e pavement showed ridges of dust as from a mighty
broom, and travellers walked bending before it with backward-flying
garments.

"You may be right," said Robert; "still, as Aunt Cynthia says, so
many girls have that idea of earning money instead of going to
school."

"I know the pitiful need of money has tainted many poor girls with a
monstrous and morbid overvalue of it," said Risley, "and for that I
cannot see they are to blame; but in this case I am sure it was not
so. That poor child gave up Vassar College and went to work because
she was fairly forced into it by circumstances. The aunt's husband
ran away with another woman, and left her destitute, so that the
support of her and her child came upon the Brewsters; and Brewster
has been out of work a long time now, I know. He told me so. That
mortgage had to be raised, and the girl had to go to work; there was
no other way out of it."

"Why didn't she tell Aunt Cynthia so?" asked Robert.

"Because she is Ellen Brewster, the outgrowth of the child who would
not--" Risley checked himself abruptly.

"I know," said Robert, shortly.

The other man started. "How long have you known--she did not tell?"

Robert laughed a little. "Oh no," he replied. "Nobody told. I went
there to call, and saw my own old doll sitting in a little chair in
a corner of the parlor. She did not tell, but she knew that I knew.
That child was a trump."

"Well, what can you expect of a girl who was a child like that?"
said Risley. "Mind you, in a way I don't like it. This power for
secretiveness and this rigidity of pride in a girl of that age
strike me rather unpleasantly. Of course she was too proud to tell
Cynthia the true reason, and very likely thought they would blame
her father, or Cynthia might feel that she was in a measure hinting
to her to do more."

"It would have looked like that," said Robert, reflecting.

"Without any doubt that was what she thought; still, I don't like
this strength in so young a girl. She will make a more harmonious
woman than girl, for she has not yet grown up to her own character.
But depend upon it, that girl never went to work of her own free
choice."

"You say the father is out of work?" Robert said.

"Yes, he has not had work for six months. He said, with the most
dejected dignity and appeal that I ever saw in my life, that they
begin to think him too old, that the younger men are preferred."

"I wonder," Robert began, then he stopped confused