Ellen's deepest emotion was pity for her father, so intense that it was actual physical pain.
“Poor father! Poor father! He had to borrow the money to buy me my watch and chain,” she kept repeating to herself. “Poor father!”
To her New England mind, borrowing seemed almost like robbing. She actually felt as if her father had committed a crime for love of her, but all she looked at was the love, not the guilt. Suddenly a conviction which fairly benumbed her came over her—the money in the savings-bank; that little hoard, which had been to the imagination of herself and her mother a sheet-anchor against poverty, must be gone. “Father must have used if for something unbeknown to mother,” she said to herself—“he must, else he would not have told Mr. Evarts that he could not pay him.” It was a hot night, but the girl shivered as she realized for the first time the meaning of the wolf at the door. “All we've got left is this house—this house and—and—our hands,” thought Ellen. She saw before her her father's poor, worn hands, her mother's thin, tired hands, jerking the thread in and out of those shameful wrappers; then she looked at her own, as yet untouched by toil, as white and small and fair as flowers. She thought of the four years before her at college, four years before she could earn anything—and in the mean time? She looked at the pile of her school-books on the table. She had been studying hard all summer. The thirst for knowledge was as intense in her as the thirst for stimulants in a drunkard.
“I ought to give up going to college, and go to work in the shop,” Ellen said to herself, and she said it as one might drive a probing-knife into a sore. “I ought to,” she repeated. And yet she was far from resolving to give up college. She began to argue with herself the expediancy, supposing that the money in the bank was gone, of putting a mortgage on the house. If her father continued to have work, they might get along and pay for her aunt, who might, as the doctor had said, not be obliged to remain long in the asylum if properly cared for. Would it not, after all, be better, since by a course at college she would be fitted to command a larger salary than she could in any other way. “I can support them all,” reflected Ellen. At that time the thought of Robert Lloyd, and that awakening of heart which he had brought to pass, were in abeyance. Old powers had asserted themselves. This love for her own blood and their need came between her and this new love, half of the senses, half of the spirit.
Amabel waked up in the early sultry dawn of the summer day with the bewilderment of one in a new world. She stared at the walls of the room, at the shaft of sunlight streaming in the window, then at Ellen.
“Where am I?” she inquired, in a loud, querulous plaint. Then she remembered, but she did not cry; instead, her little face took on a painfully old look.
“You are here with cousin Ellen, darling, don't you know?” Ellen replied, leaning over her, and kissing her.
Amabel wriggled impatiently away, and faced to the wall. “Yes, I know,” said she.
That morning Amabel would not eat any breakfast, and Fanny suggested that Ellen take her for a ride on the street-cars. “We can get along without you for an hour,” she whispered, “and I am afraid that child will be sick.”
So Ellen and Amabel set out, leaving Fanny and the dressmaker at work, and when they were returning past the factories the noon whistles were blowing and the operatives were streaming forth.
Ellen was surprised to see her father among them as the car swept past. He walked down the street towards home, his dinner-bag dangling at his side, his back more bent than ever.
She wondered uneasily if her father was ill, for he never went home to dinner. She looked back at him as the car swept past, but he did not seem to see her. He walked with an air of seeing nothing, covering the ground like an old dog with some patient, dumb end in view, heeding nothing by the way. It puzzled her also that her father had come out of Lloyd's instead of McGuire's, where he had been employed all summer. Ellen, after she reached home, watched anxiously for her father to come into the yard, but she did not see him. She assisted about the dinner, which was a little extra on account of the dressmaker, and all the time she glanced with covert anxiety at the window, but her father did not pass it. Finally, when she went out to the pump for a pitcher of water, she set the pitcher down, and sped to the orchard like a wild thing. A suspicion had seized her that her father was there.
Sure enough, there he was, but instead of lying face down on the grass, as he had done before, he was sitting back against a tree. He had the air of having settled into such a long lease of despair that he had sought the most comfortable position for it. His face was ghastly. He looked at Ellen as she drew near, and opened his mouth as if to speak, but instead he only caught his breath. He stared hard at her, then he closed his eyes as if not to see her, and motioned her away with one hand with an inarticulate noise in his throat.
But Ellen sat down beside him. She caught his two hands and looked at him. “Father, look at me,” said she, and Andrew opened his eyes. The expression in them was dreadful, compounded of shame and despair and dread, but the girl's met them with a sort of glad triumph and strength of love. “Now look here, father,” she said, “you tell me all about it. I didn't want to know last night. Now I want to know. What is the matter?”
Andrew continued to look at her, then all at once he spoke with a kind of hoarse shout. “I'm discharged! I'm discharged,” he said, “from McGuire's; they've got a boy who can move faster in my place—a boy for less pay, who can move faster. I hurried over to Lloyd's to see if they would take me on again; I've always thought I should get back into Lloyd's, and I saw the foreman, and he told me to my face that I was too old, that they wanted younger men. And I went into the office to see Lloyd, pushed past the foreman, with him damning me, and I saw Lloyd.”
“Was young Mr. Lloyd there?” asked Ellen, with white lips.
“No; I guess he had gone to dinner. And Lloyd looked at me, and I believe he counted every gray hair in my head, and he saw my back, and he saw my hands, and he said—he said I was too old.”
Andrew snatched his hands from Ellen's grasp, pressed them to his face, and broke into weeping. “Oh, my God, I'm too old, I'm too old!” he sobbed; “I'm out of it! I'm too old!”
Ellen regarded him, and her face had developed lines of strength hitherto unrevealed. There was no pity in it, hardly love; she looked angry and powerful. “Father, stop doing so, and look at me,” she said. She dragged her father's hands from his face, and he stared at her with his inflamed eyes, half terrified, half sustained. At that moment he realized a strength of support as from his own lost youth, a strength as of eternal progress which was more to be relied upon than other human strength. For the first time he leaned on his child, and realized with wonder the surety of the stay.
“Now, father, you stop doing so,” said Ellen. “You can get work somewhere; you are not old. Call yourself old! It is nonsense. Are you going to give in and be old because two men tell you that you are? What if your hair is gray! Ever so many young men have gray hair. You are not old, and you can get work somewhere. McGuire's and Lloyd's are not the only factories in the country.”
“That ain't all,” said Andrew, with eyes like a beseeching dog's on her face.
“I know that isn't all,” said Ellen. “You needn't be afraid to tell me, father. You have taken the money out of the savings-bank for something.”
Again Andrew would have snatched his hands from the girl's and hidden his face, but she held them fast. “Yes, I have,” he admitted, in a croaking voice.
