ns of mingled
solemnity and exultation, as of children let out to play because of
sorrow in the house, which will not brook the jarring inconsequence
of youth.

Mamie Brady, walking beside a young man as red-haired as herself,
called out, with ill-repressed glee, "Turn round, Ellen Brewster;
there ain't no shop to-day."

The young man at her side, nervously meagre, looked at Ellen with a
humorous contortion of this thin face, then he caught Mamie Brady by
the arm, and swung her into a hopity-skip down the sidewalk. Just
behind them came Granville Joy, with another man. Ellen stopped.
"What is it?" she said to him. "Why is the shop closed?"

Granville stopped, and let the stream of workmen pass him and Ellen.
They stood in the midst of it, separating it, as rock will separate
a current. "Mrs. Lloyd is dead," Granville replied, soberly.

"I heard she was very low last night," Ellen returned, in a hushed
voice.

Then she passed Granville, who stood a second gazing wistfully after
her, before he resumed his homeward way. He told himself quite
accurately that she had purposely refrained from turning, in order
to avoid walking with himself. A certain resentment seized him. It
seemed to him that something besides his love had been slighted.
"She needn't have thought I was going to make love to her going home
in broad daylight with all these folks," he reflected, and he threw
up his head impatiently.

The man with whom he had been walking when Ellen appeared lingered
for him to rejoin him. "Wonder how many shops they'd shut up for you
and me," said the man, with a sort of humorous bitterness. He had a
broad face, seemingly fixed in an eternal mask of laughter, and yet
there were hard lines in it, and a forehead of relentless judgment
overhung his wide bow of mouth and his squat and wrinkled nose.

"Guess not many," replied Granville, echoing the man in a way
unusual to him.

"And yet if it wa'n't for us they couldn't keep the shop running at
all," said the man, whose name was Tom Peel.

"That's so," said Granville, with a slight glance over his shoulder.

Ellen had met the Atkins girls, and had turned, and was coming back
with them. It was as he had thought.

"If the new boss cuts down fifteen per cent., as the talk is, what
be you goin' to do?" asked Tom Peel.

"I ain't goin' to stand it," replied Granville, fiercely.

"Ain't goin' to be swept clean by the new broom, hey?" said the man,
with a widened grin.