Project Gutenberg's The Portion of Labor, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

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Title: The Portion of Labor

Author: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

Release Date: March 18, 2006 [EBook #18011]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** 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 Sèvres. 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 employés 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 employés, 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 Sèvres, 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 Sèvres?"
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 Sèvres, 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 employés, 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 æsthetic 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 employés 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
employés, 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 employés.

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 cañon. 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, anæmic
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 employé 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 employés 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 employés 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
employés 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
employés 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 employés 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 employés 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 tête-à-tête 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 æsthetic 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