"I will, whether you will let me or not," cried Robert; and at that
moment he felt inclined to marry the entire Brewster family rather
than give up this girl.

However, as he went home, walking that he might think the better, he
had to confess to himself that the girl was right; that, as matters
were, anything definite was out of the question. He had to admit
that it might be a matter of years.

Chapter XL

When Ellen had been at work in the factory a year, she was running a
machine and working by the piece, and earning on an average eighteen
dollars a week. Of course that was an unusual advance for a girl,
but Ellen was herself unusual. She came to work in those days with
such swiftness and unswerving accuracy that she seemed fairly a part
of the great system of labor itself. While she was at her machine,
her very individuality seemed lost; she became an integral part of a
system.

"She's one of the best hands we ever had," Flynn told Norman Lloyd
one day.

"I am glad to hear that," Lloyd responded, smiling with that
peculiar smile of his which was like a cold flash of steel.

"Curse him, he thinks no more of anybody in this shop than he does
of the machine they work," Flynn thought as he watched the
proprietor walking with his stately descent down the stairs. The
noon whistle was blowing, and the younger Lloyd went leaping down
the stairs and joined his uncle, then the two walked down the
street, away from the factory. The factory at that time of year
began to present, in spite of its crude architecture, quite a
charming appearance, from the luxuriant vines which covered it and
were beginning to get autumnal tints of red and russet. All the
front of Lloyd's was covered with vines, which had grown with
amazing swiftness. Mrs. Lloyd often used to look at them and reflect
upon them with complacency.

"I should think it would make it pleasanter for the men to work in
the factory, when it looks so pretty and green," she told her
husband one of the hottest days of the preceding summer. As she
spoke she compressed her lips in a way which was becoming habitual
to her. It meant the endurance of a sharp stab of vital pain. There
was a terrible pathos in the poor woman's appearance at that time.
She still kept about. Her malady did not seem to be on the increase,
but it endured. Her form had changed indescribably. She had not lost
flesh, but she had a curious, distorted look, and one on seeing her
had a be