t you know what my salary is, and her whole family is in a
measure dependent upon her."

"Hasn't her father got work?"

"No."

"I'll speak to Norman," cried Mrs. Lloyd, quickly. "I know he would
do it for me."

"But even then, Aunt Lizzie, there is the aunt in the asylum, and
the child, and--"

"Your uncle will pay you more."

"It isn't altogether that; in fact, it isn't that at all which is at
the bottom of the difficulty. The difficulty is with Ellen herself.
She will never consent to my marrying her, and having to support her
family, while matters are as now. You don't know how proud she is,
Aunt Lizzie."

"She is a splendid girl."

"As far as I am concerned I would marry the whole lot on a little
more than I have now, but she would not let me do it. There's
nothing to do but to wait."

"Perhaps the aunt will get well and her husband will come back; and
I will see, anyway, if Norman won't give her father work," said Mrs.
Lloyd.

"I think you had better not, Aunt Lizzie."

"Why not, Robert?"

"There are reasons why I think you had better not." Robert would
not tell her that Ellen had begged him not to use any influence of
his to get her father work.

"After the way father has been turned off, I can't stand it," she
had said, with a sort of angry dignity which was unusual to her. In
fact, her father himself had begged her not to make use of Robert in
any way for his own advancement.

"If they don't want me for my work, I don't want to crawl in because
the nephew of the boss likes my daughter," he had said. This speech
was fairly rough for him, but Ellen had understood.

"I know what you mean, father," she said.

"I'd rather work in the road," said Andrew. That autumn he was
getting jobs of clearing up yards of fallen leaves, and gathering
feed-corn and pumpkins, and earning a pittance. Fanny continued to
work on her wrappers. "It's a mercy wrappers don't go out of
fashion," she often said.

"I suppose things that folks can get for nothing ain't so apt to go
out of fashion," Andrew retorted, bitterly. He hated the wrappers
with a deadly hatred. He hated the sight of the limp row of them on
his bedroom wall. Nobody knew how the family pinched and screwed in
those days.

They were using the small fund which they secured from the house
mortgage, Ellen's earnings, and Fanny's and Andrew's, and every cent
had to be counted, but there was something splendid in their loyalty
to poor Eva in the asyl