melancholy virtue. He followed Robert to
+one side when he was hanging up his hat and coat. "I'm going to tell
+you, Mr. Lloyd," he said, rather awkwardly; "maybe you won't be
+interested in the midst of all this, but it all came from the
+strike. She's better this morning, and I'm going to marry her, poor
+girl."
+
+Robert looked at him in a dazed fashion. For a moment he had not the
+slightest idea what he was talking about.
+
+"I'm going to marry Mamie Brady," explained Flynn. "She took
+laudanum. It all happened on account of the strike. I'll own I'd
+been flirting some with her, but she'd never done it if she hadn't
+been out of work, too. She said so. Her mother made her life a hell.
+I'm going to marry her, and take her out of it."
+
+"It's mighty good of you," Robert said, rather stupidly.
+
+"There ain't no other way for me to do," replied Flynn. "She thinks
+the world of me, and I suppose I'm to blame."
+
+"I hope she'll make you a good wife and you'll be happy," said
+Robert.
+
+"She thinks all creation of me," replied Flynn, with the simplest
+vanity and acquiescence in the responsibility laid upon him in the
+world. "That shot wasn't meant for Mr. Risley," said Flynn, as
+Robert approached the office door. His eyes flashed. He himself
+would gladly have been shot for the sake of Ellen Brewster. He was
+going to marry, and try to fulfill his simple code of honor, but all
+his life he would be married to one woman, with another ideal in his
+heart; that was inevitable.
+
+"I know it wasn't," Robert replied, grimly.
+
+"Everything is quiet now," said Dennison, with his smooth smile.
+Robert made no reply, but entered the great work-room. "He's mighty
+stand-offish, now he's got his own way," Dennison remarked in a
+whisper to Nellie Stone. He leaned closely over her. Flynn had
+followed Robert. The girl glanced up at the foreman, who was
+unmarried, although years older than she, and her face quivered a
+little, but it seemed due to a surface sensitiveness.
+
+"I want to know if you've heard that Ed is going to marry Mamie
+Brady, after all," she whispered.
+
+Dennison nodded.
+
+She knitted her forehead over a column of figures. Dennison leaned
+his face so close that his blond-bearded cheek touched hers. She
+made a little impatient motion.
+
+"Oh, go long, Jim Dennison," she said, but her tone was
+half-hearted.
+
+Dennison persisted, bending her head gently backward until he kissed
+her. She pushed him away, but she smiled weakly.
+
+"You didn't want Ed Flynn. Why, he's a Roman Catholic, and you're
+Baptist, Nell," he said.
+
+"Who said I did?" she retorted, angrily. "Why, I wouldn't marry Ed
+Flynn if he was the last man in the world."
+
+"You'd 'nough sight better marry me," said Dennison.
+
+"Go along; you're fooling."
+
+"No, I ain't. I mean it, honest."
+
+"I don't want to marry anybody yet awhile," said Nellie Stone; but
+when Dennison kissed her again she did not repulse him, and even
+nestled her head with a little caressing motion into the hollow of
+his shoulder.
+
+Then they both started violently apart as Flynn entered.
+
+"Say!" he proclaimed, "what do you think? The boss has just told the
+hands that he'll split the difference and reduce the wages five
+instead of ten per cent."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIX
+
+
+When Robert Lloyd entered the factory that morning he experienced
+one of those revulsions which come to man in common with all
+creation. As the wind can swerve from south to east, and its
+swerving be a part of the universal scheme of things, so the
+inconsistency of a human soul can be an integral part of its
+consistency. Robert, entering Lloyd's, flushed with triumph over his
+workmen, filled also with rage whenever he thought of poor Risley,
+became suddenly, to all appearances, another man. However, he was
+the same man, only he had come under some hidden law of growth. All
+at once, as he stood there amidst those whirring and clamping
+machines, and surveyed those bowed and patient backs and swaying
+arms of labor, standing aside to allow a man bending before a heavy
+rack of boots to push it to another department, he realized that his
+triumph was gone.
+
+Not a man or woman in the factory looked at him. All continued
+working with a sort of patient fierceness, as if storming a
+citadel--as, indeed, they were in one sense--and waging incessant
+and in the end hopeless warfare against the destructive forces of
+life. Robert stood in the midst of them, these fellow-beings who had
+bowed to his will, and saw, as if by some divine revelation, in his
+foes his brothers and sisters. He saw Ellen's fair head before her
+machine, and she seemed the key-note of a heart-breaking yet
+ineffable harmony of creation which he heard for the first time. He
+was a man whom triumph did not exalt as much as it humiliated. Who
+was he to make these men and women do his bidding? They were working
+as hard as they had worked for full pay. Without doubt he would not
+gain as much comparatively, but he was going to lose nothing
+actually, and he would not work as these men worked. He saw himself
+as he never could have seen himself had the strike continued; and
+yet, after all, he was not a woman, to be carried away by a sudden
+wave of generous sentiment and enthusiasm, for his business
+instincts were too strong, inherited and developed by the force of
+example. He could not forget that this had been his uncle's factory.
+
+He shut his mouth hard, and stood looking at the scene of toil, then
+he resolved what to do.