“Well, what if you have?” asked Ellen. “You had a right to take it out, didn't you? You put it in. I don't know of anybody who had a better right to take it out than you, if you wanted to.”
Andrew stared at her, as if he did not hear rightly. “You don't know what I did with it, Ellen,” he stammered.
“It is nobody's business,” replied Ellen. She had an unexplained sensation as if she were holding fast to her father's slipping self-respect which was dragging hard at her restraining love.
“I put it in a worthless gold-mine out in Colorado—the same one your uncle Jim lost his money in,” groaned Andrew.
“Well, it was your money, and you had a perfect right to,” said Ellen. “Of course you thought the mine was all right or you wouldn't have put the money into it.”
“God knows I did.”
“Well, the best business men in the world make mistakes. It is nobody's business whether you took the money out or not, or what you used it for, father.”
“I don't see how the bills are going to be paid, and there's your poor aunt,” said Andrew. He was leaning more and more heavily upon this new tower of strength, this tender little girl whom he had hitherto shielded and supported. The beautiful law of reverse of nature had come into force.
Ellen set her mouth firmly. “Don't you worry, father,” said she. “We will think of some way out of it. There's a little money to pay for Aunt Eva, and maybe she won't be sick long. Does mother know, father?”
“She don't know about anything, Ellen,” replied Andrew, wretchedly.
“I know she doesn't know about your getting thrown out of work—but about the bank?”
“No, Ellen.”
Ellen rose. “You stay here, where it is cool, till I ring the dinner-bell, father,” she said.
“I don't want any dinner, child.”
“Yes, you do, father. If you don't eat your dinner you will be sick. You come when the bell rings.”
Andrew knew that he should obey, as he saw the girl's light dress disappear among the trees.
Ellen went back to the pump, and carried her pitcher of water into the house. Her mother met her at the door. “Where have you been all this time, Ellen Brewster?” she asked, in a high voice. “Everything is getting as cold as a stone.”
Ellen caught her mother's arm and drew her into the kitchen, and closed the door. Fanny turned pale as death and looked at her. “Well, what has happened now?” she said. “Is your father killed?”
“No,” said Ellen, “but he is out of work, and he can't get a job at Lloyd's, and he took all that money out of the savings-bank a long time ago, and put it into that gold-mine that Uncle Jim lost in.”
Fanny clutched the girl's arm in a grasp so hard that it left a blue mark on the tender flesh. She looked at her, but did not speak one word.
“Now, mother,” said Ellen, “you must not say one word to father to scold him. He's got enough to bear as it is.”
Fanny pushed her away with sudden fierceness. “I guess I don't need to have my own daughter teach me my duty to my husband,” said she. “Where is he?”
“Down in the orchard.”
“Well, ring the bell for dinner loud, so he can hear it.”
When Andrew came shuffling wearily up from the orchard, Fanny met him at the corner of the house, out of sight from the windows. She was flushed and perspiring, clad in a coarse cotton wrapper, revealing all her unkempt curves. She went close to him, and thrust one large arm through his. “Look here, Andrew,” said she, in the tenderest voice he had ever heard from her, a voice so tender that it was furious, “you needn't say one word. What's done's done. We shall get along somehow. I ain't afraid. Come in and eat your dinner!”
The dressmaking work went on as usual after dinner. Andrew had disappeared, going down the road towards the shop. He tried for a job at Briggs's, with no success, then drifted to the corner grocery.
Ellen sat until nearly three o'clock sewing. Then she went up-stairs and got her hat, and went secretly out of the back door, through the west yard, that her mother should not see her. However, her grandmother called after her, and wanted to know where she was going.
“Down street, on an errand,” answered Ellen.
“Well, keep on the shady side,” called her grandmother, thinking the girl was bound to the stores for some dressmaking supplies.
That night Miss Higgins did not ask for her pay; she had made up her mind to wait until her week was finished. She went away after supper, and Ellen followed her to the door. “We won't want you to-morrow, Miss Higgins,” said she, “and here is your pay.” With that she handed a roll of bills to the woman, who stared at her in amazement and growing resentment.
“If my work ain't satisfactory,” said she—
“Your work is satisfactory,” said Ellen, “but I don't want any more work done. I am not going to college.”
There was something conclusive and intimidating about Ellen's look and tone. The dressmaker, who had been accustomed to regard her as a child, stared at her with awe, as before a sudden revelation of force. Then she took her money, and went down the walk.
When Ellen re-entered the sitting-room her father and mother, who had overheard every word, confronted her.
“Ellen Brewster, what does this mean?”
Andrew looked as if he would presently fall to the floor.
“It means,” said Ellen—and she looked at her parents with the brave enthusiasm of a soldier on her beautiful face—she even laughed—“it means that I am going to work—I have got a job in Lloyd's.”
When Ellen made that announcement, her mother did a strange thing. She ran swiftly to a corner of the room, and stood there, staring at the girl, with back hugged close to the intersection of the walls, as if she would withdraw as far as possible from some threatening ill. At that moment she looked alarmingly like her sister; there was something about Fanny in her corner, calculated, when all circumstances were taken into consideration, to make one's blood chill, but Andrew did not look at her. He was intent upon Ellen, and the facing of the worst agony of his life, and Ellen was intent upon him. She loved her mother, but the fear as to her father's suffering moved her more than her mother's. She was more like her father, and could better estimate his pain under stress. Andrew rose to his feet and stood looking at Ellen, and she at him. She tried to meet the drawn misery and incredulousness of his face with a laugh of reassurance.
“Yes, I've got a job in Lloyd's,” said she. “What's the matter, father?”
Then Andrew made an almost inarticulate response; it sounded like a croak in an unknown tongue.
Ellen continued to look at him, and to laugh.
“Now look here, father,” said she. “There is no need for you and mother to feel bad over this. I have thought it all over, and I have made up my mind. I have got a good high-school education now, and the four years I should have to spend at Vassar I could do nothing at all. There is awful need of money here, and not only for us, but for Aunt Eva and Amabel.”
“You sha'n't do it!” Andrew burst out then, in a great shout of rage. “I'll mortgage the house—that'll last awhile. You sha'n't, I say! You are my child, and you've got to listen. You sha'n't, I say!”
“Now, father,” responded Ellen's voice, which seemed to have in it a wonderful tone of firmness against which his agonized vociferousness broke as against a rock, “this is nonsense. You must not mortgage the house. The house is all you have got for your and mother's old age. Do you think I could go to college, and let you give up the house in order to keep me there? And as for grandma Brewster, you know what's hers is hers as long as she lives—we don't want to think of that. I have got this job now, which is only three dollars a week, but in a year the foreman said I might earn fifteen or eighteen, if I was quick and smart, and I will be quick and smart. It is the best thing for us all, father.”
