"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.



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.