+
+He spoke to Flynn, who could not believe his ears, and asked him
+over.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," he said.
+
+"Go and speak to the engineer, and tell him to shut down," said
+Robert.
+
+"You ain't going to turn them out, after all?" gasped Flynn. He was
+deadly white.
+
+"No, I am not. I only want to speak to them," replied Robert,
+shortly.
+
+When the roar of machinery had ceased, Robert stood before the
+employes, whose faces had taken on an expression of murder and
+menace. They anticipated the worst by this order.
+
+"I want to say to you all," said Robert, in a loud, clear voice,
+"that I realize it will be hard for you to make both ends meet with
+the cut of ten per cent. I will make it five instead of ten per
+cent., although I shall actually lose by so doing unless business
+improves. I will, however, try it as long as possible. If the hard
+times continue, and it becomes a sheer impossibility for me to
+employ you on these terms without abandoning the plant altogether, I
+will approach you again, and trust that you will support me in any
+measures I am forced to take. And, on the contrary, should business
+improve, I promise that your wages shall be raise to the former
+standard at once."
+
+The speech was so straightforward that it sounded almost boyish.
+Robert, indeed, looked very young as he stood there, for a generous
+and pitying impulse does tend to make a child of a man. The workmen
+stared at him a minute, then there was a queer little broken chorus
+of "Thank ye's," with two or three shrill crows of cheers.
+
+Robert went from room to room, repeating his short speech, then work
+recommenced.
+
+"He's the right sort, after all," said Granville Joy to John
+Sargent, and his tone had a quality of heroism in it. He was very
+thin and pale. He had suffered privations, and now came additional
+worry of mind. He could not help thinking that this might bring
+about an understanding between Robert and Ellen, and yet he paid his
+spiritual dues at any cost.
+
+"It's no more than he ought to do," growled a man at Granville's
+right. "S'pose he does lose a little money?"
+
+"It ain't many out of the New Testament that are going to lose a
+little for the sake of their fellow-men, I can tell you that," said
+John Sargent. He was cutting away deftly and swiftly, and thinking
+with satisfaction of the money which he would be able to send his
+sister, and also how the Atkins family would be no longer so
+pinched. He was a man who would never come under the grindstone of
+the pessimism of life for his own necessities, but lately the
+necessities of others had almost forced him there. Now and then he
+glanced across the room at Maria, whose narrow shoulders he could
+see bent painfully over her work. He was in love with Maria, but no
+one suspected it, least of all Maria herself.
+
+"Lord! don't talk about the New Testament. Them days is past,"
+growled the man on the other side of Joy.
+
+"They ain't past for me," said John Sargent, stoutly. A dark flush
+rose to his cheek as if he were making a confession of love.
+
+"Lord! don't preach," said the other man, with a sneer.
+
+Ellen had stopped work with the rest when Robert addressed them.
+Then she recommenced her stitching without a word. Her thoughts were
+in confusion. She had so long held one attitude towards him that she
+could not readily adjust herself to another. She was cramped with
+the extreme narrowness of the enthusiasm of youth. At noontime she
+heard all the talk which went on about him. She heard some praise
+him, and some speak of him as simply doing his manifest duty, and
+some say openly that he should have put the wages back upon the
+former footing, and she did not know which was right. He did not
+come near her, and she was very glad of that. She felt that she
+could not bear it to have him speak to her before them all.
+
+When she went home at night the news had preceded her. Fanny and
+Andrew looked up eagerly when she entered. "I hear he has
+compromised," said Andrew, with doubtful eyes on the girl's face.
+
+"Yes; he has cut the wages five instead of ten per cent.," replied
+Ellen, and it was impossible to judge of her feelings by her voice.
+She took off her hat and smoothed her hair.
+
+"Well, I am glad he has done that much," said Fanny, "but I won't
+say a word as long as you ain't hurt."
+
+With that she went into the kitchen, and Ellen and Andrew heard the
+dishes rattle. "Your mother's been dreadful nervous," whispered
+Andrew. He looked at Ellen meaningly. Both of them thought of poor
+Eva Tenny. Lately the reports with regard to her had been more
+encouraging, but she was still in the asylum.
+
+Suddenly, as they stood there, a swift shadow passed the window, and
+they heard a shrill scream from up-stairs. It sounded like "Mamma,
+mamma!"  "It's Amabel!" cried Ellen. She clutched her father by the
+arm. "Oh, what is it--who is it?" she whispered, fearfully.
+
+Andrew was suddenly white and horror-stricken. He took hold of
+Ellen, and pushed her forcibly before him into the parlor. "You stay
+in there till I call you," he said, in a commanding voice, the like
+of which the girl had never heard from him before; then he shut the
+door, and she heard the key turn in the lock.
+
+"Father, I can't stay in here," cried Ellen. She ran towards the
+other door into the front hall, but before she could reach it she
+heard the key turn in that also. Andrew was convinced that Eva had
+escaped from the asylum, and thus made sure of Ellen's safety in
+case she was violent. Then he rushed out into the kitchen, and there
+was Amabel clinging to her mother like a little wild thing, and
+Fanny weeping aloud.