“You sha'n't!” shouted Andrew. “I say you sha'n't!”
Suddenly Andrew sank into a chair, his head lopped, he kept moving a hand before his eyes, as if he were brushing away cobwebs. Then Fanny came out of her corner.
“Get the camphor, quick!” she said to Ellen. “I dun'no' but you've killed your father.”
Fanny held her husband's head against her shoulder, and rubbed his hands frantically. The awful strained look had gone from her face. Ellen came with the camphor, and then went for water. Fanny rubbed Andrew's forehead with the camphor, and held the bottle to his nose. “Smell it, Andrew,” she said, in a voice of ineffable tenderness and pity. Ellen returned with a glass of water, and Andrew swallowed a little obediently. Finally he made out to stagger into the bedroom with Fanny's and Ellen's assistance. He sat down weakly on the bed, and Fanny lifted his legs up. Then he sank and closed his eyes as if he were spent. In fact, he was. At that moment of Ellen's announcement some vital energy in him suddenly relaxed like overstrained rubber. His face, sunken in the pillow, was both ghastly and meek. It was the face of a man who could fight no more. Ellen knelt down beside him, sobbing.
“Oh, father!” she sobbed, “I think it is for the best. Dear father, you won't feel bad.”
“No,” said Andrew, faintly. There was a slight twitching in his hand, as if he wished to put it on her head, then it lay thin and inert on the coverlid. He tried to smile, but his face settled into that look of utter acquiescence of fate.
“I s'pose it's the best you can do,” he muttered.
“Have you told Miss Lennox?” gasped Fanny.
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She was sorry, but she made no objection,” replied Ellen, evasively.
Fanny came forward abruptly, caught up the camphor-bottle, and began bathing Andrew's forehead again.
“We won't say any more about it,” said she, in a harsh voice. “You'd better go over to your grandma Brewster's and see if she has got any whiskey. I think your father needs to take something.”
“I don't want anything,” said Andrew, feebly.
“Yes, you do, too, you are as white as a sheet. Go over and ask her, Ellen.”
Ellen ran across the yard to her grandmother's, and the old woman met her at the door. She seemed to have an instinctive knowledge of trouble.
“What's the matter?” she asked.
“Father's a little faint, and mother wants me to borrow the whiskey,” said Ellen. She had not at that time the courage to tell her grandmother what she had done.
Mrs. Zelotes ran into the house, and came out with the bottle.
“I'm comin' over,” she announced. “I'm kind of worried about your father; he 'ain't looked well for some time. I wonder what made him faint. Maybe he ate something which hurt him.”
Ellen said nothing. She fled up-stairs to her chamber, as her grandmother entered the bedroom. She felt cowardly, but she thought that she would let her mother tell the news.
She sat down and waited. She knew that presently she would hear the old woman's voice at the foot of the stairs. She was resolved upon her course, and knew that she could not be shaken in it, yet she dreaded unspeakably the outburst of grief and anger which she knew would come from her grandmother. She felt as if she had faced two fires, and now before the third she quailed a little.
It was not long before the expected summons came.
“Ellen—Ellen Brewster, come down here!”
Ellen went down. Her grandmother met her at the foot of the stairs. She was trembling from head to foot; her mouth twisted and wavered as if she had the palsy.
“Look here, Ellen Brewster, this ain't true?” she stammered.
“Yes, grandma,” answered Ellen. “I have thought it all over, and it is the only thing for me to do.”
Her grandmother clutched her arm, and the girl felt as if she were in the grasp of another will, which was more conclusive than steel.
“You sha'n't!” she said, whispering, lest Andrew should hear, but with intense force.
“I've got to, grandma. We've got to have the money.”
“The money,” said the old woman, with an inflection of voice and a twist of her features indicative of the most superb scorn—“the money! I guess you ain't goin' to lose such a chance as that for money. I guess I've got two hundred and ten dollars a year income, and I'll give up a half of that, and Andrew can put a mortgage on the house, if that Tenny woman has got to be supported because her husband has run off and left her and her young one. You sha'n't go to work in a shop.”
“I've got to, grandma,” said Ellen.
The old woman looked at her. It was like a duel between two strong wills of an old race. “You sha'n't,” she said.
“Yes, I shall, grandma.”
Then the old woman turned upon her in a fury of rage.
“You're a Loud all over, Ellen Brewster,” said she. “You 'ain't got a mite of Brewster about you. You 'ain't got any pride! You'd just as soon settle down and work in a shop as do anything else.”
Fanny pushed before her. “Look here, Mother Brewster,” said she, “you can just stop! Ellen is my daughter, and you 'ain't any right to talk to her this way. I won't have it. If anybody is goin' to blame her, it's me.”
“Who be you?” said Mrs. Zelotes, sniffing.
Then she looked at them both, at Ellen and at her mother.
“If you go an' do what you've planned,” said she to Ellen, “an' if you uphold her in it,” to Fanny, “I've done with you.”
“Good riddance,” said Fanny, coarsely.
“I ain't goin' to forget that you said that,” cried Mrs. Zelotes. She held up her dress high in front and went out of the door. “I ain't comin' over here again, an' I'll thank you to stay at home,” said she. Then she went away.
Soon after Fanny heard Ellen in the dining-room setting the table for supper, and went out.
“Where did you get that money you paid the dressmaker with?” she asked, abruptly.
“I borrowed it of Abby,” replied Ellen.
“Then she knows?”
“Yes.”
Fanny continued to look at Ellen with the look of one who is settling down with resignation under some knife of agony.
“Well,” said she, “there's no need to talk any more about it before your father. Now I guess you had better toast him some bread for his supper.”
“Yes, I will,” replied Ellen. She looked at her mother pitifully, and yet with that firmness which had seemed to suddenly develop in her. “You know it is the best thing for me to do, mother?” she said, and although she put it in the form of a question, the statement was commanding in its assertiveness.
“When are you—goin' to work?” asked Fanny.
“Next Monday,” replied Ellen.
When Ellen had gone to the factory to apply for work neither of the Lloyds were in the office, only a girl at the desk, whom she knew slightly. Ellen had hesitated a little as she approached the girl, who looked around with a friendly smile.
