ing your skirts draggled."

Maria pulled up her skirts so high that she exposed her slender
ankles, then seeing that she had done so, she let them fall with a
quick glance at two men behind them.

"The snow will shake right off; it's light, Abby," she said.

"It ain't light. I should think you might listen to Ellen, if you
won't to me."

Ellen pressed close to Maria, and pulled her thin arm through her
own. "Look here," she said, "don't you think--"

Then Maria burst out with a pitiful emphasis. "I've got to go," she
said. "Father had a bad spell last night; he can't get out. He'll
lose his place this time, we are afraid, and there's a note coming
due that father says he's paid, but the man didn't give it up, and
he's got to pay it over again; the lawyer says there is no other
way, and we can't let John Sargent do everything. He's got a sister
out West he's about supporting since her husband died last fall.
I've got to go to work; we've got to have the money, Ellen, and as
for my cough, I have always coughed. It hasn't killed me yet, and I
guess it won't yet for a while." Maria said the last with a
reckless gayety which was unusual to her.

Abby trudged on ahead with indignant emphasis. "I'd like to know
what good it is going to do to work and earn and pay up money if
everybody is going to be killed by it?" she said, without turning
her head.

Ellen pulled up Maria's coat-collar around her neck and put an extra
fold of her dress-skirt into her hand.

"There, you can hold it up as high as that, it looks all right,"
said she.

"I wish Robert Lloyd had to get up at six o'clock and trudge a mile
in this snow to his work," said Abby, with sudden viciousness.
"He'll be driven down in his Russian sleigh by a man looking like a
drum-major, and cut our poor little wages, and that's all he cares.
Who's earning the money, he or us, I'd like to know? I hate the
rich!"

"If it's true, what you say," said Maria, "it seems to me it's like
hating those you have given things to, and that's worse than hating
your enemies."

"Don't say given, say been forced to hand over," retorted Abby,
fiercely; "and don't preach, Maria Atkins, I hate preaching; and do
have sense enough not to talk when you are out in this awful storm.
You can keep your mouth shut, if you can't do anything else!"

Ellen had turned quite white at Abby's words.

"You don't think that he means to cut the wages?" she said, eagerly.

"I know he does. I h