+
+When Andrew entered Fanny flew to him. "O Andrew--O Andrew!" she
+cried. "Eva's come out! She's well! she's cured! She's as well as
+anybody! She is! She says so, and I know she is! Only look at her!"
+
+"Mamma, mamma!" gasped Amabel, in a strange, little, pent voice,
+which did not sound like a child's. There was something fairly
+inhuman about it. "Mamma," as she said it, did not sound like a word
+in any known language. It was like a cry of universal childhood for
+its parent. Amabel clung to her mother, not only with her slender
+little arms, but with her legs and breast and neck; all her slim
+body became as a vine with tendrils of love and growth around her
+mother.
+
+As for Eva, she could not have enough of her. She was intoxicated
+with the possession of this little creature of her own flesh and
+blood.
+
+"She's grown; she's grown so tall," she said, in a high, panting
+voice. It was all she could seem to realize--the fact that the child
+had grown so tall--and it filled her at once with ineffable pain and
+delight. She held the little thing so close to her that the two
+seemed fairly one. "Mamma, mamma!" said Amabel again.
+
+"She has--grown so tall," panted Eva.
+
+Fanny went up to her and tried gently to loosen her grasp of the
+little girl. In her heart she was not yet quite sure of her. This
+fierceness of delight began to alarm her. "Of course she has grown
+tall, Eva Tenny," she said. "It's quite a while since you
+were--taken sick."
+
+"I ain't sick now," said Eva, in a steady voice. "I'm cured now. The
+doctors say so. You needn't be afraid, Fanny Brewster."
+
+"Mamma, mamma!" said Amabel. Eva bent down and kissed the little,
+delicate face; then she looked at her sister and at Andrew, and her
+own countenance seemed fairly illuminated. "I 'ain't _told_ you
+all," said she. Then she stopped and hesitated.
+
+"What is it, Eva?" asked Fanny, looking at her with increasing
+courage. The tears were streaming openly down her cheeks. "Oh, you
+poor girl, what have you been through?" she said. "What is it?"
+
+"I 'ain't got to go through anything more," said Eva, still with
+that rapt look over Amabel's little, fair head. "He's--come back."
+
+"Eva Tenny!"
+
+"Yes, he has," Eva went on, with such an air of inexpressible
+triumph that it had almost a religious quality in it. "He has. He
+left her a long time ago. He--he wanted to come back to me and
+Amabel, but he was ashamed, but finally he came to the asylum, and
+then it all rolled off, all the trouble. The doctors said I had been
+getting better, but they didn't know. It was--Jim's comin' back.
+He's took me home, and I've come for Amabel, and--he's got a job in
+Lloyd's, and he's bought me this new hat and cape."  Eva flirted her
+free arm, and a sweep of jetted silk gleamed, then she tossed her
+head consciously to display a hat with a knot of pink roses. Then
+she kissed Amabel again. "Mamma's come back," she whispered.
+
+"Mamma, mamma!" cried Amabel.
+
+Andrew and Fanny looked at each other.
+
+"Where is he?" asked Andrew, in a slow, halting voice.
+
+Eva glanced from one to the other defiantly. "He's outside, waitin'
+in the road," said she; "but he ain't comin' in unless you treat him
+just the same as ever. I've set my veto on that."  Eva's voice and
+manner as she said that were so unmistakably her own that all
+Fanny's doubt of her sanity vanished. She sobbed aloud.
+
+"O God, I'm so thankful! She's come home, and she's all right! O
+God, I'm so thankful!"
+
+"What about Jim?" asked Eva, with her old, proud, defiant look.
+
+"Of course he's comin' in," sobbed Fanny. "Andrew, you go--"
+
+But Andrew had already gone, unlocking the parlor door on his way.
+"It's your aunt Eva, Ellen," he said as he passed. "She's come home
+cured, and your uncle Jim is out in the yard, and I'm goin' to call
+him in. I guess you'd better go out and see her."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LX
+
+
+Lloyd's had been running for two months, and spring had fairly
+begun. It was a very forward season. The elms were leafed out, the
+cherry and peach blossoms had fallen, and the apple-trees were in
+full flower. There were many orchards around Rowe. The little city
+was surrounded with bowing garlands of tenderest white and rose, the
+well-kept lawns in the city limits were like velvet, and
+golden-spiked bushes and pink trails of flowering almond were beside
+the gates. Lilacs also, flushed with rose, purpled the walls of old
+houses. One morning Ellen, on her way to the factory, had for the
+first time that year a realization of the full presence of the
+spring. All at once she knew the goddess to be there in her whole
+glory.
+
+"Spring has really come," she said to Abby. As she spoke she jostled
+a great bush of white flowers, growing in a yard close to the
+sidewalk, and an overpowering fragrance, like a very retaliation of
+sweetness, came in her face.
+
+"Yes," said Abby; "it seems more like spring than it did last night,
+somehow!"  Abby had gained flesh, and there was a soft color on her
+cheeks, so that she was almost pretty, as she glanced abroad with a
+sort of bright gladness and a face ready with smiles. Maria also
+looked in better health than she had done in the winter. She walked
+with her arm through Ellen's.