“I want to see—” Ellen began, then she stopped, for she did not exactly know for whom she should ask. The girl, who was blond and trim, clad coquettishly in a blue shirt-waist and a duck skirt, with a large, cheap rhinestone pin confining the loop of her yellow braids, looked at her in some bewilderment. She had heard of Ellen's good-fortune, and knew she was to be sent to Vassar by Cynthia Lennox. She did not dream that she had come to ask for employment.
“You want to see Mr. Lloyd?” she asked.
“Oh no!” replied Ellen.
“Mr. Robert Lloyd?” The girl, whose name was Nellie Stone, laughed a little meaningly as she said that.
Ellen blushed. “No,” she said. “I think I want to see the foreman.”
“Which foreman?”
“I don't know,” replied Ellen. “I want to get work if I can. I don't know which foreman I ought to see.”
“To get work?” repeated the girl, with a subtle change in her manner.
“Yes,” said Ellen. She could hear her heart beat, but she looked at the other girl's pretty, common face with the most perfect calmness.
“Mr. Flynn is the one you want to see, then,” said the girl. “You know Ed Flynn, don't you?”
“A little,” replied Ellen. He had been a big boy when she entered the high-school, and had left the next spring.
“Well, he's the one you want,” said Nellie Stone. Then she raised her voice to a shrill peal as a boy passed the office door.
“Here, you, Jack,” said she, “ask Mr. Flynn to come here a minute, will you?”
“He don't want to see you,” replied the boy, who was small and spare, laden heavily with a great roll of wrapping paper borne bayonet fashion over his shoulder. His round, impish face grinned back at the girl at the desk.
“Quit your impudence,” she returned, half laughing herself. “I don't want to see him; it is this young lady here; hurry up.”
The boy gave a comprehensive glance at Ellen. “Guess he'll come,” he called back.
Flynn appeared soon. He was handsome, well shaven and shorn, and he held himself smartly. He also dressed well in a business suit which would not have disgraced the Lloyds. His face lit up with astonishment and pleasure when he saw Ellen. He bowed and greeted her in a rich voice. He was of Irish descent but American born. Both his motions and his speech were adorned with flourishes of grace which betrayed his race. He placed a chair for Ellen with a sweep which would have been a credit to the stage. All his actions had a slight exaggeration as of fresco painting, which seemed to fit them for a stage rather than a room, and for an audience rather than chance spectators.
“No, thank you,” replied Ellen. Then she went straight to the matter in hand. “I have called to see if I could get a job here?” she said. She had been formulating her speech all the way thither. Her first impulse was to ask for employment, but she was sure as to the manner in which a girl would ordinarily couch such a request. So she asked for a job.
Flynn stared at her. “A job?” he repeated.
“Yes, I want very much to get one,” replied Ellen. “I thought there might be a vacancy.”
“Why, I thought—” said the young man. He was very much astonished, but his natural polish could rise above astonishment. Instead of blurting out what was in his mind as to her change of prospects, he reasoned with incredible swiftness that the change must be a hard thing to this girl, and that she was to be handled the more tenderly and delicately because she was such a pretty girl. He became twice as polite as before. He moved the chair nearer to her.
“Please sit down,” he said. He handed to her the wooden arm-chair as if it had been a throne. Nellie Stone bent frowning over her day-book.
“Now let me see,” said the young man, seriously, with perfect deference of manner, only belied by the rollicking admiration in his eyes. “You have never held a position in a factory before, I think?”
“No,” replied Ellen.
“There is at present only one vacancy that I can think of,” said Flynn, “and that does not pay very much, but there is always a chance to rise for a smart hand. I am sure you will be that,” he added, smiling at her.
Ellen did not return the smile. “I shall be contented to begin for a little, if there is a chance to rise,” she said.
“There's a chance to rise to eighteen dollars a week,” said Flynn. He smiled again, but it was like smiling at seriousness itself. Ellen's downright, searching eyes upon his face seemed almost to forbid the fact of her own girlish identity.
“What is the job you have for me?” said she.
“Tying strings in shoes,” answered Flynn. “Easy enough, only child's play, but you won't earn more than three dollars a week to begin with.”
“I shall be quite satisfied with that,” said Ellen. “When shall I come?”
“Why, to-morrow morning; no, to-morrow is Friday. Better come next Monday and begin the week. That will give you one day more off, and the hot wave a chance to get past.” Flynn spoke facetiously. It was a very hot day, and the air in the office like a furnace. He wiped his forehead, to which the dark rings of hair clung. The girl at the desk glanced around adoringly at him.
“I would rather not stop for that if you want me to begin at once,” said Ellen.
Flynn looked abashed. “Oh, we'd rather have you begin on the even week—it makes less bother over the account,” he said. “Monday morning at seven sharp, then.”
“Yes,” said Ellen.
Flynn walked off with an abrupt duck of his head. He somehow felt that he had been rebuffed, and Ellen rose.
“I told you you'd get one,” said the girl at the desk. “Catch Ed Flynn not giving a pretty girl a job.” She said it with an accent of pain as well as malice. Ellen looked at her with large, indignant eyes. She had not the least idea what she meant, at least she realized only the surface meaning, and that angered her.
“I suppose he gave me the job because there was a vacancy,” she returned, with dignity.
The other girl laughed. “Mebbe,” said she.
Ellen continued to look at her, and there was something in her look not only indignant, but appealing. Nellie Stone's expression changed again. She laughed uneasily. “Land, I didn't mean anything,” said she. “I'm glad for you that you got the job. Of course you wouldn't have got it if there hadn't been a chance. One of the girls got married last week, Maud Millet. I guess it's her place you've got. I'm real glad you've got it.”
“Thank you,” said Ellen.
“Good-bye,” said the girl.
“Good-bye,” replied Ellen.
On Monday morning the heat had broken, and an east wind with the breath of the sea in it was blowing. Ellen started for her work at half-past six. She held her father's little, worn leather-bag, in which he had carried his dinner for so many years. The walk was so long that it would scarcely give her time to come home at noon, and as for taking a car, that was not to be thought of for a moment on account of the fare.
Ellen walked along briskly, the east wind blew in her face, she smelled the salt sea, and somehow it at once soothed and stimulated her. Without seeing the mighty waste of waters, she seemed to realize its presence; she gazed at the sky hanging low with a scud of gray clouds, which did not look unlike the ocean, and the sense of irresponsibility in the midst of infinity comforted her.
“I am not Ellen Brewster after all,” she thought. “I am not anything separate enough to be worried about what comes to me. I am only a part of greatness which cannot fail of reaching its end.” She thought this all vaguely. She had no language for it, for she was very young; it was formless as music, but as true to her.
