at. 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-machi