+
+Suddenly a carriage, driven rapidly, passed them, and Cynthia
+Lennox's graceful profile showed like a drooping white flower in a
+window.
+
+Sadie Peel came up to them with a swift run. "Say!" she said, "know
+who that was?"
+
+"We've got eyes," replied Abby Atkins, shortly.
+
+"Who said you hadn't? You needn't be so up an' comin', Abby Atkins;
+I didn't know as you knew they were married, that's all. I just
+heard it from Lottie Snell, whose sister works at the dressmaker's
+that made the wedding fix. Weddin' fix! My land! Think of a weddin'
+without a white dress and a veil! All she had was a gray silk and a
+black velvet, and a black lace, and a travellin'-dress!"
+
+Abby Atkins eyed the other girl sharply, her curiosity getting the
+better of her dislike. "Who did she marry?" said she, shortly. "I
+suppose she didn't marry the black velvet, or the lace, or the
+travelling-dress. That's all you seem to think about."
+
+"I _thought_ you didn't know," replied Sadie Peel, in a tone of
+triumph. "They've kept it mighty still, and he's been goin' there so
+long, ever since anybody can remember, that they didn't think it was
+anything more now than it had been right along. Lyman Risley and
+Cynthia Lennox have just got married, and they've gone down to Old
+Point Comfort. My land, it's nice to have money, if you be half
+blind!"
+
+Ellen looked after the retreating carriage, and made no comment.
+
+She was pale and thin, and moved with a certain languor, although
+she held up her head proudly, and when people asked if she were not
+well, answered quickly that she had never been better. Robert had
+not been to see her yet. She had furtively watched for him a long
+time, then she had given it up. She would not acknowledge to herself
+or any one else that she was not well or was troubled in spirit. Her
+courage was quite equal to the demand upon it, yet always she was
+aware of a peculiar sensitiveness to all happenings, whether
+directly concerned with herself or not, which made life an agony to
+her, and she knew that her physical strength was not what it had
+been. Only that morning she had looked at her face in the glass, and
+had seen how it was altered. The lovely color was gone from her
+cheeks, there were little, faint, downward lines about her mouth,
+and, more than that, out of her blue eyes looked the eternal,
+unanswerable question of humanity, "Where is my happiness?"
+
+It seemed to her when she first set out that she could not walk to
+the factory. That sense of the full presence of the spring seemed to
+overpower her. All the revelation of beauty and sweetness seemed a
+refinement of torture worse to bear than the sight of death and
+misery would have been. Every blooming apple-bough seemed to strike
+her full on the heart.
+
+"Only look at that bush of red flowers in that yard," Maria said
+once, and Ellen looked and was stung by the sight as by the contact
+of a red flaming torch of spring. "What ails you, dear; don't you
+like those flowers?" Maria said, anxiously.
+
+"Yes, of course I do; I think they are lovely," replied Ellen,
+looking.
+
+She looked after the carriage which contained the bridal party; she
+thought how the bridegroom had almost lost his eyesight to save her,
+and her old adoration of Cynthia seemed to rise to a flood-tide.
+Then came the thought of Robert, how he must have ceased to love
+her--how some day he would be starting off on a bridal trip of his
+own. Maud Hemingway, with whom she had often coupled him in her
+thoughts, seemed to start up before her, all dressed in bridal
+white. It seemed to her that she could not bear it all. She
+continued walking, but she did not feel the ground beneath her feet,
+nor even Maria's little, clinging fingers of tenderness on her arm.
+She became to her own understanding like an instrument which is
+played upon with such results of harmonies and discords that all
+sense of the mechanism is lost.
+
+"Well, Ellen Brewster," said Sadie Peel, in her loud, strident
+voice, "I guess you wouldn't have been walkin' along here quite so
+fine this mornin' if it hadn't been for Mr. Risley. You'd ought to
+send him a weddin'-present--a spoon, or something."
+
+"Shut up," said Abby Atkins; "Ellen has worried herself sick over
+him as it is."  She eyed Ellen anxiously as she spoke. Maria clung
+more closely to her.
+
+"Shut up yourself, Abby Atkins," returned Sadie Peel. "He's got a
+wife to lead him around, and I don't see much to worry about. A
+great weddin'! My goodness, if I don't get married when I'm young
+enough to wear a white dress and veil, catch me gettin' married at
+all!"
+
+Sadie Peel sped on with her news to a group of girls ahead, and the
+wheels of the carriage flashed out of sight in the spring sunlight.
+It was quite true that Risley and Cynthia had been married that
+morning. He had not entirely lost his vision, although it would
+always be poor, and he would live happily, although in a measure
+disappointedly, feeling that his partial helplessness was his chief
+claim upon his wife's affection. He had gotten what he had longed
+for for so many years, but by means which tended to his humiliation
+instead of his pride. But Cynthia was radiant. In caring for her
+half-blind husband she attained the spiritual mountain height of her
+life. She possessed love in the one guise in which he appealed to
+her, and she held him fast to the illumination of her very soul.