When she reached the cross-street where the Atkinses lived Abby and Maria came running out.
“My land, Ellen Brewster,” said Abby, half angrily, “if you don't look real happy! I believe you are glad to go to work in a shoe-shop!”
Ellen laughed. Maria said nothing, but she pressed close to her as she walked along. She was coughing a little in the east wind. There had been a drop of twenty degrees in the night, and these drops of temperature in New England mean steps to the tomb.
“You make me mad,” said Abby. Her voice broke a little. She dashed her hand across her eyes angrily. “Here's Granville Joy,” said she; “you'll be in the same room with him, Ellen.” She said it maliciously. Distress over her friend made her fairly malicious.
Ellen colored. “You are hard to talk to,” said she, in a low voice, for Granville was coming nearer, gaining on them from behind.
“She don't mean it,” whispered Maria.
When Granville caught up with them, Ellen pressed so close to Maria that he was forced to walk with Abby or pass on. She returned his “Good-morning,” then did not look at him again. Presently Willy Jones appeared, coming so imperceptibly that he seemed almost impossible.
“Where did he come from?” whispered Ellen to Maria.
“Hush,” replied Maria; “it's this way 'most every morning. All at once he comes, and he generally walks with me, because he's afraid Abby won't want him, but it's Abby.”
This morning, Willy Jones, aroused, perhaps, to self-assertion by the presence of another man, walked three abreast with Abby and Granville, but on the other side of Granville. Now and then he peered around the other man at the girl, with soft, wistful blue eyes, but Abby never seemed to see him. She talked fast, in a harsh, rather loud voice. She uttered bitter witticisms which made her companions laugh.
“Abby is so bright,” whispered Maria to Ellen, “but I wish she wouldn't talk so. Abby doesn't feel the way I wish she did. She rebels. She would be happier if she gave up rebelling and believed.” Maria coughed as she spoke.
“You had better keep your mouth shut in this east wind, Maria,” her sister called out sharply to her.
“I'm not talking much, Abby,” replied Maria.
Presently Maria looked at Ellen lovingly. “Do you feel very badly about going to work?” she asked, in a low voice.
“No, not now. I have made up my mind,” replied Ellen. The east wind was bringing a splendid color to her cheeks. She held up her head as she marched along, like one leading a charge of battle. Her eyes gleamed as with blue fire, her yellow hair sprung and curled around her temples.
They were now in the midst of a great, hurrying procession bound for the factories. Some of the men walked silently, with a dogged stoop of shoulders and shambling hitch of hips; some of the women moved droopingly, with an indescribable effect of hanging back from the leading of some imperious hand of fate. Many of them, both men and women, walked alertly and chattered like a flock of sparrows. Ellen moved with this rank and file of the army of labor, and all at once a sense of comradeship seized her. She began to feel humanity as she had never felt it before. The sense of her own littleness aroused her to a power of comprehension of the grandeur of the mass of which she was a part. She began to lose herself and sense humanity.
When the people reached the factories, two on one side of the road, one, Lloyd's, on the other, they began streaming up the outside stairs and disappearing like swarms of bees in hives. Two flights of stairs, one on each side, led to a platform in front of the entrance of Lloyd's.
When Ellen set her foot on one of these stairs the seven-o'clock steam-whistle blew, and a mighty thrill shot through the vast building. Ellen caught her breath. Abby came close to her.
“Don't get scared,” said she, with ungracious tenderness; “there's nothing to be scared at.”
Ellen laughed. “I'm not scared,” said she. Then they entered the factory, humming with machinery, and a sensation which she had not anticipated was over her. Scared she was not; she was fairly exultant. All at once she entered a vast room in which eager men were already at the machines with frantic zeal, as if they were driving labor herself. When she felt the vibration of the floor under her feet, when she saw people spring to their stations of toil, as if springing to guns in a battle, she realized the might and grandeur of it all. Suddenly it seemed to her that the greatest thing in the whole world was work and that this was one of the greatest forms of work—to cover the feet of progress of the travellers of the earth from the cradle to the grave. She saw that these great factories, and the strength of this army of the sons and daughters of toil, made possible the advance of civilization itself, which cannot go barefoot. She realized all at once and forever the dignity of labor, this girl of the people, with a brain which enabled her to overlook the heads of the rank and file of which she herself formed a part. She never again, whatever her regret might have been for another life for which she was better fitted, which her taste preferred, had any sense of ignominy in this. She never again felt that she was too good for her labor, for labor had revealed itself to her like a goddess behind a sordid veil. Abby and Maria looked at her wonderingly. No other girl had ever entered Lloyd's with such a look on her face.
“Are you sick?” whispered Abby, catching her arm.
“No,” said Ellen. “No, don't worry me, Abby. I think I shall like it.”
“I declare you make me mad,” said Abby, but she looked at her adoringly. “Here's Ed Flynn,” she added. “He'll look out for you. Good-bye, I'll see you at noon.” Abby went away to her machine. She was stitching vamps by the piece, and earning a considerable amount. The Atkinses were not so distressed as they had been, and Abby was paying off a mortgage.
When the foreman came towards Ellen she experienced a shock. His gay, admiring eyes on her face seemed to dispel all her exaltation. She felt as if her feet touched earth, and yet the young man was entirely respectful, and even thoughtful. He bade her “Good-morning,” and conducted her to the scene of her labor. One other girl was already there at work. She gave a sidewise glance at Ellen, and went on, making her fingers fly. Mr. Flynn showed Ellen what to do. She had to tie the shoes together with bits of twine, laced through eyelet holes. Ellen took a piece of twine and tied it in as Flynn watched her. He laughed pleasantly.
“You'll do,” he said, approvingly. “I've been in here five years, and you are the first girl I ever saw who tied a square knot at the first trial. Here's Mamie Brady here, she worked a solid month before she got the hang of the square knot.”
“You go along,” admonished the girl spoken of as “Mamie Brady.” Her words were flippant, even impudent, but her tone was both dejected and childish. She continued to work without a glance at either of them. Her fingers flew, tying the knots with swift jerks.
“Well, you help Miss Brewster, if she needs any help,” said Flynn, as he went away.
“We don't have any misses in this shop,” said the girl to Ellen, with sarcastic emphasis.
“I don't care anything about being called miss,” replied Ellen, picking up another piece of string.
“What's your first name?”
“Ellen.”
“Oh, land! I know who you be. You read that essay at the high-school graduation. I was there. Well, I shouldn't think you would want to be called miss if you feel the way you said you did in that.”
“I don't want to,” said Ellen.
The girl gave a swift, comprehensive glance at her as her fingers manipulated the knots.
“You won't earn twenty cents a week at the rate you're workin',” she said; “look at me.”
“I don't believe you worked any faster than I do when you hadn't been here any longer,” retorted Ellen.
“I did, too; you can't depend on a thing Ed Flynn says. You're awful slow. He praises you because you are good-lookin'.”
Ellen turned and faced her. “Look here,” said she.
The other girl looked at her with unspeakable impudence, and yet under it was that shadow of dejection and that irresponsible childishness.
“Well, I am lookin',” said she, “what is it?”
“You need not speak to me again in that way,” said Ellen, “and I want you to understand it. I will not have it.”
“My, ain't you awful smart,” said the other girl, sneeringly, but she went on with her work without another word. Presently she said to Ellen, kindly enough: “If you lay the shoes the way I do, so, you can get them faster. You'll find it pays. Every little saving of time counts when you are workin' by the piece.”
“Thank you,” said Ellen, and did as she was instructed. She began to work with exceeding swiftness for a beginner. Her fingers were supple, her nervous energy great. Flynn came and stood beside her, watching her.
“If you work at that rate, you'll make it pretty profitable,” he said.
“Thank you,” said Ellen.
“And a square knot every time,” he added, with almost a caressing inflection. Mamie Brady tied in the twine with compressed lips. Granville Joy passed them, pushing a rack full of shoes to another department, and he glanced at them jealously. Still he was not seriously alarmed as to Flynn, who, although he was good-looking, was a Catholic. Mrs. Zelotes seemed an effectual barrier to that.
“Ed Flynn talks that way to everybody,” Mamie Brady said to Ellen, after the foreman had passed on. She said it this time quite inoffensively. Ellen laughed.
“If Idotie the knots square, that is the main thing,” she said.
“Then you don't like him?”
“I never spoke two words to him before the day I applied for work,” Ellen replied, haughtily. She was beginning to feel that perhaps the worst feature of her going to work in a factory would be this girl.
“I've known girls who would be willing to go down on their knees and tie his shoes when they hadn't seen more of him than that,” said the girl. “Ed Flynn is an awful masher.”
Ellen went on with her work. The girl, after a side glance at her, went on with hers.
Gradually Ellen's work began to seem mechanical. At first she had felt as if she were tying all her problems of life in square knots. She had to use all her brain upon it; after a while her brain had so informed her fingers that they had learned their lesson well enough to leave her free to think, if only the girl at her side would let her alone. The girl had a certain harsh beauty, coarsely curling red hair, a great mass of it, gathered in an untidy knot, and a brilliant complexion. Her hands were large and red. Ellen's contrasted with them looked like a baby's.
“You 'ain't got hands for workin' in a shoe-shop,” said Mamie Brady, presently, and it was impossible to tell from her tone whether she envied or admired Ellen's hands, or was proud of the superior strength of her own.
“Well, they've got to work in a shoe-shop,” said Ellen, with a short laugh.
“You won't find it so easy to work with such little mites of hands when it comes to some things,” said the girl.
It began to be clear that she exulted in her large, coarse hands as being fitted for her work.
“Maybe mine will grow larger,” said Ellen.
“No, they won't. They'll grow all bony and knotty, but they won't grow any bigger.”
“Well, I shall have to get along with them the best way I can,” replied Ellen, rather impatiently. This girl was irritating to a degree, and yet there was all the time that vague dejection about her, and withal a certain childishness, which seemed to insist upon patience. The girl was really older than Ellen, but she was curiously unformed. Some of the other girls said openly that she was “lacking.”
“You act stuck up. Are you stuck up?” asked Mamie Brady, suddenly, after another pause.
Ellen laughed in spite of herself. “No,” said she, “I am not. I know of no reason that I have for being stuck up.”
“Well, I don't know of any either,” said the other girl, “but I didn't know. You sort of acted as if you felt stuck up.”
“Well, I don't.”
“You talk stuck up. Why don't you talk the way the rest of us do? Why do you say ‘am not,’ and ‘ar'n't’; why don't you say ‘ain't’?”
The girl mimicked Ellen's voice impishly.
Ellen colored. “I am going to talk the way I think best, the way I have been taught is right, and if that makes you think I am stuck up, I can't help it.”
“My, don't get mad. I didn't mean anything,” said the other girl.
All the time while Ellen was working, and even while the exultation and enthusiasm of her first charge in the battle of labor was upon her, she had had, since her feminine instincts were, after all, strong with her, a sense that Robert Lloyd was under the same great factory roof, in the same human hive, that he might at any moment pass through the room. That, however, she did not think very likely. She fancied the Lloyds seldom went through the departments, which were in charge of foremen. Mr. Norman Lloyd was at the mountains with his wife, she knew. They left Robert in charge, and he would have enough to do in the office. She looked at the grimy men working around her, and she thought of the elegant young fellow, and the utter incongruity of her being among them seemed so great as to preclude the possibility of it. She had said to herself when she thought of obtaining work in Lloyd's that she need not hesitate about it on account of Robert. She had heard her father say that the elder Lloyd almost never came in contact with the men, that everything was done through the foremen. She reasoned that it would be the same with the younger Lloyd. But all at once the girl at her side gave her a violent nudge, which did not interrupt for a second her own flying fingers.
“Say,” she said, “ain't he handsome?”
Ellen glanced over her shoulder and saw Robert Lloyd coming down between the lines of workmen. Then she turned to her work, and her fingers slipped and bungled, her ears rang. He passed without speaking.
Mamie Brady openly stared after him. “He's awful handsome, and an awful swell, but he's awful stuck up, just like the old boss,” said she. “He never notices any of us, and acts as if he was afraid we'd poison him. My, what's the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” said Ellen.
“You look white as a sheet; ain't you well?”
Ellen turned upon her with sudden fury. She had something of the blood of the violent Louds and of her hot-tempered grandmother. She had stood everything from this petty, insistent tormentor.
“Yes, I am well,” she replied, “and I will thank you to let me alone, and let me do my work, and do your own.”
The other girl stared at her a minute with curiously expressive, uplifted eyebrows.
“Whew!” she said, in a half whistle then, and went on with her work, and did not speak again.