+
+After the carriage had passed out of sight Abby came close on the
+other side of Ellen and slid her arm through hers. "Say!" she began.
+
+"What is it?" asked Ellen.
+
+Abby blushed. "Oh, nothing much," she replied, in a tone unusual for
+her. She took her arm away from Ellen's, and laughed a little
+foolishly.
+
+Ellen stared at her with grave wonder. She had not the least idea
+what she meant.
+
+Abby changed the subject. "Going to the park opening to-night,
+Ellen?" she asked.
+
+"No, I guess not."
+
+"You'd better. Do go, Ellen."
+
+"Yes, do go, Ellen; it will do you good," said Maria. She looked
+into Ellen's face with the inexpressibly pure love of one innocent
+girl for another.
+
+The park was a large grove of oaks and birch-trees which had
+recently been purchased by the street railway company of Rowe, and
+it was to be used for the free entertainment of the people, with an
+undercurrent of consideration for the financial profit of the
+company.
+
+"I'm afraid I can't go," said Ellen.
+
+"Yes, you can; it will do you good; you look like a ghost this
+morning," said Abby.
+
+"Do go, Ellen," pleaded Maria.
+
+However, Ellen would not have gone had it not been for a whisper of
+Abby's as they came out of the factory that night.
+
+"Look here, Ellen, you'd better go," said she, "just to show folks.
+That Sadie Peel asked me this noon if it was true that you had
+something on your mind, and was worrying about--well, you know
+what--that made you look so."
+
+Ellen flushed an angry red. "I'll stop for you and Maria to-night,"
+she answered, quickly.
+
+"All right," Abby replied, heartily; "we'll go on the eight-o'clock
+car."
+
+Ellen hurried home, and changed her dress after supper, putting on
+her new green silk waist and her spring hat, which was trimmed with
+roses. When she went down-stairs, and told her mother where she was
+going, she started up.
+
+"I declare, I'd go too if your father had come home," she said. "I
+don't know when I've been anywhere; and Eva was in this afternoon
+and said that she and Jim were going."
+
+"I wonder where father is?" said Ellen, uneasily. "I don't know as I
+ought to go till he comes home."
+
+"Oh, stuff!" replied Fanny. "He's stopped to talk at the store. Oh,
+here he is now. Andrew Brewster, where in the world have you been?"
+she began as he entered; but his mother was following him, and
+something in their faces stopped her. Fanny Brewster had lived for
+years with this man, but never before had she seen his face with
+just that expression of utter, unreserved joy; although joy was
+scarcely the word for it, for it was more than that. It was the look
+of a man who has advanced to his true measure of growth, and
+regained self-respect which he had lost. All the abject bend of his
+aging back, all the apologetic patience of his outlook, was gone.
+She stared at him, hardly believing her eyes. She was as frightened
+as if he had looked despairing instead of joyful. "Andrew Brewster,
+what is it?" she asked. She tried to smile, to echo the foolish
+width of grimace on his face, but her lips were too stiff.
+
+Ellen looked at him, trembling, and very white under her knot of
+roses. Andrew held out a paper and tried to speak, but he could not.
+
+"For God's sake, what is it?" gasped Fanny.
+
+Then Mrs. Zelotes spoke. "That old mining-stock has come up," said
+she, in a harsh voice. "He'd never ought to have bought it. I should
+have told him better if he had asked me, but it's come up, and it's
+worth considerable more than he paid for it. I've just been down to
+Mrs. Pointdexter's, and Lawyer Samson was in there seeing her about
+a bond she's got that's run out, and he says the mine's going to pay
+dividends, and for Andrew to hold on to part of it, anyhow. I bought
+this paper, and it's in it. He never ought to have bought it, but
+it's come up. I hope it will learn him a lesson. He's had enough
+trouble over it."
+
+Nothing could exceed the mixture of recrimination and exultation
+with which the old woman spoke. She eyed Fanny accusingly; she
+looked at Andrew with grudging triumph. "Lawyer Samson says it will
+make him rich, he guesses; at any rate, he'll come out whole," said
+she. "I hope it will learn you a lesson."
+
+Andrew dropped into a chair. His face was distended with a foolish
+smile like a baby's. He seemed to smile at all creation. He looked
+at his wife and Ellen; then his face again took on its expression of
+joyful vacuity.
+
+Fanny went close to him and laid a firm hand on his shoulder. "You
+'ain't had a mite of supper, Andrew Brewster," said she; "come right
+out and have something to eat."
+
+Andrew shook his head, still smiling. His wife and daughter looked
+at him alarmedly, then at each other. Then his mother went behind
+him, laid a hard, old hand on each shoulder, and shook him.
+
+"If you _have_ got a streak of luck, there's no need of your actin'
+like a fool about it, Andrew Brewster," said she. "Go out and eat
+your supper, and behave yourself, and let it be a lesson to you.
+There you had worked and saved that little money you had in the
+bank, and you bought an old mine with it, and it might have turned
+out there wasn't a thing in it, no mine at all, and there was. Just
+let it be a lesson to you, that's all; and go out and eat your
+supper, and don't be too set up over it."
+
+Andrew looked at his wife and mother and daughter, still with that
+expression of joy, so unreserved that it was almost idiotic. They
+had all stood by him loyally; he had their fullest sympathy; but had
+one of them fully understood? Not one of them could certainly
+understand what was then passing in his mind, which had been
+straitened by grief and self-reproach, and was now expanding to hold
+its full measure of joy. That poor little sum in the bank, that
+accumulation of his hard earnings, which he had lost through his own
+bad judgment, had meant much more than itself to him, both in its
+loss and its recovery. It was more than money; it was the value of
+money in the current coin of his own self-respect.
+
+His mother shook him again, but rather gently. "Get up this minute,
+and go out and eat your supper," said she; "and then I don't see why
+you can't go with Fanny and me to the park opening. They say lots of
+folks are goin', and there's goin' to be fireworks. It'll distract
+your mind. It ain't safe for anybody to dwell too much on good luck
+any more than on misfortune. Go right out and eat your supper; it's
+most time for the car."
+
+Andrew obeyed.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LXI
+
+
+The new park, which had been named, in honor of the president of the
+street railway company, Clemens Park, was composed of a light growth
+of oak and birch trees. With the light of the full moon, like a
+broadside of silvery arrows, and the frequent electric-lights
+filtering through the young, delicate foliage, it was much more
+effective than a grove of pine or hemlock would have been.
+
+When the people streamed into it from the crowded electric-cars,
+there were exclamations of rapture. Women and girls fairly shrieked
+with delight. The ground, which had been entirely cleared of
+undergrowth, was like an etching in clearest black and white, of the
+tender dancing foliage of the oaks and birches. The birches stood
+together in leaning, white-limbed groups like maidens, and the
+rustling spread of the oaks shed broad flashes of silver from the
+moon. In the midst of the grove the Hungarian orchestra played in a
+pavilion, and dancing was going on there. Many of the people outside
+moved with dancing steps. Children in swings flew through the airs
+with squeals of delight. There was a stand for the sale of ice-cream
+and soda, and pretty girls blossomed like flowers behind the
+counters. There were various rustic adornments, such as seats and
+grottos, and at one end of the grove was a small collection of wild
+animals in cages, and a little artificial pond with swans. Now and
+then, above the chatter of the people and the music of the
+orchestra, sounded the growl of a bear or the shrill screech of a
+paroquet, and the people all stopped and listened and laughed. This
+little titillation of the unusual in the midst of their sober walk
+of life affected them like champagne. Most of them were of the
+poorer and middle classes, the employes of the factories of Rowe.
+They moved back and forth with dancing steps of exultation.
+
+"My, ain't it beautiful!" Fanny said, squeezing Andrew's arm. He had
+his wife on one arm, his mother on the other. For him the whole
+scene appeared more than it really was, since it reflected the joy
+of his own soul. There was for him a light greater than that of the
+moon or electricity upon it--that extreme light of the world--the
+happiness of a human being who blesses in a moment of prosperity the
+hour he was born. He knew for the first time in his life that
+happiness is as true as misery, and no mere creation of a fairy
+tale. No trees of the Garden of Eden could have outshone for him
+those oaks and birches. No gold or precious stones of any mines on
+earth can equal the light of the little star of happiness in one
+human soul.
+
+Fanny, as they walked along, kept looking at her husband, and her
+own face was transfigured. Mrs. Zelotes, also, seemed to radiate
+with a sort of harsh and prickly delight. She descanted upon the
+hard-earned savings which Andrew had risked, but she held her old
+head very high with reluctant joy, and her bonnet had a rakish cant.
+
+Ellen, with Abby and Maria, walked behind them.
+
+Presently Andrew met another man who had also purchased stock in the
+mine, and stopped to exchange congratulations. The man's face was
+flushed, as if he had been drinking, but he had not. On his arm hung
+his wife, a young woman with a showy red waist and some pink ribbon
+bows on her hat. She was teetering a little in time to the music,
+while a little girl clung to her skirts and teetered also.
+
+"Well, old man," said the new-comer, with a hoarse sound in his
+throat, "they needn't talk to us any more, need they?"
+
+"That's so," replied Andrew, but his joy in prosperity was not like
+the other man's. It placed him heights above him, although from the
+same cause. Prosperity means one thing to one man, and another to
+his brother.
+
+Presently they met Jim Tenny and Eva and Amabel. They were walking
+three abreast, Amabel in the middle. Jim Tenny looked hesitatingly
+at them, although his face was widened with irrepressible smiles.
+Eva gazed at them with defiant radiance. "Well," said she, "so luck
+has turned?"
+
+Amabel laughed out, and her laugh trilled high with a note of
+silver, above the chatter of the crowd and the blare and rhythmic
+trill of the orchestra. "I've had an ice-cream, and I'm going to
+have a new doll and a doll-carriage," said she. "Oh, Ellen!"  She
+left her father and mother for a second and clung to Ellen, kissing
+her; then she was back.
+
+"Well, Andrew?" said Jim. He had a shamed face, yet there was
+something brave in it struggling for expression.
+
+"Well, Jim?" said Andrew.