Ellen was thankful that Robert Lloyd had not spoken to her in the factory, and yet she was cut to the quick by it. It fulfilled her anticipations to the letter. “I was right,” she said to herself; “he can never think of me again. He is showing it.” Somehow, after he had passed, her enthusiasm, born of a strong imagination, and her breadth of nature failed her somewhat. The individual began to press too closely upon the aggregate. Suddenly Ellen Brewster and her own heartache and longing came to the front. She had put herself out of his life as completely as if she had gone to another planet. Still, feeling this, she realized no degradation of herself as a cause of it. She realized that from his point of view she had gone into a valley, but from hers she was rather on an opposite height. She on the height of labor, of skilled handiwork, which is the manifestation in action of brain-work, he on the height of pure brain-work unpressed by physical action.
At noon, when she was eating her dinner with Abby and Maria, Abby turned to her and inquired if young Mr. Lloyd had spoken to her when he came through the room.
“No, he didn't,” replied Ellen.
Abby said nothing, but she compressed her lips and gave her head a hard jerk. A girl who ran a machine next to Abby's came up, munching a large piece of pie, taking clean semicircular bites with her large, white teeth.
“Say,” she said, “did you see the young boss's new suit? Got up fine, wasn't he?”
“I'd like to see him working where I be for an hour,” said a young fellow, strolling up, dipping into his dinner-bag. He was black and greasy as to face and hands and clothing. “Guess his light pants and vest would look rather different,” said he, and everybody laughed except the Atkins girls and Ellen.
“I guess he washed his hands, anyway, before he ate his dinner,” said Abby, sharply, looking at the young man's hands with meaning.
The young fellow colored, though he laughed. “There ain't a knife in this shop so sharp as some women's tongues,” said he. “I pity the man that gets you.”
“There won't be any man get me,” retorted Abby. “I've seen all I want to see of men, working with 'em every day.”
“Mebbe they have of you,” called back the young fellow, going away.
“The saucy thing!” said the girl who stitched next to Abby.
“There isn't any excuse for a man's eating his dinner with hands like that,” said Abby. “It's worse to poison yourself with your own dirt than with other folks'. It hurts your own self more.”
“He ain't worth minding,” said the girl.
“Do you suppose I do mind him?” returned Abby. Maria looked at her meaningly. The young man, whose name was Edison Bartlett, had once tried to court Abby, but neither she nor Maria had ever told of it.
“His clothes were a pearl gray,” said the girl at the stitching-machine, reverting to the original subject.
“Good gracious, who cares what color they were?” cried Abby, impatiently.
“He looked awful handsome in 'em,” said the girl. “He's awful handsome.”
“You'd better look at handsome fellows in your own set, Sadie Peel,” said Abby, roughly.
The girl, who was extremely pretty, carried herself well, and dressed with cheap fastidiousness, colored.
“I don't see what we have to think about sets for,” said she. “I guess way back the Peels were as good as the Lloyds. We're in a free country, where one is as good as another, ain't we?”
“No one is as good as another, except in the sight of the Lord, in any country on the face of this earth,” said Abby.
“If you are as good in your own sight, I don't see that it makes much difference about the sight of other human beings,” said Ellen. “I guess that's what makes a republic, anyway.”
Sadie Peel gave a long, bewildered look at her, then she turned to Abby.
“Do you know where I can get somebody to do accordion-plaiting for me?” she asked.
“No,” said Abby. “I never expect to get to the height of accordion-plaiting.”
“I know where you can,” said another girl, coming up. She had light hair, falling in a harsh, uncurled bristle over her forehead; her black gown was smeared with paste, and even her face and hands were sticky with it.
“There's a great splash of paste on your nose, Hattie Wright,” said Abby.
The girl took out a crumpled handkerchief and began rubbing her nose absently while she went on talking about the accordion-plaiting.
“There's a woman on Joy Street does it,” said she. “She lives just opposite the school-house, and she does it awful cheap, only three cents a yard.” She thrust the handkerchief into her pocket.
“You haven't got it half off,” said Abby.
“Let it stay there, then,” said the girl, indifferently. “If you work pasting linings in a shoe-shop you've got to get pasted yourself.”
Ellen looked at the girl with a curious reflection that she spoke the truth, that she really was pasted herself, that the soil and the grind of her labor were wearing on her soul. She had seen this girl out of the shop—in fact, only the day before—and no one would have known her for the same person. When her light hair was curled, and she was prettily dressed, she was quite a beauty. In the shop she was a slattern, and seemed to go down under the wheels of her toil.
“On Joy Street, you said?” said Sadie Peel.
“Yes. Right opposite the school-house. Her name is Brackett.”
Then the one-o'clock whistle blew, and everybody, Ellen with the rest, went back to their stations. Robert Lloyd did not come into the room again that afternoon. Ellen worked on steadily, and gained swiftness. Every now and then the foreman came and spoke encouragingly to her.
“Look out, Mamie,” he said to the girl at her side, “or she'll get ahead of you.”
“I don't want to get ahead of her,” said Ellen, unexpectedly.
Flynn laughed. “If you don't, you ain't much like the other girls in this shop,” said he, passing on with his urbane, slightly important swing of shoulders.
“Did you mean that?” asked Mamie Brady.
“Yes, I did. It seems to me you work fast enough for any girl. A girl isn't a machine.”
“You're a queer thing,” said Mamie Brady. “If I were you, I would just as soon get ahead as not, especially if Ed Flynn was goin' to come and praise me for it.”
Ellen shrugged her shoulders and tied another knot.
“You're a queer thing,” said Mamie Brady, while her fingers flew like live wires.
That night, when Ellen went down the street towards home with the stream of factory operatives, she computed that she must have earned about fifty cents, perhaps not quite that. She was horribly tired. Although the work in itself was not laborious, she had been all day under a severe nervous tension.
“You look tired to death, Ellen Brewster,” Abby said, in a half-resentful, half-compassionate tone. “You can never stand this in the world.”
“I am no more tired than any one would be the first day,” Ellen returned, stoutly, “and I'm going to stand it.”
“You act to me as if you liked it,” said Abby, with an angry switch like a cat.
“I do,” Ellen returned, almost as angrily. Then she turned to Abby. “Look here, Abby Atkins, why can't you treat me half-way decent?” said she. “You know I've got to do it, and I'm making the best of it. If anybody else treated me the way you are doing, I don't know what you would do.”
“I would kill them,” said Abby, fiercely; “but it's different with me. I'm mad to have you go to work in the shop, and act as if you liked it, because I think so much of you.” Abby and Ellen were walking side by side, and Maria followed with Sadie Peel.
“Well, I can't help it if you are mad at me,” said Ellen. “I've had everything to contend against, my father and mother, and my grandmother won't even speak to me, and now if you—” Ellen's voice broke.