+
+The two shook hands solemnly. Then they walked on together, and the
+sisters behind, with Amabel clinging to her mother's hand. "Jim's
+goin' to work if he _has_ had a little windfall," said Eva, proudly.
+"Oh, Fanny, only think what it means!"
+
+"I hope it will be a lesson to both of them," said Mrs. Zelotes,
+stalking along after, but she smiled harshly.
+
+"Oh, land, don't croak, if you've got a chance to laugh! There's few
+enough chances in this world," cried Eva, with boisterous good
+humor. "As for me, I've come out of deep waters, and I'm goin' to
+take what comfort I can in the feel of the solid ground under my
+feet."  She began to force Amabel into a dance in time with the
+music, and the child shrieked with laughter.
+
+"S'pose she's all right?" whispered Mrs. Zelotes to Fanny.
+
+"Land, yes," replied Fanny; "it's just like her, just the way she
+used to do. It makes me surer than anything else that she's cured."
+
+The girls behind were loitering. Abby turned to Ellen and pointed to
+a rustic seat under a clump of birches.
+
+"Let's sit down there a minute, Ellen," said she.
+
+"All right," replied Ellen. When she and Abby seated themselves,
+Maria withdrew, standing aloof under an oak, looking up at the
+illumined spread of branches with the rapt, innocent expression of a
+saint.
+
+"Why don't you come and sit down with us, Maria?" Ellen called.
+
+"In a minute," replied Maria, in her weak, sweet voice. Then John
+Sargent came up and joined her.
+
+"She'll come in a minute," Abby said to Ellen. "She--she--knows I
+want to tell you something."
+
+Abby hesitated. Ellen regarded her with wonder.
+
+"Look here, Ellen," said Abby; "I don't know what you're going to
+think of me after all I've said, but--I'm going to get married to
+Willy Jones. His mother has had a little money left her, and she
+owns the house clear now, and I'm going to keep right on working;
+and--I never thought I would, Ellen, you know; but I've come to
+think lately that all you can get out of labor in this world is the
+happiness it brings you, and--the love. That's more than the money,
+and--he wants me pretty bad. I suppose you think I'm awful, Ellen
+Brewster."  Abby spoke with triumph, yet with shame. She dug her
+little toe into the shadow-mottled ground.
+
+"Oh, Abby, I hope you'll be real happy," said Ellen. Then she choked
+a little.
+
+"I've made up my mind not to work for nothing," said Abby; "I've
+made up my mind to get whatever work is worth in this world if I
+can, and--to get it for him too."
+
+"I hope you will be very happy," said Ellen again.
+
+"There he is now," whispered Abby. She rose as Willy Jones
+approached, laughing confusedly. "I've been telling Ellen Brewster,"
+said Abby, with her perfunctory air.
+
+Ellen held out her hand, and Willy Jones grasped it, then let it
+drop and muttered something. He looked with helpless adoration at
+Abby, who put her hand through his arm reassuringly.
+
+"Let's go and see the animals," said she; "I haven't seen the
+animals."
+
+"I guess I'll go and see if I can find my father and mother,"
+returned Ellen. "I want to see my mother about something."
+
+"Oh, come with us."  Abby grasped Ellen firmly around the waist and
+kissed her. "I don't love him a mite better than I do you," she
+whispered; "so there! You needn't think you're left out, Ellen
+Brewster."
+
+"I don't," replied Ellen. She tried to laugh, but she felt her lips
+stiff. And unconquerable feeling of desolation was coming over her,
+and in spite of herself her tone was somewhat like that of a child
+who sees another with all the cake.
+
+"I suppose you know Floretta got married last night," said Abby,
+moving off with Willy Jones. John Sargent and Maria had long since
+disappeared from under the oak.
+
+Ellen, left alone, looked for a minute after Abby and Willy, and
+noted the tender lean of the girl's head towards the young man's
+shoulder; then she started off to find her father and mother. She
+could not rid herself of the sense of desolation. She felt blindly
+that if she could not get under the shelter of her own loves of life
+she could not bear it any longer. She had borne up bravely under
+Robert's neglect, but now all at once, with the sight of the
+happiness of these others before her eyes, it seemed to crush her.
+All the spirit in her seemed to flag and faint. She was only a young
+girl, who would fall to the ground and be slain by the awful law of
+gravitation of the spirit without love. "Anyway, I've got father and
+mother," she said to herself.
+
+She rushed on alone through the merry crowd. The orchestra was
+playing a medley. The violins seemed to fairly pierce thought. A
+Roman-candle burst forth on the right with a great spluttering, and
+the people, shrieking with delight, rushed in that direction. Then a
+rocket shot high in the air with a splendid curve, and there was a
+sea of faces watching with speechless admiration the dropping stars
+of violet and gold and rose.
+
+Ellen kept on, moving as nearly as she could in the direction in
+which her party had gone. Then suddenly she came face to face with
+Robert Lloyd.
+
+She would have passed him without a word, but he stood before her.
+
+"Won't you speak to me?" he asked.
+
+"Good-evening, Mr. Lloyd," returned Ellen.
+
+Then she tried to move on again, but Robert still stood before her.