Abby caught her arm in a hard grip.
“I ain't,” said she; “you can depend on me. You know you can, in spite of everything. You know why I talk so. If you've set your heart on doing it, I won't say another word. I'll do all I can to help you, and I'd like to hear anybody say a word against you for going to work in the shop, that's all.”
Ellen and Abby almost never kissed each other; Abby was not given to endearments of that kind. Maria was more profuse with her caresses. That night when they reached the corner of the cross street where the Atkinses lived, Maria went close to Ellen and put up her face.
“Good-night,” said she. Then she withdrew her lips suddenly, before Ellen could touch them.
“I forgot,” said she. “You mustn't kiss me. I forgot my cough. They say it's catching.”
Ellen caught hold of her little, thin shoulders, held her firmly, and kissed her full on her lips.
“Good-night,” said she.
“Good-night, Ellen,” called Abby, and her sharp voice rang as sweet as a bird's.
When Ellen came in sight of her grandmother's house, she saw a window-shade go down with a jerk, and knew that Mrs. Zelotes had been watching for her, and was determined not to let her know it. Mrs. Pointdexter came out of her grand house as Ellen passed, and took up her station on the corner to wait for a car. She bowed to Ellen with an evasive, little, sidewise bow. Her natural amiability prompted her to shake hands with her, call her “my dear,” and inquire how she had got on during her first day in the factory, but she was afraid of her friend, whose eye she felt upon her around the edge of the drawn curtain.
It was unusually dark that night for early fall, and the rain came down in a steady drizzle, as it had come all day, and the wind blew from the ocean on the east. The lamp was lighted in the kitchen when Ellen turned into her own door-yard, and home had never looked so pleasant and desirable to her. For the first time in her life she knew what it was to come home for rest and shelter after a day of toil, and she seemed to sense the full meaning of home as a refuge for weary labor.
When she opened the door, she smelled at once a particular kind of stew of which she was very fond, and knew that her mother had been making it for her supper. There was a rush of warm air from the kitchen which felt grateful after the damp chill outside.
Ellen went into the kitchen, and her mother stood there over the stove, stirring the stew. She looked up at the girl with an expression of intense motherliness which was beyond a smile.
“Well, so you've got home?” she said.
“Yes.”
“How did you get along?”
“All right. It isn't hard work. Not a bit hard, mother.”
“Ain't you tired?”
“Oh, a little. But no more than anybody would be at first. I don't look very tired, do I?” Ellen laughed.
“No, you don't,” said Fanny, looking at her cheeks, reddened with the damp wind. The mother's look was admiring and piteous and brave. No one knew how the woman had suffered that day, but she had kept her head and heart above it. The stew for Ellen's supper was a proof of that.
“Where's father?” asked Ellen, taking off her hat and cape, and going to the sink to wash her face and hands. Fanny saw her do that with a qualm. Ellen had always used a dainty little set in her own room. Now she was doing exactly as her father had always done on his return from the shop—washing off the stains of leather at the kitchen sink. She felt instinctively that Ellen did it purposely, that she was striving to bring herself into accord with her new life in all the details.
Little Amabel came running out of the dining-room, and threw her arms around Ellen's knees as she was bending over the sink. “I've set the table!” she cried.
“Look out or you'll get all splashed,” laughed Ellen.
“And I dusted,” said Amabel.
“She's been as good as a kitten all day, and a sight of help,” said Fanny.
“She's a good girl,” said Ellen. “Cousin Ellen will kiss her as soon as she gets her face washed.”
She caught hold of a fold of the roller towel, and turned her beautiful, dripping face to her mother as she did so.
“That stew does smell so good,” said she. “Where did you say father was?”
“I thought we'd just have some bread and milk for dinner, and somethin' hearty to-night, when you came home,” said Fanny. “I thought maybe a stew would taste good.”
“I guess it will,” said Ellen, stooping down to kiss Amabel. “Where did you say father was?”
“Uncle Andrew has been lyin' down all day most,” whispered Amabel.
“Isn't he well?” Ellen asked her mother, in quick alarm.
“Oh yes, he's well enough.” Fanny moved close to the girl with a motion of secrecy. “If I were you I wouldn't say one word about the shop, nor what you did, before father to-night; let him kind of get used to it. Amabel mustn't talk about it, either.”
“I won't,” said Amabel, with a wise air.
“You know father had set his heart on somethin' pretty different for you,” said Fanny.
Fanny hushed her voice as Andrew came out of the dining-room, staggering a little as if the light blinded him. His nervous strength of the morning had passed and left him exhausted. He moved and stood with a downward lope of every muscle, expressing unutterable patience, which had passed beyond rebellion and questioning.
He stood before Ellen like some old, spent horse. He was expecting to hear something about the shop—expecting, as it were, a touch on a sore, and he waited for it meekly.
Ellen turned her lovely, glowing face towards him.
“Father,” she said, as if nothing out of the common had happened, “are you going down-town to-night?”
Andrew brightened a little. “I can if you want anything, Ellen,” he said.
“Well, I don't want you to go on purpose, but I do want a book from the library.”
“I'd just as soon go as not, Ellen,” said Andrew.
“It'll do him good,” whispered Fanny, as she passed Ellen, carrying the dish of stew to the dining-room.
“Well, then, I'll give you my card after supper,” said Ellen. “Supper is ready now, isn't it, mother? I'm as hungry as a bear.”
Andrew, when he was seated at the table and was ladling out the stew, had still that air of hopeless and defenceless apology towards life, but he held his head higher, and his frown of patient gloom had relaxed.
Then Ellen said something else. “Maybe I can write a book some time,” said she.
A sudden flash illumined Andrew's face. It was like the visible awakening of hope and ambition.
“I don't see why you can't,” he said, eagerly.
“Maybe she can,” said Fanny. “Give her some more of the potatoes, Andrew.”
“I'll have plenty of time after—evenings,” said Ellen.
“I guess lots of folks write books that sell, and sell well, that don't have any more talent than you,” said Andrew. “Only think how they praised your valedictory.”
“Well, it can't do any harm to try,” said Ellen, “and you could copy it for me, couldn't you, father? Your writing is so fine, it would be as good as a typewriter.”
“Of course I can,” said Andrew.
When Andrew went down to the library, passing along the drenched streets, seeing the lamps through shifting veils of heavy mist, he was as full of enthusiasm over Ellen's book as he had been over the gold-mine. The heart of a man is always ready to admit a ray of sunshine, and it takes only a small one to dispel the shadows when love dwells therein.