+
+"I want to say something to you," he said, in a low voice. "I was
+coming to your house to-night, but I saw you on the car. Please come
+to that seat over there. There is nobody in that direction. They
+will all go towards the fireworks now."
+
+Ellen looked at him hesitatingly. At that moment she seemed to throw
+out protecting antennae of maidenliness; and, besides, there was
+always the memory of the cut in wages, for which she still judged
+him; and then there was the long neglect.
+
+"Please come," said Robert. He looked at her at once like a
+conqueror and a pleading child. Ellen placed her hand on his arm,
+and they went to the seat under the clump of birches. They were
+quite alone, for the whole great company was streaming towards the
+fireworks. A fiery wheel was revolving in the distance, and rockets
+shot up, dropping showers of stars. Ellen gazed at them without
+seeing them at all.
+
+Robert, seated beside her, looked at her earnestly. "I am going to
+put back the wages on the old basis to-morrow," he said.
+
+Ellen made no reply.
+
+"Business has so improved that I feel justified in doing so," said
+Robert. His tone was almost apologetic. Never as long as he lived
+would he be able to look at such matters from quite the same
+standpoint as that of the girl beside him. She knew that, and yet
+she loved him. She never would get his point of view, and yet he
+loved her. "I have waited until I was able to do that before
+speaking to you again," said Robert. "I knew how you felt about the
+wage-cutting. I thought when matters were back on the old basis that
+you might feel differently towards me. God knows I have been sorry
+enough for it all, and I am glad enough to be able to pay them full
+wages again. And now, dear?"
+
+"It has been a long time," said Ellen, looking at her little hands,
+clasped in her lap.
+
+"I have loved you all the time, and I have only waited for that,"
+said Robert.
+
+
+Later on Robert and Ellen joined Fanny and the others. It was
+scarcely the place to make an announcement. After a few words of
+greeting the young couple walked off together, and left the
+Brewsters and Tennys and Mrs. Zelotes standing on the outskirts of
+the crowd watching the fireworks. Granville Joy stood near them. He
+had looked at Robert and Ellen with a white face, then he turned
+again towards the fireworks with a gentle, heroic expression. He
+caught up Amabel that she might see the set piece which was just
+being put up. "Now you can see, Sissy," he said.
+
+Eva looked away from the fireworks after the retreating pair, then
+meaningly at Fanny and Andrew. "That's settled," said she.
+
+Andrew's face quivered a little, and took on something of the same
+look which Granville Joy's wore. All love is at the expense of love,
+and calls for heroes.
+
+"It'll be a great thing for her," said Fanny, in his ear; "it'll be
+a splendid thing for her, you know that, Andrew."
+
+Andrew gazed after the nodding roses on Ellen's hat vanishing
+towards the right. Another rocket shot up, and the people cried out,
+and watched the shower of stars with breathless enjoyment. Andrew
+saw their upturned faces, in which for the while toil and trial were
+blotted out by that delight in beauty and innocent pleasure of the
+passing moment which is, for human souls, akin to the refreshing
+showers for flowers of spring; and to him, since his own vision was
+made clear by his happiness, came a mighty realization of it all,
+which was beyond it all. Another rocket described a wonderful golden
+curve of grace, then a red light lit all the watching people. Andrew
+looked for Ellen and Robert, and saw the girl's beautiful face
+turning backward over her lover's shoulder. All his life Andrew had
+been a reader of the Bible, as had his father and mother before him.
+To-day, ever since he had heard of his good fortune, his mind had
+dwelt upon certain verses of Ecclesiastes. Now he quoted from them.
+"Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the
+life of thy vanity, which He hath given thee under the sun, all the
+days of thy vanity, for that is thy portion in this life and in thy
+labor which thou takest under the sun."
+
+Ellen saw her father, and smiled and nodded, then she and her lover
+passed out of sight. Another rocket trailed its golden parabola
+along the sky, and dropped with stars; there was an ineffably sweet
+strain from the orchestra; the illuminated oaks tossed silver and
+golden boughs in a gust of fragrant wind. Andrew quoted again from
+the old King of Wisdom--"I withheld not my heart from any joy, for
+my heart rejoiced in all my labor, and that was my portion of
+labor."  Then Andrew thought of the hard winter which had passed, as
+all hard things must pass, of the toilsome lives of those beside
+him, of all the work which they had done with their poor, knotted
+hands, of the tracks which they had worn on the earth towards their
+graves, with their weary feet, and suddenly he seemed to grasp a new
+and further meaning for that verse of Ecclesiastes.
+
+He seemed to see that labor is not alone for itself, not for what it
+accomplishes of the tasks of the world, not for its equivalent in
+silver and gold, not even for the end of human happiness and love,
+but for the growth in character of the laborer.
+
+"That is the portion of labor," he said. He spoke in a strained,
+solemn voice, as he had done before. Nobody heard him except his
+wife and mother. His mother gave a sidewise glance at him, then she
+folded her cape tightly around her and stared at the fireworks, but
+Fanny put her hand through his arm and leaned her cheek against his
+shoulder.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Portion of Labor, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
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